UCSON, March 18 – If your typical major league player had been confined to a videoconference room for nine hours, essentially ignored by the Congressional committee that had subpoenaed him and fed only a pizza that was too greasy to touch, he might have been angry enough to throw a helmet from here to Washington.

Frank Thomas was only upset that he did not get to say more. While the House Committee on Government Reform questioned every player present at the hearing Thursday – Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Curt Schilling, Rafael Palmeiro and Jose Canseco – Thomas remained a disembodied face on a television screen, shunted aside by the committee after his opening statement.

Either the committee members felt that the satellite hookup took away from the drama of the hearing or they forgot about Thomas, one of baseball’s strongest critics of steroids. After his first statement, Thomas was never called on again, leaving him stuck, hour after hour, in the on-deck circle at the University of Arizona. It was only when Thomas reported back to work with the Chicago White Sox on Friday that he was finally able to answer the questions that the committee never asked him.

On baseball’s existing drug-testing policy: “Public embarrassment will take care of a lot of this. Once a guy’s name is out there in the newspaper, he won’t want to do it again. One big punch in the stomach will take care of this – not a slap on the wrist.”

On McGwire, who would not answer questions from the panel about whether he took steroids: “I don’t think it was anything positive for us, for baseball. Guys would say stuff like that about him back in the day, but I was naïve about the whole thing.”

On the negative attention being cast on baseball: “If we have suffered a black eye, it’s time to clear it up and let it heal. Everyone is on edge right now, but I think some good will come out of this. I really do.”

Thomas’s comments came on a day on which Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and the ranking minority member of the committee, issued a statement saying there was a need to investigate “the full extent of the steroid problem in baseball and other sports.” Waxman, who near the end of the hearing Thursday wondered out loud whether baseball needed new leaders, also endorsed a “universal no-steroids policy for all levels of athletics.”

Waxman said it was clear after the 11-hour hearing that baseball remained “in denial” about the scope of its steroid problem. Karen Lightfoot, his spokeswoman on the committee, said new individuals had approached the committee Friday with information about steroid use in baseball.

But at the same time, President Bush declined to offer further support Friday for a Congressional investigation of baseball. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One that the president did not believe federal intervention was the proper course. Bush, a former owner of the Texas Rangers, said on Wednesday that he had no problem with the committee’s decision to subpoena players for the hearing, but on Friday, he seemed to draw a line.

“Baseball has taken important steps to respond to concerns that have been expressed about the use of steroids,” McClellan said. “It is important for baseball to continue to take steps to confront the problem.”

Meanwhile, the 36-year-old Thomas, a longtime slugger with 436 career home runs, has already accepted an invitation to participate on a Congressional task force with Schilling, a fellow steroids critic, and a handful of other players. Thomas envisions doing public-service announcements and speaking to high school students about the dangers of performance-enhancing drugs.

Thomas seemed to be among the relatively few major leaguers who admitted to watching the hearings on Thursday – and not just because he was legally obligated to do so. While White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen said he “didn’t pay any attention” and Chicago Cubs Manager Dusty Baker said he was busy buying cornbread, cabbage and corned beef for St. Patrick’s Day, Thomas said, “This is real.”

When he reflected on the number of teenagers using steroids, he shook his head as if he had been fooled by a curveball. “I didn’t know,” he said.

Even though Tucson Electric Park is about as far from the Rayburn building in Washington as baseball can get, steroids were a topic of conversation Friday because the White Sox were playing the Cubs in a spring-training game with an intracity edge.

With Thomas speaking out and Sosa still linked to the Cubs even though he was traded to the Baltimore Orioles, the steroids uproar has an address in Chicago. Fans of the Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals are arguably more invested than others in the controversy because their memories of the 1998 home run race between Sosa and McGwire are so precious, and now so sullied.

