Christ, you would think that Sosa had walked into a shopping mall at Christmas and blown Santa Claus away with a sawed off .12 gauge, or that he gave out poisoned candy at Halloween.
He used a corked bat.
And got caught.
Is it against the rules?
Sure.
Will he be fined/suspended?
Most likely.
Should he be suspended for 30 games, as suggested by one AssHatted sportswriter?
Hell no.
Did you really need to have almost 3 hours of special programming devoted to the incident yesterday?
Fuck no.
I sure as hell don’t remember any special programming when the fan ran on the field and attacked the ump in Chicago, a couple of months ago.
That is something which deserves a special or two, not the fact that Sammy Sosa used a bat that was corked and got caught.
I’ve heard so many insanely stupid opinions from AssHatted sportswriters, but perhaps the best was the guy who bleated that "all of Sosa’s home runs should be stricken from the record books. This is a black mark on the game of baseball that will never be forgotten. Sammy Sosa does this and yet Pete Rose is banned from the Hall of Fame and baseball?"
I’ll bet you $50 that by a year from now, no one will remember it without being prompted.*
Christ, you would think this was on the level of the Olympic Park bombing, the way ESPN was screaming about it.
Schmoes.
*Bets will not be honored unless three independent Doper and one Mod are present as witnesses.
Sosa cheated in such a way that we have no way of knowing that he didn’t cheat in a similar way in the past. We only have his denials. In the face of the evidence that he did, in fact, cheat by using a corked bat in a major league baseball game, we cannot believe his denials.
Any good will expectation that we may have had that he came by his achievements and records fairly is destroyed.
Sosa has long been one of the most important representatives of major league baseball. Sosa’s charisma and apparent acheivements made him incredibly popular among fans and non-fans alike. He and Mark McGwire were instrumental in mitigating the damage done to the public opinion about the game in the wake of the strike. To the person that is not a baseball fan, Sammy Sosa is one of the best known baseball names. In fact the non-fan may not know any basball names other than Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. And Sosa was seen by many as the more appealing of the two, partially because the spectre of performance enhancing drugs wasn’t hanging over him.
This is a very important story.
Let me address some of your points:
Right. He shouldn’t be suspended for 30 games. He should be banned for life.
This is a matter of intense interest to many people. It is by far the most important thing that has happened in the world of sports recently. A lot of people look to ESPN for their sports coverage, and they sure as hell wanted to see coverage of this story. YMV, apparently.
Well, that incident was interesting, but as far as importance to the game of baseball and to American society at large, it’s not even in the same ballpark (sorry) as Sosa’s cheating. Baseball is very important to American culture, and the image of baseball has certainly taken a beating lately. Players like Sosa helped people feel good about the game. And I’m sure many parents used the McGwire/Sosa home run race to teach their children two important lessons: a) That you need not have animosity towards your competitors, and b) Strong competition inspires the competitors to be the best that they can possibly be. I was certainly planning to use the home run race to teach my son. Fortunately, he’s only one, so I haven’t started to discuss this sort of stuff with him yet. I feel very sorry for the parents who now have to explain this whole crappy situation to their kids.
How is that “insanely stupid” As I explained above, all of our good faith expectations that Sosa’s records have been acheived fairly have been destroyed. His records are already invalid.
It’s more of a black mark on Sammy Sosa specifically than on baseball in general, but given Sosa’s importance to Major League Baseball, it will definitely have repercussions on the whole sport. And as long as baseball is not forgotten, this incident will not be forgotten. We still remember Shoeless Joe Jackson and his cronies, and their alleged cheating happened over 80 years ago.
If Pete Rose is banned from baseball, so should Sammy Sosa be banned from baseball. Sosa’s misdeeds had more of a direct effect on the actual outcome of a game than Rose’s. We have no evidence that Rose bet against his own team, setting up an incentive to throw the game. We do have evidence that Sosa used a corked bat in a major league baseball game. I believe that they both should be banned from baseball and the Hall of Fame for life, but if Sosa is allowed to remain, then I must reluctantly support Rose’s bid for reinstatement.
I’ll take you up on that bet. You can have as many independent witnesses as you want. Shall we double the stakes? (I have never played for or been employed by any team or company affiliated with Major League Baseball. I can bet all I want. Take that, Pete Rose!)
I guess it just really surprises me that you seem to think that Sosa’s cheating is no big deal.
By this reasoning, Whitey Ford, Gaylord Perry, Phil Niekro, John McGraw, and a host of other self-admitted cheaters should be thrown out of the Hall of Fame. I suspect that good percentage of members of the Hall of Fame have cheated at least as much as Sosa.
Would you advocate kicking Whitey Ford out of the Hall of Fame?
