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MLB - Put a Cork in it: Sosa's Reality Bites

By Eric Poole
Thursday, June 5th, 2003
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My favorite fictional baseball player comes from the novel "Strike Zone" by Jim Bouton and Eliot Asinof.

"Now he's got the load on his back. Some guys love it, some would rather be shooting pool," writes Asinof of the player, who is coming up to the plate with the game on the line.

"He looks like a man who's been her a lot of times before. When he's good and ready, he steps in, plants his right foot deep in the box, and sets himself. I catch a look at his eyes and suddenly I see his pleasure."

If that sounds familiar, there's good reason. The character Asinof is describing happens to be Sammy Sosa.

In an almost prophetic climax -- "Strike Zone" was written in 1995 -- Sosa hits the game-winning homerun before the bottom of Page 351 in the paperback version. I hope that doesn't ruin the ending for anybody, but, hey, you've had eight years to read it yourself.

Sosa comes off in his literature cameo as a decent guy who finds joy in the simple act of playing Major League Baseball and living the Dominican dream, and comes through in the clutch.

For a long time, life imitated art for Sosa. He and Mark McGwire electrified a nation of baseball fans in 1998 as they battled each other and history to become the sport's all-time single-season homerun-hitter.

From 1998 to 2002, Sosa hit 292 homeruns, an average of 58 round-trippers a season. Before he and McGwire came along, only one other National Leaguer -- George Foster -- had matched what the Cubs' outfielder would average over five seasons.

Further, Sosa became a fan favorite, in part because he so obviously enjoyed playing baseball and even though he is getting compensated quite handsomely for his services, the kid whose first baseball glove was made of a cardboard milk carton had all the airs of a man who played solely for love of the game.

In short, he acted just like fans thought a baseball superstar should act.

But even during that magical run, some cracks began to appear in Sosa's public persona. When former major leaguer Ken Caminiti estimated that more than half of all his former peers used steroids, players -- like Sosa and Barry Bonds -- who were skinny when they reached the bigs, but filled out a little too much became prime suspects for getting power from a syringe.

Last year, Sosa and Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly had a verbal confrontation that almost turned physical when the latter asked Sosa to take an impromptu drug test.

When that happened, Sosa not only exposed himself to suspicion, but he also damaged his reputation as the friendly superstar.

By now, even the most casual baseball fan is well aware that Sosa has been busted. Not for juicing himself, but for juicing his bat.

On June 4, a day after he was ejected from a game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, ESPN's Rob Dibble absolutely savaged Sosa, repeatedly calling him a cheater who has thrown all of his accomplishments into doubt.

So which is the real Sosa? The fictional character that became true-to-life or the reporter-bashing cheater?

As with most of us, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

For one thing, even though Sosa's explanation was unbelievably lame, the fact that none of his other bats were corked lent credence to his statement that he grabbed the corked bat by mistake.

In order to eliminate any questions about Sosa's previous accomplishments, the Baseball Hall of Fame might want to check the bats he has donated, including some of those he used to hit homers in 1998 and the one with which he hit career home run No. 500 earlier this season.

If the Hall of Fame bats turn out to be legit, the most likely explanation would be that he had the illegal bat lying around and, in his desperation to get that "rainmaker" hit that would end his slump, gave in to the temptation to use it.

Even if he was looking for a long-term power boost -- which isn't likely, because he had only the one corked bat -- Sosa would hardly have been the first to step outside the rules in an effort to gain an edge.

Baseball has historically nurtured an atmosphere in which cheating is not just tolerated, but expected and even celebrated. Dozens of quality hitters, from Albert Belle to Graig Nettles to Norm Cash, have illegally altered their bats.

In fact, it's a pretty safe bet that Sosa wasn't the only hitter who went to the plate June 3 with some wine-bottle-stoppers in his stick. He was just the only one who got caught.

And that's the attitude in baseball.

Lots of guys cheat. If they get caught, they accept the consequences, just like Sosa did.

But if you want to cast doubt on Sammy Sosa's accomplishments because he got busted with a corked bat, fine. But then what do you do with a Gaylord Perry, who won 300 games as a pitcher and got into the Hall of Fame largely on the strength of an illegal pitch?

When sportscasters say, "He's really got something on that pitch," about Cubs pitcher Mark Prior, they're talking about speed. When they said it about Perry, they might have been talking about Vaseline, K-Y jelly, or any number of other foreign materials that he admitted slathering on the ball before sending it to the plate..

No one got upset about Perry's cheating. Instead, they made him out to be something of a folk hero -- baseball's Jesse James, if you will.

So Dibble can get indignant over Sosa's "cheating." I'm thinking the former Reds reliever is just jealous that it's a lot more difficult for pitchers to get away with things.

And I'm also wondering if the fictional Sosa used a legal bat to hit his game-winning home run in "Strike Zone."

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