“The ball was juiced and maybe the players were juiced, too,” said Jeff Guba, a 21-year-old college student who sat behind the right-field fence on Friday, wearing Sosa’s old Cubs jersey. “I’m still a Sosa fan and I was encouraged yesterday that he said he didn’t use steroids, but I couldn’t get a read on if he was really telling the truth or not.”

While rain has drenched the Grapefruit League in Florida this spring training and steroids have dampened the preseason mood, the game has at least gone on in Arizona, where Chicagoans flock every March to soak up the sunshine and convince themselves that this, finally, is their year.

In that way, if no other, 2005 does not feel any different.

“This is my annual trip and it’s not ruined by steroids,” said Glenn Smith, 34, of Arlington Heights in the Chicago area. “I still want to watch the game. What McGwire did and what Sosa did is history. Let it be. Let’s just start over.”

Players hope that sentiment is the prevailing one.

Todd Walker, the Cubs’ second baseman and a former teammate of Sosa’s, looked at the stands before the game Friday and said, “I just hope the people out there know that Sammy is a stand-up guy and I hope they focus on the large percentage of us who are going about the game the right way.”

In many ways, baseball is filled with players like the 31-year-old Walker, who is 6 feet and 185 pounds, a .289 career hitter with 86 home runs. These players were all over the spring-training fields Friday, and many sounded defiant in the face of Congressional criticism.

“The changes we have made are right on track,” White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko said. “I think what we did will knock steroid use down to zero. If Canseco hadn’t written a book or if the committee hadn’t been able to televise the hearing, would it have even been done? I don’t think so.”

Baker, who managed Sosa and Barry Bonds and played with McGwire and Hank Aaron, seemed particularly perturbed by a suggestion at the hearing made by Senator Jim Bunning, a Kentucky Republican and Hall of Fame pitcher. Bunning told the committee that records set by steroid users should be erased.

“What are they going to do?” Baker said. “Put an asterisk on the whole period when they think someone did it?”

Many in and around baseball are upset, except perhaps the player who has the most reason to be. Thomas did not go to Washington, because he is recuperating from ankle surgery and feared that the cross-country flight would induce swelling.

Now, after being sidelined via satellite, he appears ready to run with the cause.

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LAPAHA, Ga., March 17 – Few episodes in this modern age have drawn the Southern talent for tall tales like the legend of Hogzilla, the alleged 12-foot, 1,000-pound wild hog shot and killed on a South Georgia farm last June.

Documented by only a single photograph before the carcass was buried, Hogzilla drew television crews from as far away as Japan and appeared on the cover of Weekly World News. The pig became the theme of the town’s annual festival. People from California and New Jersey called to order hog T-shirts.

So tall did the tale become that in November, a team of scientists exhumed Hogzilla and went at him with calipers and DNA tests. Now all of Berrien County awaits their findings, which are to be broadcast on the National Geographic Channel on Sunday night.

Some people say the hog had to have been raised in a pen to get that big. Others think there was no hog at all. No one figured the argument would ever be resolved. And, anyway, that was not the point. Asked if she believed Hogzilla was real, Beverly Moore, a retired bookkeeper eating lunch at Flander’s Cafe in Alapaha, raised her eyebrows and said, “It’s a real story.”

Few hunting yarns could stand up to a posse of Ph.D.’s in yellow hazard suits. In fact, new technology has generally made it easier – not harder – to practice the art of embellishment, said Wiley Prewitt, a collector of hunting and fishing lore in Kilmichael, Miss. There is a cottage industry in making realistic sets of antlers out of resin to mount as trophies, he said, and photographs no longer back up a story.

“Some guy kills a deer and takes a picture of it,” Mr. Prewitt said. “He’ll take it to his buddy who’s got all the computer software and they’ll turn it into a world record.”

But two people were eager for the credibility they hoped a scientific investigation would bring: Ken Holyoak, who owns Ken’s Hatchery and Fish Farms, and Chris Griffin, his former employee, who said he killed Hogzilla with a single shot last June. The men had a falling out over who deserved proceeds from the sale of the Hogzilla photograph, and Mr. Griffin now fixes flats at the Wal-Mart in nearby Fitzgerald.

