The Back Page

By Jason Page
For Outsports.com

What do Xavier Nady, Wes Helms and Juan Encarnacion have in common? While you ponder that question, I’ll take this time to tell you a little bit about cheating. Websters definition of cheating would describe it this way: to influence or lead by deceit, trick, or artifice. Words that are similar in definition would include swindle or defraud. Hard to think of a baseball Hall of Famer in these terms, now isn’t it?? Oh, time is up. The three players I listed at the start of this paragraph, all play on terrible teams, and all have numbers that are better than Chicago Cubs outfielder Sammy Sosa this season. You probably couldn’t tell me whom any of them play for without consulting your Sunday boxs core. That’s OK; not many could. 

I happened to be watching television on Tuesday night when Sammy Sosa decided to make his baseball science experiment public. When the Dominican Republic’s golden child saw his bat shatter, he may have also seen his reputation do the same. I have taken a long hard look at this story and others like it, and I find myself riding on both extremes. On one hand I can remember watching the duel between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in the summer of ’98. I can remember rooting for Sosa during most of that epic duel, for the charming way he handled the media while McGwire sulked and whined about the intense coverage. The other side of me sees Sosa refusing a steroid test from a major sports publication just last season, and now I see a broken bat loaded with cork. 

Sammy Sosa is a cheater. He “lead by deceit, trick, or artifice.” There is no denying that “Slammin’” Sammy has done just that. But how long has he been cheating for? We may never know. The kinder gentler side of me says that many great players have cheated and none have had it destroy their legacy. As long as their has been competition, there have been those that have attempted to gain the upper hand by means that are less than honest. In this regard, Sammy Sosa is no different than Albert Belle or Amos Otis. 

Hitting 505 home runs is a tremendous feat anyway you slice it. Does his career total need an asterisk next to it? It’s a valid argument, especially if Sosa were to surpass Hank Aaron's prestigious 755. I truly wonder how many people are going to linger on this incident. I feel these things often fade with time. There are plenty examples of this. The only time you hear of these transgressions are when another person commits one that’s similar. Every time one of these corked-bat incidents occurs, the player gets suspended and life moves on. The number of round-trippers that Sosa has amassed over the past decade makes this situation much different. Or does it?

Gaylord Perry piled up 314 wins in his 21 years on the mound. He admittedly used anything and everything to doctor up the baseball. If it would’ve fit in his pocket, Perry would have used a battery-operated sander. Yet in 1991, Perry was inducted into the Hall of Fame with the likes of Rod Carew and Ferguson Jenkins. Would Perry have won 314 games without the use of the foreign substances? I would probably say no.  

One thing that could be said of Sammy is his willingness to take the heat for this act of stupidity. As soon as Tuesday night's game concluded, he was taking questions on the corked-bat and gave reporters his excuse for the use of the illegally loaded bat. He said he wanted to give the fans a show during batting practice, and this bat allowed him to do so. He claims he accidentally took it out for his at-bat and didn’t realize he was using it. Seventy-six other bats belonging to Sosa were tested for cork and all  came back negative. That means Sosa had a 1 in 76 chance of picking up this corked-bat. Those odds aren’t very good. You’d have a better chance of surviving at a “White Party” in Baghdad than you would of picking the bat with cork in it.  

Will Sammy Sosa end up in the Hall of Fame or the Hall of Shame? I would guess that the former is the most likely scenario that’ll play itself out. Perhaps this incident will help him regain his focus and return him to the form that earned him accolades from those that supposedly matter most to him--the fans. This folly will hurt his credibility to an extent, but not enough to destroy what’s been a wonderful career to this point. Cork or no cork, Sosa is perhaps the greatest Cub to ever play the game. Then again, Ernie Banks knew to leave the cork at the hotel with the bottle of wine. 

Jason Page is currently an on-air personality on Sirius Satelite Radio's GLBT Radio Stream, OutQ. It is the nation's first talk-radio station entirely dedicated to the Gay Community. Page works as an Associate Producer and personality on both the Wayne Besen Show (7-10 a.m. Monday-Friday) and the Michaelangelo Signorile Show (1-4 p.m. Monday-Friday). Page has also worked as a play-by-play work in minor-league baseball.
 
He can be reached at JPage@siriusradio.com

  June 6, 2003