The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [93]
Things got worse for Sosa. In 2004 it became clear that the Cubs organization wanted to trade their onetime star, and the fans wanted them to also. The relationship reached a low point when they fined Sosa $87,400 for arriving late and leaving early for the last game of the season. Being late to work is one of those things that is not—not ever—supposed to happen in baseball, and sneaking out early is also unacceptable. Sosa tried to claim he left in the seventh inning, but the security videotape in the player parking lot showed that he had actually left in the first. His teammates were furious.
Fairly or unfairly, in both the U.S. and San Pedro in the last years of Sosa’s career, a cloud of suspicion hung over the once smiling hero from Consuelo, and it remained there even after his 2007 retirement. In 2009 lawyers leaked to the press that Sosa had been shown positive for steroids in a 2003 test that Major League Baseball gave on condition that the results remained secret. Such a cloud can do a lot of damage to a player’s reputation. It can keep a significant number of sportswriters from voting positively for a Hall of Fame candidate.
There is already a growing sentiment among some sportswriters, old-time players, and fans that it is not fair to compare modern players’ records with old-time players’ achievements, even without performance-enhancing drugs; steroid use further complicates the issue. How can a Roger Clemens be compared with Bob Feller, Juan Marichal, or Sandy Koufax, when Clemens pitched only six- or seven-inning games every four or five days and the earlier pitchers had to keep their arms in shape for complete games every three days? In 1965, Sandy Koufax pitched a complete game seven of the World Series on two days’ rest, a feat that would be unimaginable to today’s pitchers.
How do you compare the home runs hit in one season by McGwire or Sosa with those hit by Ruth or Greenberg, when the earlier hitters played 154-game seasons in which to make their records and modern hitters play 162 games?
Then, when it is added to the mix that Clemens and Sosa may have also used steroids, and that McGwire did, the old-time players, fans, and, most important, the sportswriters start to get angry.
Baseball had its share of scandals in the U.S., but in the Dominican Republic—where it dangled millions of dollars in front of underfed, impoverished teenagers and their desperate, often uneducated families—occasional incidents of corruption could not be surprising.
In 1999 there was the marriage scandal. Signed major-league prospects from the Dominican Republic were taking money from local women to say they were married so they would be eligible for U.S. visas. The only problem was that the U.S. consulate started noticing that suddenly a lot of young players, especially from San Pedro, were married. They uncovered the scam and denied visas to players who had been caught. One of the players who lost his visa this way was Manny Alexander, but he pleaded that he was just trying to help out his cousin, and the State Department gave him back his visa. Alexander had other problems. In 2000, while playing for the Red Sox, steroids and syringes were found in his car. When he played for the Yankees, he was accused of stealing items from Derek Jeter’s locker and selling them to memorabilia dealers.
The signing prospect, an uneducated teenager from a small town, had a dizzying array of people swirling around him, mostly looking for part of his fat check. Players’ agents signed them up even though it would be years before they needed an agent. Scouts and buscones were ready with ideas.
In May 2008 the White Sox fired their director of player personnel, David Wilder, and two Dominican scouts, Victor Mateo and Domingo Toribio, charging that they had conspired with buscones to