Cheating is baseball’s oldest profession. No other game is so rich in skulduggery, so suited to it or so proud of it. - Thomas Boswell
Gotta agree with the OP. Fer cryin’ out loud, the histrionics of a good portion of the sportswriting media is absolutely incredible!! I admire Sosa as a player and a good citizen, and this incident has altered my perception of him not one iota, other than a “way to go dumbass” for his mistake.
If your perception of him before this incident is that he is a cheater, then your perception should not have changed. The mere fact that he is a cheater HAS to change your perception of him, if only to the point where you think he is a dumbass. If the fact that Sosa cheated doesn’t change your opinion of him, well, then you’re pretty much in line with the idiot Cub fans who cheered him after this debacle. Now go grab yourself another $4.50 beer and enjoy the largest outdoor bar in Chicago that you call Wrigley.
Good citizen? Sosa savagely beat his wife because she wouldn’t give him a divorce back in the early 90s (IIRC it was with a rum bottle). I don’t call that a good citizen and he will never be anything more than a wife beater to me.
I remember him when he was with the Rangers and the White Sox, scrawny little thing that he was. He finally started showing some power, averaged about 27 HR per year (over 7 years). All of a sudden, he’s got some heft to him and he doubles his HR average over the last 5 years. In one year, he went from 36 to 66. He also strikes out more than ever, so it’s not that he’s seeing the ball better. My belief for the increased power? Steriods. The rumor has floated around for years but never verified.
And now he’s gets caught with a corked bat. Cheating, pure and simple. It doesn’t matter one bit if others do it, did it, or will do it in the future. Sammy Sosa cheated by walking to the plate with an altered bat. His excuse is pure bullshit. He is a cheater. I can not believe that this is the first and only time he has done this. I do believe that this is the first time he has gotten caught however.
According to this, there is no evidence you’ll accept to the contrary. What about the fact that other bats of his were immediately confiscated and checked, and found to be legal?
I agree with the seriousness of the error. But I am prepared to accept Mr. Sosa’s explanation that this was an error, rather than a deliberate attempt to cheat. Because of the seriousness of the error, and because a strong penalty sends a message that cheating will not be tolerated, I think a multi-game suspension is in order.
But 30 games? Or banned for life?
I want to see more evidence than one corked bat in one game. You are taking the fact that this happened once, and extrapolating to the conclusion that it happend many times, because “…we cannot believe his denials.” And why can’t we? Becuase he cheated. This seems rather circular reasoning to me. When the available objective evidence supports the story he’s telling, I’m inclined to beliebe the story he’s telling. Yes, it’s self-serving… and if there were no bats to check, perhaps I’d be more skeptical. Certainly if another corked bat had shown up during the check, I’d be more skeptical. But on the basis of this one incident, and a reasonable explanation, I think a ten-game suspension is appropriate.
Geeze, Green Bean, way to overreact. I posed this question yesterday and didn’t get much response: 76 other bats were confiscated from Sosa and tested, and none of them were corked. In my mind this goes a long way to supporting his claim that he picked up a practice bat by mistake. AFAIK, Sammy has never had any black marks against him, and you’re claiming he should be banned from baseball for life? Why? Isn’t a player entitled to just a smigeon of benefit of a doubt for his first offence?
BTW, I’m not a Sosa apologist, or even much of a baseball fan anymore- the whole sport is dying, poisoned by greedy owners and players, in 50 years it with be something only played by the SCA, but why so much viehamence against Sammy?
I’m not even a baseball fan (not ANY kind of sports fan) but I see this as pretty big news. Sosa dominated the news in Chicago the summer he was breaking home run records, and then of course he did break all those records, which set the bar higher game-wide, and now we find out that maybe he didn’t break those records. Not really.
Anyway, I see this as a huge story in the small world of sports, and a small story in the real world.
Green Bean, calm down before your head explodes Scanners-style. Ban him for life? He (possibly accidentally) used a corked bat once. Give him the standard 10-game suspension and let’s go on.
That said, he should have had enough sense to not even have a corked bat. He’s too popular to risk something like this happening.
My problem is that ESPN felt the need to ask Rick Reilly his opinion. Reilly has had such a vendetta against Sosa for a while now that anything he says is worthless. He was acting like Sosa just, to borrow the words of Clerks’s Dante Hicks, “poured sugar in his gas tank while anally raping his mother.” Reilly’s a moron.
At first, I thought the same thing when I heard that report. Oh, well, he must be innocent because none of his other bats were corked.
But then I thought about it some more. And now I’m not so sure. Because, truly, what are the odds that he just randomly picked the one out of 77 bats that was corked?