Mr. Holyoak has a knack for publicity, and has a wall of articles about his efforts to raise bullfrogs in captivity and his record-breaking fish breeds, like one he calls the Georgia Giant Hybrid Bream. He has theorized that Hogzilla grew so big by feasting on the special fish food used on the farm.

Mr. Holyoak, who also operates hog hunts on his land, allowed National Geographic to dig up Hogzilla because, he said, he wanted the free advertising, and he thought the hog might be a world record.

A thousand pounds is not extraordinary for a pen-raised hog. But a feral pig or a true wild boar -characterized by tusks, black hair and long legs – would top out closer to 500 pounds, and a typical one of each weighs in at about 150 pounds. Interbreeding with farm animals is, of course, a possibility.

Mr. Griffin says he is tired of doubters. “They’re going to eat a whole lot of humble pie come Sunday evening,” he said. “I’m going to be giggling and laughing.”

Drinking a mixture of Fanta Cherry and Pibb Extreme on his lunch break, Mr. Griffin, 32, told the story he has told a thousand times: He was picking up after hunters when he saw the hog. He grabbed a rifle from his truck and fired. “I shot him, and he turned around and walked off, and I thought, how’d I miss something that big?” Mr. Griffin said. He said he followed the hog into the swamps, where it collapsed and died. Mr. Griffin said he managed to drag it out with a backhoe.

Mr. Holyoak said he measured Hogzilla “with a ruler” and drove the hog in his flatbed truck to a peanut scale. The meat was too gamey to eat, he said, and the pig was too expensive to stuff, so he told Mr. Griffin to bury it.

But before they laid Hogzilla to rest, Mr. Holyoak shot a picture of the pig trussed up by the hind legs, dangling from the backhoe. Later, he had six people sign affidavits saying they had seen the 1,000-pound wild hog (each signer circled “alive” or “dead”).

In Alapaha, several townspeople said it did not matter if Hogzilla turned out to be a hoax. “The Legend of Hogzilla” had proved more popular, they said, than previous parade themes like “Saluting Our Firemen” and “Good Old Days on the Farm.”

Hogzilla is not the first Alapaha legend, and he probably will not be the last. In the 1970′s, the town had a peg-legged bigfoot that left mysterious tracks at night. He has been in the parade too.

“First there was the bigfoot, then there was the hog,” said a man at City Hall who refused to give his name and said he was sick to death of hearing about Hogzilla. “And you heard a big old snake crawled across Highway 82 the other day.”

Renee Copeland, the city clerk, looked up in surprise at this bit of news. Then she asked, “How big was it?”

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UST when Americans are being told it’s safe to hand over their savings to Wall Street again, he’s baaaack! Looking not unlike Chucky, the demented doll of perennial B-horror-movie renown, Ken Lay has crawled out of Houston’s shadows for a media curtain call.

His trial is still months away, but there he was last Sunday on “60 Minutes,” saying he knew nothin’ ’bout nothin’ that went down at Enron. This week he is heading toward the best-seller list, as an involuntary star of “Conspiracy of Fools,” the New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald’s epic account of the multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme anointed America’s “most innovative company” (six years in a row by Fortune magazine). Coming soon, the feature film: Alex Gibney’s “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” a documentary seen at Sundance, goes into national release next month. As long as you’re not among those whose 401(k)’s and pensions were wiped out, it’s morbidly entertaining. In one surreal high point, Mr. Lay likens investigations of Enron to terrorist attacks on America. For farce, there’s the sight of a beaming Alan Greenspan as he accepts the “Enron Award for Distinguished Public Service” only days after Enron has confessed to filing five years of bogus financial reports. Then again, given the implicit quid pro quo in this smarmy tableau, maybe that’s the Enron drama’s answer to a sex scene.

