Slammin' Sammy's corker a real stinker

America At Large/George Kimball: All of America woke up yesterday to the news that Sammy Sosa was out of the closet. Sammy, it turns out, is a corksocker.

Whether he has been one for years or whether, as he claims, he just picked up the wrong bat when he came to the plate in the first inning of a game against the Devil Rays, the shattering revelation promulgated by Sammy's shattered bat threatens to cast a shadow over his accomplishments for the rest of his career.

When the Chicago Cubs slugger came to bat with runners on second and third in Tuesday night's game, he hit a ground ball that apparently scored a run. But Sosa's bat splintered into several pieces, immediately revealing that it had been tampered with, in violation of the rules.

After huddling with his fellow umpires and conferring with Cubs' manager, Dusty Baker, who was allowed to examine the evidence, Tim McClelland, the chief umpire, ordered Mark Grudzielanek back to third, declared Sosa out, and ejected him from the game.

To his credit, Sammy didn't try to blame it on an over-the-counter medication prescribed by his physician.

In view of the overwhelming evidence, in fact, Sosa couldn't deny much of anything. He termed it a "mistake", claiming he'd grabbed the wrong bat out of the rack, and had thus inadvertently used a cork-doctored bat he normally uses to provide thrills for the fans who come early to watch him in batting practice. Right.

At least Sosa had the good grace to run out the ground ball. When the Dodgers' Wilton Guerrero had a similar experience half-a-dozen years ago, instead of sprinting for first base he bent over and hastily attempted to pick up the pieces of his shattered bat. Guerrero was, like Sosa, ejected from the game, fined and suspended for eight games.

A year earlier, when the Cincinnati Reds' Chris Sabo got caught using a corked bat, he was suspended for seven games and fined $25,000.

Perhaps the most famous bat-doctoring incident occurred in 1994, when Cleveland's Albert Belle's weapon was confiscated by umpire Dave Phillips after White Sox manager Dave Phillips voiced his suspicion that Belle's bat had been corked. In lieu of an evidence room, Phillips stored the bat in his locker, but during the game one of Belle's team-mates (later identified as pitcher Jason Grimsley) played cat-burglar, wormed his way through a crawl space and dropped through a fire escape above the umpire's room to replace Belle's contraband bat with a legal one. The ruse was discovered and Belle was suspended for seven games.

Major League rules unequivocally state that "the bat shall be one piece of solid wood", but for years players have tampered with their equipment to make balls fly higher, stronger, faster. I don't pretend to understand the physics involved, other than the principle of hollowing out a bat and replacing the displaced material with something, shall we say, bouncier, tends to produce the same spring-loaded effect golf club manufacturers are constantly trying to achieve.

In keeping with the treatment of previously-exposed corksockers, the expectation is that Sosa will be fined and suspended for a week - and perhaps a bit longer, in keeping with his stature. But the real question isn't how he will be punished, but how he will be viewed by baseball history.

Sammy's image had been that of one of the sport's Good Guys. Five years ago the Dominican outfielder's running battle with Mark McGwire, as the pair chased the ghosts of Babe Ruth and Roger Maris, transfixed the country, and was credited with restoring much of the goodwill baseball had squandered in 1994's calamitous work stoppage. (McGwire and Sosa both broke the old home run record; McGwire set the new one, but Sosa's cheerful demeanour and exemplary sportsmanship throughout the episode earned him a nation full of admirers.)

Earlier this year, Sosa had become just the 18th player in history to hit 500 home runs, and is the only man to have had three 60-plus homer seasons. He loomed a sure-fire, first-ballot Hall of Famer once his playing days ended, but even that no longer remains a certainty.

It could be that Sosa was telling the truth when he said: "I just picked the wrong bat and went up there. I use that bat for batting practice. I take the blame. It's a mistake." And it could be that he's been using one for years.

Many people will choose to believe the latter regardless of the result of the pending investigation. Exactly how many of his home runs (505 and counting) might have been illegally obtained will remain open to question. If any of them turn out to have been juiced, would his records be expunged?

"I know somebody right now would think whatever comes to their mind, but I don't really need to use that," a contrite Sosa insisted of the illegal bat. "I know I lost the fans, and they have been great to me. It was a mistake. It's something that wasn't meant to happen. They would understand if they had been knowing me for a long time."

"It was as if someone had caught Superman using brass knuckles, or suspected Robin Hood of stealing from the poor, or accused King Arthur of rigging it so that the sword would slide easily out of the stone," Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Downey lamented yesterday.

Once the umpires had caught Sosa red-handed, Major League Baseball security swung into its red alert mode, with operatives swarming through the clubhouse to impound all of Sosa's unused bats.

"It was like they were looking for the FBI's Most Wanted," said Baker, who added: "I just hope this event doesn't tarnish his career and take away from what Sammy has done for baseball and Chicago."