Biggest Scandal in Sports History Grows With Sosa Revelation

At least three times, maybe more, I've asked Sammy Sosa if he ever has used steroids. Each time, he testily answered no, once stating that the only performance-enhancing substance he took was a "Flintstone vitamin." He had this goofy, cartoonish way about him that made you want to believe him, even though deep down, as someone who noticed that his head and upper body were swelled disproportionately to human reality, I knew he was as stone-cold guilty as any of them.

Now, at last, the other syringe seems to have fallen. In a development that will shock no one but the lying, denial-ridden Sosa himself, baseball's sixth-leading home run slugger of all-time reportedly is on the list of 104 players who tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003. Assuming the New York Times report is correct, it means Sosa becomes the latest in a staggeringly prominent line of fallen, cheating, juiced-up heroes who have turned the game's steroids debacle into pro sports' biggest scandal ever.

---

---

That's what I said, the biggest scandal in sports history. Think about it. Nearly every baseball superstar we've tried to embrace the last dozen years because of his magnitude and numbers -- Sosa, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez being the foremost -- has come up dirty. And all it does is make me ill for gushing over each of them at one time or another, starting with the Summer of Love in 1998, when Sosa and McGwire waged a muscle duel and blew past the single-season home run numbers of Roger Maris and Babe Ruth. The surge rejuvenated a game that lost some measure of popularity earlier that decade, when a labor impasse led to the cancellation of a World Series and widespread fan apathy. Alas, it turned out to be nothing but a hoax, just like almost everything else we've applauded in the Steroid Era.

I'm ashamed to have admired their accomplishments, even while I was openly suspicious in some of my columns back then. We wanted so dearly as a nation to believe that Sosa and McGwire were advancing the art of power hitting and achieving the unthinkable. Tuesday's news only reconfirms that those so-called "superlatives" were too good to be true. For years, I've wondered when Sosa would be nailed with the others, amazed he never was haunted by a paper trail or rat trap the way Bonds was via the probe of the BALCO lab, Clemens was by trainer/tattler Brian McNamee, McGwire was by his cowardly performance on Capitol Hill and Rodriguez was when his name was leaked in February as the first of the Dirty 104. Was Sammy just dumb enough for his own good to elude the steroids fuzz?

Nah. It just was a matter of time and circumstance before the heat finally caught up to Sosa and he officially joined the Liar's Club. That's what angers me most about these villains, the deceit and the lies, and Sosa has distorted the truth as much as Clemens, Bonds and the others. Like the Rocket and the Home Run King*, Slammin' Sammy conceivably could be headed to jail after standing before Congress under oath and testifying that "everything" he knew "about steroids and human growth hormones is that they are bad for you, even lethal" and that he "would never put anything dangerous like that" in his body. "To be clear," he said that day, "I have never taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs. I have never injected myself or had anyone inject me with anything." He was accompanied by a lawyer who said Sosa had difficulty speaking English, which struck me as odd considering Sosa knows English very well, including every choice curse word he has used when scolding media people. Problem was, his testimony came in 2005, two years after the alleged positive test was included among the Dirty 104.

Which means Sosa may have been lying under oath. Perhaps we'll be calling him Slammer Sammy.

It suggests he also was lying recently when he told ESPNDeportes.com, "I always played with love and responsibility and I assure you that I will not answer nor listen to rumors. If anything ugly comes up in the future, we will confront it immediately, but with all our strength because I will not allow anybody to tarnish what I did in the field." In the same interview, in which he comically announced a "retirement" that actually was confirmation that no team has been interested in his services in a year and a half, Sosa openly lobbied for induction into the Hall of Fame.

"Everything I achieved, I did it thanks to my perseverance, which is why I never had any long, difficult moments," he told the Web site. "If you have a bad day in baseball and start thinking about it, you will have 10 more. I will calmly wait for my induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Don't I have the numbers to be inducted?"


Oh, Sosa had the numbers all right: 609 homers (sixth all-time), 1,667 RBI (24th), .534 slugging percentage (42nd) and home run seasons of 66 in 1998, 63 in 1999 and 64 in 2001, when I was in the Wrigley Field press box gasping and singing hosannas with all the other media. But now we realize each number is coated with juice. So, no, he doesn't belong in the Hall any more than McGwire, who has been rejected overwhelmingly in his first three years of eligibility by the voting baseball writers -- myself included. It's now becoming obvious that any Hall-worthy player connected with steroids must be separated from the clean inductees of other eras. If it's a separate wing in Cooperstown, explaining in detail how these great players infected the game, that's fine. Or stamp their records with asterisks. Or, if commissioner Bud Selig had any guts and wasn't so concerned about protecting his hopelessly tattered legacy, he'd strip the career and single-season home run records of Bonds and return them rightfully to Henry Aaron and Maris.