The Bush administration, eager to sell the country on “personal” Social Security accounts, cannot be all that pleased to see Kenny Boy again. He’s the poster boy for how big guys can rip off suckers in the stock market. He also dredges up some inconvenient pre-9/11 memories of Bush family business. Enron was the biggest Bush-Cheney campaign contributor in the 2000 election. Kenny Boy and his lovely wife Linda flew the first President Bush and Barbara Bush to the ensuing Inauguration on the Enron jet. Even as Enron was presiding over rolling blackouts in California, Dick Cheney or his aides had at least six meetings with the company’s executives to carve up government energy policy in 2001. Even now what exactly transpired at those meetings remains a secret.

But never mind. The president himself gave his word when the Enron scandal broke that Kenny Boy was really more of a supporter of Ann Richards anyway. Feeling our pain, Mr. Bush told us of his own personal tragedy: his mother-in-law lost $8,000 she had invested in Enron. Soon stuff was happening in Iraq, and the case was closed, or at least forgotten.

Yet the larger shadows linger. Revisiting the Enron story as it re-emerges in 2005 is to be reminded of just how much the Enron culture has continued to shape the Bush administration long after the company itself imploded and the Lays were eighty-sixed from the White House Christmas card list.

The enduring legacy of Enron can be summed up in one word: propaganda. Here was a corporate house of cards whose business few could explain and whose source of profits was an utter mystery – and yet it thrived, unquestioned, for years. How? As the narrator says in “The Smartest Guys in the Room,” Enron “was fixated on its public relations campaigns.” It churned out slick PR videos as if it were a Hollywood studio. It browbeat the press (until a young Fortune reporter, Bethany McLean, asked one question too many). In a typical ruse in 1998, a gaggle of employees was rushed onto an empty trading floor at the company’s Houston headquarters to put on a fictional show of busy trading for visiting Wall Street analysts being escorted by Mr. Lay. “We brought some of our personal stuff, like pictures, to make it look like the area was lived in,” a laid-off Enron employee told The Wall Street Journal in 2002. “We had to make believe we were on the phone buying and selling” even though “some of the computers didn’t even work.”

If this Potemkin village sounds familiar, take a look at the ongoing 60-stop “presidential roadshow” in which Mr. Bush has “conversations on Social Security” with “ordinary citizens” for the consumption of local and national newscasts. As in the president’s “town meeting” campaign appearances last year, the audiences are stacked with prescreened fans; any dissenters who somehow get in are quickly hustled away by security goons. But as The Washington Post reported last weekend, the preparations are even more elaborate than the finished product suggests; the seeming reality of the event is tweaked as elaborately as that of a television reality show. Not only are the panelists for these conversations recruited from administration supporters, but they are rehearsed the night before, with a White House official playing Mr. Bush. One participant told The Post, “We ran through it five times before the president got there.” Finalists who vary just slightly from the administration’s pitch are banished from the cast at the last minute, “American Idol”-style.

Like Enron’s stockholders, American taxpayers pay for the production of such propaganda, even if its message, like that of the Enron show put on for visiting analysts, misrepresents and distorts the bottom line of the scheme that is being sold. We paid for last year’s phony television news reports in which the faux reporter Karen Ryan “interviewed” administration officials who gave partially deceptive information hyping the Medicare prescription-drug program. We paid Armstrong Williams his $240,000 for delivering faux-journalistic analysis of the No Child Left Behind act.

The administration cycled the Ryan and Williams paychecks through the PR giant Ketchum Communications. Ketchum was also one of the companies hired to flack for Andersen, the now-defunct Enron accounting firm that shredded a ton of documents. We don’t know what, if any, role Ketchum is playing in the White House’s Social Security propaganda push, though we do know the company has received at least $97 million from the government, according to a Congressional report.

