Sammy Gone A Corkin'

[RonF]

So who examined the 75-80 bats from the dugout? Major League Baseball did. The organization that looks the other way at the suggestion of steroid testing. The organization that will do damned near anything to keep cheating and juicing undercover in order to increase revenue and "protect" America's Pastime. Maybe someone else should take a look. Baseball has become a bad joke.

[slsmcgrew]

The powers that be ought to go down to the Field Museum and confiscate the bat that Sammy used to hit number 500. I believe it's on display there now. It would interesting to see what that baby is made of!

The powers to be did just that and checked all of the bats at the Hall of Fame. No cork.

[Leeway]

I suspect Sammy has been feeling somewhat desparate lately and resorted to the cork bat to jump start his hitting.

Either you work for Sosa, the Cubs or David Letterman. Not sure which.

No, I don't work for Sammy, the Cubs, or Letterman. I did live in Chicago for 14 years, so am part of that suffering breed known as Cub Fans.

Really, I don't see what's so funny. Check the stats. Since Sammy was beaned, his numbers have been way down. I'm sure that concerned him enough to try something he might otherwise not have done. Corked bat or not, a player still has to hit those 90 mile an hour+ fastballs, and major league curve balls. Sammy has hit 500+ -- that's no fluke. How many have you hit, Ron?

I don't condone what he did, just offered what I think might be a reason for him trying it.

[RonF]

I suspect Sammy has been feeling somewhat desparate lately and resorted to the cork bat to jump start his hitting.

Either you work for Sosa, the Cubs or David Letterman. Not sure which.

No, I don't work for Sammy, the Cubs, or Letterman. I did live in Chicago for 14 years, so am part of that suffering breed known as Cub Fans.

Really, I don't see what's so funny. Check the stats. Since Sammy was beaned, his numbers have been way down. I'm sure that concerned him enough to try something he might otherwise not have done. Corked bat or not, a player still has to hit those 90 mile an hour+ fastballs, and major league curve balls. Sammy has hit 500+ -- that's no fluke. How many have you hit, Ron?

I don't condone what he did, just offered what I think might be a reason for him trying it.

I apologize for being facetious. It just seems preposterous to me that a corked bat would be a considered remedy for a slump. A slump is a batter's temporary inability to make contact with the ball. How would cork make that task any easier? I have no idea why Sosa's numbers are down. It happens with all hitters. I used to swing a pretty mean stick in high school, thank you very much. B)

[RonF]

Sammy. Is that YOU?

[BERIGAN]

The MLB cops were in house, since the Yankees will be in town this weekend, and they ran to the clubhouse and confiscated all of Sammy's 72 bats. After inspection they say the bats are all fine. Mr. Sosa's excuse holds water.

Stick it where the sun don't shine!

I agree with Chuck and the others that have stuck up for Sammy.As hard as it may be to believe(I sure didn't at first) he may have had just one corked bat...Jayson Stark, who raked Sammy over the coals at first, had this side column within a column about interleague play...

It's been tough to find people in baseball, at least early on, who believe that Sammy Sosa didn't know what bat he was using when he picked that cork stick out of the bat rack Tuesday night. But if it turns out that the rest of Sosa's bats are cork-free, at least that would lessen the suspicion that Sosa was cheating when he hit all those 505 home runs.

How many bats are broken these days in every game? How many bats break in an inning when a Mariano Rivera or John Smoltz is out there? So if Sosa had been using a corked bat repeatedly for the last five years, or eight years, or 10 years, wouldn't someone have caught him long before this?

"Sammy knows how common it is for bats to break," said one Sosa sympathizer. "He also knows that bats that have been `worked on' are more prone to exploding. Sammy is a lot of things. But he's not a stupid guy."

That doesn't mean people ought to accept his alibi for this incident without a raised eyebrow. But unlike Albert Belle -- who had a teammate crawl through the ceiling to steal the evidence -- or Wilton Guerrero -- who scrambled around trying to retrieve his cork before the proper authorities did -- at least Sosa's first act was to admit he'd done what he'd done and apologize.

Unlike Belle, who denied everything even after being caught, Sosa seems to understand he needs to accept at least some responsibility. In fact, there has already been some speculation that if his suspension is in line with previous bat-tampering suspensions -- i.e., about a week -- he might not even appeal.

But of course, once people get beyond the question, "Did Sammy cheat?" the next question is: "Is everybody cheating?"

Well, we'd bet that a half-dozen bats break every day in the average major-league game. And no one has been caught corking in seven years. So that tells you the percentage of corkers and cheaters is lower than some people think.

But when Dusty Baker tried to claim Tuesday he'd never heard of anybody corking in all his years in baseball, it ought to qualify him for a spot in the next troupe down at Second City.

Former Indians have suggested in recent years that they actually had a wood shop at the old Cleveland Stadium in the late 1980s and early 1990s. And who doesn't know that cheating by pitchers and hitters is a more time-honored baseball tradition than the seventh-inning stretch?

One player told us recently that bat-corking technology has improved so much in recent years that the holes being bored in the wood can now be as small as 1/16 or 1/8 of an inch -- and still help improve bat speed. And the smaller the holes, the less likely the bat is to break.

But the fact is, not even players themselves know how much cheating is taking place.

"How much that goes on, I don't know, and I don't want to know," said 20-year-veteran reliever Dan Plesac. "I used to look at Mark McGwire, and there was no doubt in my mind his forearms were corked."

http://espn.go.com/mlb/columns/stark_jayso...on/1563059.html