Is the image of Sammy Sosa
‘forever tarnished’ by the
corked bat incident?

Absolutely. He’s a cheater. Bats don’t get corked by accident. Sosa came up with the Texas Rangers and he was a skinny kid that no one would ever have imagined would hit 60 bombs. He then bulked up with steroids, corked his bat, and became one of the most prolific home run hitters in the history of baseball.

Sosa’s gaudy numbers were made possible by his ability to hit home runs to right and right-center field. Anyone will tell you that hitting opposite field homers requires tremendous strength to carry the ball to that part of the field. Now, let’s take away the steroids and the corked bat and those home runs become pop-outs. Instead of a 60-home run guy, you have a 30-home run guy. And 30-home run guys are abundant in today’s baseball climate.

Sosa has never claimed that he didn’t take steroids, he only claimed he would pass the piss test. On Tuesday night, he said that he corked his bat for the fans during BP. What we are seeing is a desperate man that will say anything to gain back the goodwill of the fans.

-- Lu Delecti
New York, NY

I think Sammy Sosa is a big, juiced-up liar. Sammy hasn’t been putting up his usual super-sized numbers, so he decided to turn it up a notch, in the cheating department that is, by ‘mistakenly’ using his crowd-pleasing BP bat to belt out a few home runs to boost his fragile confidence and his even more vulnerable psyche. Sammy hasn’t been the same since that beaner he took to the cabeza against the Bucs several weeks ago.

Nobody’s BP bat has that much pine tar on it, folks. This was no accident. Sammy ‘Say It Ain’t’ Sosa is a cheater and a drug addict. But he’s a real crowd-pleaser in the ol’ MLB parks, yes he is.

I’ve been to the Dominican Republic. There’s no one there that looks like Sammy. Sammy is engineered to have that body by illicit drugs banned by MLB. He should not go to the Hall, nor should any of his tainted records stand. In fact, the Cubbies would be better off to trade his dirty ass away for some more pitching.

-- Otis B.
Chicago, Ill

Just as Sammy Sosa has now been shown to be a fraud, the entire home run explosion that started in the mid-1990s and made Sammy such a big “hero,” may someday be exposed as one of the biggest frauds to stain the game. When the Orioles’ Brady Anderson, a light-hitting leadoff man known more for his 90210-style sideburns than his powerful bat, belted an unbelievable 50 long-shots in 1996, people should have seen that something was up.

Beginning in 1996, many baseball games turned into contests where each team merely attempted to hit more solo and two-run shots than the other. Strategy and pitching duels became rare sights as the 35-45 home run season became commonplace. Several factors contributed to the cheapening of what used to be a Herculean feat, the Home Run:

1. Muscle-enhancing drugs such as anabolic steroids and growth hormone substances increased the weight of the average All-Star from 190 lbs. in 1992 to 210 lbs. by 2002. Barry Bonds, who now holds the single-season record for homeruns with 73, increased his weight from 190 lbs. in 1997, to 228 lbs. in 2001, the year he broke Mark McGwire’s 3-year-old record.

2. The baseball used in the big leagues in the late -1990s seemed to be manufactured for increased offense. Though the ball was of the same weight and dimensions as always, the core was wound tighter, making the ball fly further.

3. New ballparks in the 1990s were built with short left- and right-field fences (“home run porches”) allowing for more low line drives and “bloop” home runs to clear the fences.

4. Pitching quality declined with all the expansion teams added in the 1990s, creating a situation where pitchers with minor-league talent were facing off with bulked-up, drug-addled hitters.

It is no coincidence that exorbitant numbers of home runs began to jack up baseball scores and dominate the sport at a time when baseball’s revenue was taking a nosedive. After the shameful betrayal of fans in 1994 when players walked out in the middle of the season and the World Series was cancelled, baseball suffered low attendance in 1995 and clearly began to struggle to maintain its status as the American “national pastime.” New ballparks and more rounds of “wild-card” playoffs did little to increase attendance, so baseball’s overlords turned to the home run to get the fans to return to the ballpark. It may have worked for a while, but plummeting attendance figures in 2003 show it was only a temporary solution as Americans' interest in MLB action continues to evaporate.

-- Randy R.
Mar Vista, Calif.

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