That $97 million may yet prove a mere down payment. The Times reported last weekend that the administration told executive-branch agencies simply to ignore a stern directive by the Congressional Government Accountability Office discouraging the use of “covert propaganda” like the Karen Ryan “news reports.” In other words, the brakes are off, and before long, the government could have a larger budget for fake news than actual television news divisions have for real news. At last weekend’s Gridiron dinner, Mr. Bush made a joke about how “most” of his good press on Social Security came from Armstrong Williams, and the Washington press corps yukked it up. The joke, however, is on them – and us.

USA Today reported this month that the Department of Homeland Security, having failed miserably to secure American ports and air transportation from potential Al Qaeda attacks, has nonetheless shelled out $100,000-plus to hire “a Hollywood liaison”: Bobbie Faye Ferguson, an actress whose credits include the movie “The Bermuda Triangle” and guest shots on television schlock like “Designing Women” and “The Dukes of Hazzard.” She will “work with moviemakers and scriptwriters” to give us homeland security infotainment – which is to actual homeland security what the movie “Independence Day” is to an actual terrorist attack.

Another propagandist with a rising profile is Susan Molinari, the onetime CBS News personality who appears regularly on news shows like “Hardball” and “Capitol Report.” As she bloviates from the right about Social Security or the fake newsman Jeff Gannon, she is invariably described as “a former Republican Congresswoman” or a “CNBC political analyst.” But her actual current jobs remain mysteriously unmentioned: C.E.O. of the Washington Group, Ketchum’s lobbying firm, and president of Ketchum Public Affairs. Were the Ketchum link disclosed, perhaps some real NBC reporter might find the nerve to ask her what other Karen Ryans and Armstrong Williamses might be on the Ketchum payroll. Or not.

The Bush propagandists have been successful at many tasks, from fomenting the canard that Iraqis attacked on 9/11 to deflecting moral outrage from Abu Ghraib and toward indecency as defined by its Federal Communications Commission. But Social Security may be a bridge too far even for propaganda machinery of this heft. Polls find that an ever-increasing majority of the country rejects the idea of letting Wall Street get its hands on its retirement savings.

Americans do have short memories, but it’s the administration’s bad luck that not just Kenny Boy but a whole brigade of bubble plutocrats have lately been yanked back into the spotlight by their legal travails: WorldCom’s Bernard J. Ebbers, Tyco’s L. Dennis Kozlowski, HealthSouth’s Richard M. Scrushy, Global Crossing’s Gary Winnick. No one is glad to see them. The public knows that the economy has not fully mended, and that there remain different economic rules for insiders than for the panelists drafted for the presidential Social Security roadshow. The new bankruptcy bill embraced this month by Republicans and Democrats alike throws Americans paying usurious credit-card interest to the wolves even as wealthy debtors remain protected.

You can catch the public mood in the reaction to Martha Stewart’s homecoming. Despite the news media’s heavy-breathing efforts to hype her emergence from jail as the heartwarming comeback of a born-again humanitarian, the bottom line shows that few in the audience are buying it. The Martha Stewart Omnimedia stock price started tumbling the moment she was back on camera, in line with the cratered circulation and ad sales of her magazine. Handing out hot cocoa to reporters at her Bedford, N.Y., estate did not turn the tide, and her spinoff of “The Apprentice” may be arriving just as the country is getting sick of C.E.O.’s again. Coincidentally or not, ratings for the existing “Apprentice” are off in tandem with the filing for bankruptcy protection by Donald Trump’s casino empire, the saturation coverage of his lavish nuptials and the introduction of a Trump fragrance.

It’s against this backdrop that the returning Mr. Lay – completely unrepentant, still purporting on “60 Minutes” that he’s an innocent victim of others – could be the Democrats’ new best friend. A Texas tycoon who helped create the political career of George W. Bush only to be discarded when scandal struck has re-emerged at just the precise moment when he might do his old buddy the most harm.

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KLAHOMA CITY, March 18 (AP) – In their 110th season, the Bucknell Bison finally won their first N.C.A.A. tournament game. And, wow, what a victory it was.

