I BELIEVE SAMMY SOSA

Since the Sosa scandal has transcended baseball I thought I'd post something on it. Sosa was just given an eight game suspension, and he deserves the penalty. But Sammy Sosa's explanation is far more believable than the NY Times' explanation after getting caught repeatedly with corked articles, or Barbara Walters' latest excuses for her friend Hillary's corked book. Unlike either of them, he deserves the benefit of the doubt. Interestingly, it turns out that a corked bat only gives hitters a 0% to 1% distance advantage -- mostly just a psychological boost. Hall of Famer Joe Morgan puts the feeding frenzy in perspective:

For all those who jumped to conclusions after Sammy Sosa was caught with a corked bat, it looks like Sosa's explanation was more correct than their accusations.

Sosa said he used the corked bat only for batting practice and picked it up by mistake in Tuesday night's game. Since then, all 76 of Sosa's bats that were confiscated after the incident have been X-rayed and found to be completely cork-free.

Moreover, the five bats Sosa has given to the Baseball Hall of Fame were X-rayed by us at the Hall (I'm the vice chairman of the Hall) and also found to be clean. These are the bats he used in achieving milestones such as his 500th home run.

...Since Sosa's bats were demonstrated to be clean, I accept his explanation. In fact, I understand how a batter could use a corked bat by mistake -- because it happened to me once.

I had two or three corked bats, made for me by a carpenter, that I used for batting practice when I played with the San Francisco Giants in 1981. We used them because the cold conditions made our hands hurt during BP. The corked bat would soften the sting and protect your hands. I also used aluminum bats during batting practice, for the same reason.

One day, I forgot to take the corked bats back to my clubhouse locker after BP. During the game, one of my bats broke, and the bat boy brought a couple of other bats to me. I just grabbed one, because all my bats were the same. After I hit a fly ball to right field, I thought, "That didn't feel right." I went back to look at the bat, and sure enough -- it was the corked bat I had used in BP and forgotten to put away.

By the way, there's a debate about whether a corked bat actually causes a batted ball to travel farther. My experience was that corked bats did not make the ball go farther