[Steeltrap]

Been taking some. This Skip Bayless column from the San Jose Mercury News is a howler:

Posted on Thu, Jun. 05, 2003



World sees Scammin' Sammy

By Skip Bayless
Mercury News

Finally the cover has been knocked off a beloved slugger known for knocking the cover off the ball.

Finally an all-time great con artist has been exposed. As I've written many times, including in the newspaper that owns the Chicago Cubs, Sammy Sosa is the biggest phony I've encountered in any sport. Baseball's most popular player is Madison Avenue's most successful marketing fraud.

Finally the world has seen that its cartoon superhero -- sweet, cuddly Sammy -- has feet of cork.

If you think that's far too harsh, please understand that nothing poisons my pen like heroic hypocrites. While many fans, through the Great Home Run Race of 1998, were conned into seeing Sammy as this heart-tap-kissing, bunny-hopping buddy and rival of Mark McGwire's, the sly-eyed guy I often heard about or observed off-camera was a profane bully with highly questionable integrity.

There's some Martha Stewart in Sosa, and vice versa. Here is a great actor who can be a bad actor. I'll say it again: At least Barry Bonds is always exactly what he is.

Yet fans believed the Mark-and-Sammy fairy tale they badly wanted to believe. A mystified McGwire privately told St. Louis reporters he had no idea why Sosa kept telling the media they were close friends. McGwire knew Sosa only from conversations at first base and never played golf or socialized with him.

Does anyone remember that Sosa, as a member of the Chicago White Sox, was accused of spousal abuse? No. Does anyone remember that his family-operated Sosa Foundation set up to help rebuild his Dominican Republic after it was ravaged by storms in '98 collapsed under accusations of corruption? No.

Now maybe some of the wide-eyed Sosa worshipers will narrow their eyes with skepticism. Now maybe some of the companies whose products he pushes will rethink paying millions to Say It Ain't Sosa. No, he's no worse than a lot of wealthy superstars. But the corked bat he was caught using proves he isn't the baseball-saving role model so many fans were sold.

My educated guess: Sosa cheated, got caught and lied about it.

Yet fortunately for Sosa, his bat shattered in the bottom of the first inning, revealing the illegal cork and getting him ejected. He had the rest of the game 1) to remove other possible weapons of corked destruction from his clubhouse bat bin before baseball officials confiscated them for inspection; and 2) to rehearse his apology and excuse.

Not surprisingly, the league office announced no cork was found in the 76 bats examined. Sosa's no fool, and neither are baseball executives. He remains one of baseball's biggest draws.

Answering ``yes, sir'' and ``no, sir'' to TV reporters' questions, Sosa has begged forgiveness while claiming he accidentally picked up the one corked bat he uses only ``to make the fans happy'' by hitting tape-measure home runs in batting practice. That's only slightly less believable than former Alabama Coach Mike Price's story that he awoke in his hotel room bed with a woman he'd never seen before.

Some players prefer slightly heavier batting-practice bats so their regular lumber will feel lighter during games. But Sosa has struggled of late after being hit in the head with a pitch and missing some games with a toe problem. When he returned last weekend, he looked as overweight as his bat looked slow. He struck out eight times in two games.

So Tuesday night, with runners at second and third, it was probably no accident he reached for the hollowed-out bat he could swing a little faster. It's highly possible Sosa has occasionally tried to put a cork in a home-run slump.

Experiments have shown corked bats provide only an approximate 1 percent improvement in distance. That, however, could occasionally mean the difference in a ball hitting high in Wrigley's ivy instead of catching the home-run basket. Now you wonder how many of Sosa's 505 homers were cork-aided. Five? Ten?

For sure, a corked bat can provide a psychological edge for a slumping slugger.

And Slammin' Sammy has sometimes desperately looked for ways to live up to the image he created in '98. He returned in '99 sporting about 30 more pounds and announced: ``I am a slugger now.'' Is it much of a stretch to believe, if he resorts to corked bats, he might have used testosterone boosters to build his body? He has repeatedly denied using them, but Cubs insiders have long suspected he has.

But do most fans really care? No, most just want to be awed by home runs bouncing across streets and splashing in coves no matter what it took to produce them. I'm for outlawing performance-enhancing drugs to protect the players who don't want to risk using them but have no choice if they want to compete. But I'm for stiffer corked-bat penalties because it's time our national pastime stopped glamorizing cheating.

My fairy tale would be baseball sending a tape-measure message by suspending Sammy Sosa 20 games, instead of the usual seven or eight for getting caught swinging cork. But we'll sooner see world peace.

Nor will this incident damage Sosa's Hall of Fame chances. Spitball specialist Gaylord Perry was enshrined after seasons of being portrayed as colorfully crafty for illegally doctoring baseballs and avoiding detection. Then again, crusty old Gaylord wasn't sweet, cuddly Sammy.

Sosa's image has taken a fitting hit. This just in: Sosa no angel.