Chris McNaughton banked in a hook shot over Wayne Simien with 10.5 seconds left, then Simien missed an open 15-foot jumper at the buzzer, giving the 14th-seeded Bison a 64-63 victory over third-seeded Kansas on Friday night to shake up the Syracuse Regional.

“It came off the backboard and rimmed in somehow – I don’t even know how, but I don’t care,” McNaughton said.

Bucknell (23-9) began playing basketball in 1896, joining Yale and Minnesota as the nation’s oldest Division I programs. But the only other times the Bison even made the N.C.A.A. field were 1987, when it lost by 22 to Georgetown, and ’89, when it lost by 23 to Syracuse.

Now Bucknell is the first No. 14 seed to win since Weber State beat North Carolina in 1999, and the Bison ended the title hopes of Kansas, the preseason No. 1. This also is the first tournament win by a team from the Patriot League. In the second round on Sunday, Bucknell will play seventh-seeded Wisconsin (23-8), which beat Northern Iowa 57-52 earlier Friday.

“Certainly it’s the biggest win we’ve ever had,” Coach Pat Flannery, a 1980 Bucknell graduate, said. “Our kids battled their big kids all night long. Our kids made them work for everything they got.”

The Jayhawks (23-7) ended a streak of getting to the second round 15 straight years and their last 21 appearances. Although they had their share of scares along the way, including one by Utah State in Oklahoma City two years ago, this was their first opening-round exit since being eliminated by U.C.L.A. in 1978.

Kansas seemed vulnerable because it had lost five of its last eight and second-leading scorer Keith Langford was slowed by a lingering flu problem and a creaky left ankle. However, the Jayhawks weren’t too concerned because four of those recent losses were to teams that won first-round N.C.A.A. games.

Bucknell knew it could hang with the big boys after winning at Pittsburgh this season when the Panthers were undefeated and ranked No. 7. Not everyone was so sure this might happen, though the university’s band took off for spring break and couldn’t be gathered in time to make it here, so the Northern Iowa band filled in. They were faxed sheet music earlier Friday and received a box of orange Bucknell T-shirts when they got to the area.

Kevin Bettencourt got the good karma going with a 4-point play to open the Bison’s scoring. He finished with 19 points and had five of Bucknell’s 3-pointers. Bucknell put up a season-high 31, while trying to stay away from Simien inside.

The Bison led by as many as 7 in the first half and protected the lead even through a nearly six-minute minute drought between baskets. Then Bucknell went scoreless the last 4 minutes 33 seconds of the half and Kansas used a 10-0 run to take the lead.

Yet the Jayhawks were never able to seize control. They came close in the final minute, when Langford hit two free throws with 25.4 seconds left to put KU up 63-62.

Bucknell went straight up the court and fed McNaughton in the lane. He responded with his sixth basket on seven attempts, giving him 14 points.

Langford had another attempt, but missed short. Bucknell’s John Griffin got the rebound and was fouled, but missed the front end of a one-and-one and Simien grabbed the rebound with 2.4 seconds left.

After a timeout, Kansas tried the Grant Hill-to-Christian Laettner play Duke used to beat Kentucky in the tournament in 1992. Michael Lee’s heave to Simien went perfectly and he spun for a good look at the basket. But his shot hit the rim and bounced away.

Bucknell celebrated wildly at midcourt while Simien walked straight to the locker room, his college career over.

The scene in the stands was similar. Blue-clad Jayhawks fans were stunned, while the small section of orange-clad Bison fans and the thousands of bandwagon jumpers they picked up over the last few hours all cheered wildly. The underdog factor was best exhibited with 1:04 left when a chant of “Here we go, Bison, here we go!” was so contagious that even Wisconsin players were among those clapping and screaming along.

Simien finished with 24 points and 10 rebounds. He may also lament a missed foul shot with 1:41 left, the only one of 16 second-half free throws that did not fall for Kansas.

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