I cannot believe this!
Why would one of the greatest baseball players of our time do something so stupid. Does he really need to cork his bats?
I admire Sosa and his accomplishments, but now I find myself questioning his achievements. How many of those homeruns did he hit with a corked bat? Will this affect his Hall of Fame status?
I am so pissed and disappointed. I feel like the day I found out Santa Claus didn’t exist.
Say it ain’t so Sammy, say it aint so…
What a maroon.
I really do have to wonder how long he’s been doing this for. And hell, even if he did only use it for exhibitions, it’s stupid.
Another question: How do Major League veterans not know that bats fuckin’ break?! Often, at that!
Kick his ass, Dusty!
I don’t know if I’m buying his explanation. He says that the bat that he used today was a bat that he only uses during batting practice or exhibitons and he grabbed the wrong bat. If that were the case, then why was the knob of that bat taped? I thought he only taped his game bats.
Also, why doesn’t he mark those “exhibition” bats so that he can distinguish which one is which?
This idiot, with this one single incident, has managed to cast a shadow of doubt over all of his accomplisments. Were I a ball player of his stature, I would scrupulously ensure that only regulation bats were used by myself at all times. To even be in possession of a corked bat, regardless of whether it is in game play or not is so incredibly stupid that he needs MRI to determine if he is in possession of any brain matter whatsoever.
~groans~
That’s truly disappointing, an otherwise admirable athlete, makes a mistake that will cost him far more than the bat was worth. (reputation wise)
~J
Yep, I just saw this earlier on a news blurb. Is it for sure?
Say it ain’t so.
Damn shame.
Well, I just heard on ESPN that he says he uses corked bats in practice to “impress the fans” WTF?
This is not good for baseball.
That would to wow the fans with long homers. It still sucks though. He says he simply grabbed the wrong bat, but the pundits are saying “How do you put your practice bats in the dugout?”
Good thing I never liked him anyway. 
One good point Harold Reynolds made on SC- When the bat shattered, shouldn’t he have held on to the broken handle, and scooped up the barrel on the way back to the dugout?
Either way, he’s a dipshit on several levels.
And, the evidence in question. You can see a dark spot in the cross-section of the bat.
I’ve heard that corking a bat actually will make you hit for a lesser distance. The actual impact time of the ball and the bat is so short that there is no time for the springiness of cork to help. True, it will make the bat lighter so that you can swing faster. But it is legal to hollow out parts of the bat, so couldn’t you just hollow out enough of the bat to get an equal weight to a corked bat?
Can you cite that, please? I highly doubt that.
Are you sure you can hollow out the bat? I really doubt it, as I’ve never heard of it being done in the majors.
You can hollow out the end to a certain degree, as witnessed by the end of the bat being shown as part of Buck Showalter’s 2001 demonstration of how to cork a bat. But it’s not like you can drill a hole in it half an inch deep. It’s like a bowl cut.
…but I guess it just happens. So here goes.
Okay, the umpire made the right call. The run didn’t count, Sosa was called out, and now he faces a suspension. The man was held accountable for his actions…for crying out loud, how mad can I be? (Don’t ever get me started on Bud Selig, or for that matter anything involving the word “Olympics”.)
He used corked bats in practice because he wanted to give the fans what they wanted. That’s pretty damn decent in my book. When has Albert Belle (who reportedly used corked bats for his entire career) ever been so generous?
As for putting his home run numbers into question (which is a minor issue anyway, since he never set any records), I truly believe that the prevalence of performance enhancers is far more serious a factor, in this regard, for the entire sport. I don’t care what the player’s union says. Rick Reilly interviewed none other than Slammin’ Sammy himself, who refused to answer any questions about the existence of performance-enhancing drugs.
Exactly what I feared appears to be happening…fans getting so riled up over a minor issue that they start ignoring a much deeper problem that’s been going on for much longer.
Since the Cubbies are owned by the Chicago Tribune co., don’t you think they will have to fire Sammy or terminate his contract?
The last Trib employee caught cheating, Bob Greene, was summarily fired by the paper for having a brief affair with a former subject of one of his articles. About 10 years ago.
Pardon me, but that’s insane. You wanna give the fans a show? It’s batting practice. If you’re half the slugger the fans think you are, you can hit a batting practice pitch well out of the park. Don’t hand me this bullshit about how he was doing it for the fans. The fans thought he was hitting tape-measure batting practice home runs without cheating. He lied his ass off.
I am not the only one who has realized the none-to-subtle increases and current decreases in the size of Sammy’s body and head, over his career? I am not the only one to notice his refusal to take tests for those same enhancers. And I am surely not the only one to think that a corked bat is but the tip of the iceberg with Sammy.
Lemme give you a tip…
I wouldn’t be surprised if 50%+ of major league hitters corked their bats at some point. It’s fairly pervasive in the game.
So don’t point to Sammy as some moral degenerate just because he got caught. Instead blame the system.
Why blame the system? Is the system forcing him to do it?
Are you saying Sammy Sosa is succumbing to peer pressure? He’s hit 500 home runs.
Bad excuse.