The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [92]
Then Reilly asked, “Why wait?”
“What?” said Sosa.
Reilly, thinking that Sosa could clear the air and give a lift to baseball by proving that he, at least, had come by his home runs honestly, wrote down the telephone number and address of a diagnostic lab that could test him only thirty minutes from Wrigley Field, where he was playing for the Cubs.
Sosa became enraged, accused Reilly of trying to “get me in trouble,” and stopped the interview, calling Reilly a “motherfucker.” Reilly said that the lesson for sportswriters was to always ask the steroid question at the end of the interview.
The public and many sportswriters began suspecting Sosa of steroid use. Anabolic steroids are drugs related to testosterone, a male hormone. Anabolic comes from a Greek word meaning “to build up.” The drugs were first developed in the 1930s and are used today to treat patients suffering from bone loss and to counteract deterioration in cancer and AIDS patients. But steroids can also be used to build up muscles, and consequently strength, in athletes. The risks are many, including increased cholesterol, high blood pressure, infertility, liver damage, and heart disease. Some studies indicate a physical altering of the structure of the heart and personality changes, including extreme aggression. Since the 1980s the possession of anabolic steroids without a prescription is a crime, in the United States. Not only were baseball players who used them committing a crime, but they were violating the rules of Major League Baseball. Like the Olympics committee, the National Football Association, and basketball, hockey, and most other sports organizations, Major League Baseball considered steroids to be an unfair trick to enhance performance and had banned their use. A baseball player who used steroids was considered a cheater.
Sosa, once a fan favorite for his ready smile and his maudlin talk of remembering the poor, had other problems. In 2003 he was at bat for the Cubs in the first inning against Tampa Bay, a notoriously ineffective pitching team that year. But Sosa, the home-run king, was having a bad year. It was June and he had hit only six home runs—none in the past thirty-three days. Sosa took a swing; the pitch shattered the bat and sent a ground ball to second base. The alert catcher, Toby Hall, gathered the broken pieces and showed them to the umpire, who promptly ejected Sosa from the game. The pieces revealed that the bat had a cork interior.
It is not clear if corked bats are an advantage. They make the bat lighter for a faster swing, but Robert K. Adair, a Yale professor who authored The Physics of Baseball, claimed that because cork is a softer substance, it may actually slow down the ball. But corked bats were used by hitters who believed they sent the ball farther, and Major League Baseball had banned their use. Players caught using them were officially cheating. Baseball rules state that a bat must be a solid piece of wood.
The following day, seventy-six bats were confiscated from Sosa in the Cubs locker room while a game was still going on; the bats were all X-rayed and found to be “clean.” Sosa had claimed that his use of the corked bat the day before had just been a big mistake, that he had accidentally pulled out a bat that he used for home-run exhibitions. Major-league officials said they believed his story and cut his eight-day suspension to seven days. But the fans and the press felt Sammy Sosa had been caught cheating. USA Today sports columnist Jon Saraceno called Sosa’s explanation a “highly implausible defense.” USA Today conducted a poll in which sixty percent of respondents said they didn’t believe Sosa and thought he had used the corked bat intentionally. The press wrote variations on the “Say it isn’t so, Joe” line to “Shoeless” Joe Jackson after the 1919 World Series had been found to be fixed. The New York Post, with their traditional love of tabloid headlines, ran the story with “Say It Isn’t Sosa,” a line that was being used by Chicago fans. Jackson, by the