For now, until someone officially defines the Steroid Era as the sham that it is, we'll have to be content with watching the names of more juice-tainted players trickle out like poison. It's useless for someone like Sosa's former boss, Cubs general manager Jim Hendry, to plead for amnesia and ask fans to forgive the users. "To just speculate from an era of how many years it was of who did and didn't do what, it's impossible," he said Tuesday. "It's just time to put that whole era behind us and move on." Hendry's comments are grossly irresponsible because the Steroid Era hasn't ended. As long as players aren't being tested for human growth hormone, we have no idea who is or isn't using as we speak. The bust of Ramirez earlier this season is all you need to know about steroids in 2009. Selig keeps insisting that the game is free of steroids.

That, too, is a lie.

Baseball, once the national pastime, is the ongoing American deception.

The All-Time Home Run List
Rank	Player	HR
1	Barry Bonds	762
2	Hank Aaron	755
3	Babe Ruth	714
4	Willie Mays	660
5	Ken Griffey Jr.	617
6	Sammy Sosa	609
7	Frank Robinson	586
8	Mark McGwire	583
9	Harmon Killebrew	573
10	Rafael Palmeiro	569
11	Reggie Jackson	563
12	Alex Rodriguez	562
13	Jim Thome	553
14	Mike Schmidt	548
15	Mickey Mantle	536
16	Jimmie Foxx	534
17	Manny Ramirez	533
18	Willie McCovey	521
t.	Frank Thomas	521
t.	Ted Williams	521
21	Ernie Banks	512
t.	Eddie Mathews	512
23	Mel Ott	511
24	Gary Sheffield	506
25	Eddie Murray	504
Players in italics have been connected to PEDs; All statistics courtesy of baseball-reference.com

"As far as being surprised, I was surprised with Manny," said Joe Torre, who manages Ramirez with the Dodgers. "And after that, I mean, how can you be surprised anymore? After Manny, how can you be surprised?"

"It's just like gambling on baseball. If you're not supposed to do it, you shouldn't be able to get in," Los Angeles Angels infielder Chone Figgins said. "It's the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Cheatin'. It's like not paying your taxes. They eventually catch up to you."

The infamous 2003 list was supposed to remain anonymous under terms established between Major League Baseball and the Players Association. For some reason, either the union didn't destroy the test results or someone in management is involved in hanky-panky. How interesting that Sosa's name was leaked in a Times story published on the day the Cubs were scheduled to play the crosstown White Sox -- owned by Jerry Reinsdorf, Selig's right-hand man forever -- in the opener of their interleague series. Ozzie Guillen, manager of the Sox, said before the game was rained out that all the names of the Dirty 104 should be released publicly. The Blizzard of Oz is a flaming hypocrite, of course, having said three years ago that former major-league pitcher Jason Grimsley was a snitch for serving as a steroids informant in a federal investigation. "Shoot the [bleep]," Guillen said then. "The only thing I can say is that a former player should shut up and go. Shut up and move on. We don't need these guys. Baseball is better without him." Now, Ozzie thinks all names should be revealed.

I don't like his lack of intellect. But I do agree with his stance. Release the names, please, so we can expose all the juicers and at least try to get on with the ballgames.

"It's really sad. Really sad," Guillen said. "We all should be embarrassed. No matter how you put it, you're not going to win. Every other week or every two weeks or whatever, we have to talk about this or somebody else or another player. I think whoever's name is out there, just bring it up and deal with it for one day and we don't have to sit here everyday.

"We need to get it over with. Get those names out there. Whoever is guilty is guilty, whoever is not is not. Let baseball deal with it once and then move on. Every month, we seem to talk about somebody, and it's not a good thing. It's not healthy for the game."

I sensed Sosa was up to no good several years ago, when he claimed to have been "robbed" of $20,000 in the lobby of the Caracas Hilton. He had placed the money in a plastic bag, wrapped it inside a towel and supposedly left it in the lobby while he and his brother ate in a hotel restaurant. Uh, what was Sosa doing in Venezuela with $20,000 in cash stuffed in a bag? There also were reports in 2000 that he'd failed on promises to rebuild homes in his native Dominican Republic after Hurricane Georges. "Sammy Sosa said he was going to rebuild 1,000 houses in San Pedro de Macoris and he hasn't done it," said Sergio Cedeno, then the mayor of Sosa's hometown.

But all credibility was lost in June 2003, when Sosa's bat shattered and cork was found lodged inside the wood. Two years later, Jose Canseco wrote in his first tell-all book, "Sammy Sosa -- I can't say for a fact he took steroids -- but he gained 30 pounds just like that. You could see the bloating in his face and neck. It seemed so obvious. It was a joke." Between 1993 and 2003, when his body transformed from stringbean-thin to Incredible Hulk-thick, he averaged 45 homers and 119 RBI a season. After the alleged positive drug test in 2003, he averaged 23 homers and 72 RBI in a smaller body.

For the longest time, Sosa was pulling off the scam. He was mentioned only once in Sen. George Mitchell's 409-page report on steroids in baseball -- when Mitchell expressed frustration that Sosa didn't cooperate with his investigation. "I sent ... letters with specific questions to lawyers for Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa and Gary Sheffield, none of whom provided answers to my questions," he wrote.

I was able to ask my questions to Sosa. Each time, he denied ever using steroids. I wanted to call him a liar but couldn't.

Today, I can.