The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [91]
Juan Marichal remained the only Dominican inducted into the Hall of Fame, although several good prospects waited in the wings. To be elected, a player must be retired for five years. Entry is voted on by only the members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America who are currently working and have been active writers for at least ten years. To be inducted into the Hall of Fame, at least seventy-five percent of the members have to vote favorably. The number of voters varies, but in 2009, for example, this meant receiving a minimum of 405 votes. Few players are assured entry. Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb easily made it their first voting year with over ninety-five percent. But Cy Young barely made it with seventy-five percent. Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Hank Greenberg were all turned down the first time they came up for a vote. So it is difficult to predict this process, but the most likely Hall of Famer from San Pedro, according to his records, would be Sammy Sosa.
And yet if Macorisanos were asked who was the best ballplayer they ever produced, it is unlikely many would say Sosa. They would probably say Tetelo Vargas. Sosa was not a five-tool player. Early in his career, when he was stealing twenty-five bases each season, he was a three-tool player, but mostly he was an extraordinary hitter who in 2007 became only the fifth player ever to hit more than six hundred home runs. He also drove in more than 140 runs year after year. He was the leading home-run hitter in baseball in two different years, he had the most home runs in a four-year period in history, he was the only batter to hit sixty or more home runs for three consecutive seasons, and he was famous for the record-breaking season of 1998, when he beat the long-standing sixty-one home-run record of Roger Maris, the most celebrated record in baseball, by hitting sixty-six—only to be beaten by Mark McGwire, who hit seventy home runs.
Yet at the opening of the Winter League in San Pedro in 1999—at the height of his record-making career—when Sosa threw out the first ball, people booed. Then others cheered, but he was clearly booed first. The reason was that San Pedro had been devastated by a hurricane and Sosa had made a great show in the American press of hurricane relief, but Macorisanos were not believing it. The mayor at the time, Sergio Cedeño, said, “He asked for money to help the people of San Pedro de Macorís. That’s what we are asking—where’s the money?” In the U.S. also, Sosa’s much-trumpeted charitable work was called into question. But for baseball fans, other questions were to arise. By 2004 the onetime Chicago superstar was being regularly booed in Wrigley Field, and his T-shirt was so unpopular in the Wrigleyville Sports store near the field that it had been marked down thirty percent.
In 2002 the steroid scandal was beginning to overtake baseball. Steroids were found in the locker of Sosa’s home-run competitor, Mark McGwire. The other home-run king, Barry Bonds, denied using steroids but had tested positive several times.
That left one home-run champion, Sosa, for whom a grandstand was more than just where he sent the ball. With his customary bravado he took to saying that if baseball started testing for steroids, he wanted to be first in line. In an interview, Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly asked