Sammy Sosa Assumptions!
Written by Nolan Thomas, Friday June 05 2009
Contrary to popular belief among baseball fans, I think that Sammy Sosa clearly deserves to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
In announcing that he will be officially retiring from baseball Sosa said, "I will calmly wait for my induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Don't I have the numbers to be inducted?"
As much as people laugh at this statement, you cannot laugh at his numbers when considering the Hall of Fame.
Sosa has 609 home runs. Only four other players in the history of the game are on the 600 homer list, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Barry Bonds. He also led the league in home runs two times.
He has 1667 runs batted in and is ranked 24th all-time and led the league in RBI’s two times.
He is the only player in the history of baseball to hit over 60 home runs in three different seasons, and holds three of the top six all-time single-season home run totals.
He is 41st all-time in slugging percentage at .534.
He has nine seasons in a row with at least 35 home runs and 100 runs batted in.
He has one MVP award along with six top ten finishes in the voting.
He has six Silver Slugger awards.
He played in seven all-star games.
He has a very commendable .878 on base plus slugging (OPS) percentage.
He has a career batting average of .274.
He has 234 career-stolen bases.
You cannot argue that he does not have the numbers to be a sure thing first time inductee for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Sadly though, too many people think or assume that because he was buffed and put out these kind of numbers that he was undoubtedly taking steroids. They look at his earlier pictures with the White Sox and see a lanky skinny kid, and then look at his pictures with the Chicago Cubs as a buffed out Hercules, that there is absolutely no doubt that he was on the juice.
In a recent poll that was held online, 48% of the vote believe or assume that Sosa took steroids. 33% say there is no proof that Sosa took the juice and 19% say maybe but are waiting for further evidence.
There is no hardcore evidence what so ever that Sosa ever used steroids. He is not associated with BALCO in any way. He was not implicated in Canseco's self-serving book. His name was not on the famed Mitchell report citing players who used the juice.
He never, not even once, failed a drug test in any way shape or form. He has not been caught or named in any past conjecture on the subject of steroids.
He came up with the Rangers as a very raw, fast, and athletic kid. He worked out and grew into his body, changed his swing, and in his prime played in very hitter friendly park at Wrigley Field and started hitting home runs by the boatload.
It was almost an inhuman accomplishment, so why should not everyone assume that Sosa was on the juice.
Then there was the corked bat incident. If Sosa used a corked bat, which is cheating, he most certainly would do almost anything else in order to gain a competitive advantage, so that is the proof right there that Sosa also used steroids.
What a bunch of hogwash!
Sosa was caught once! All of the bats that were in the Hall of Fame were x-rayed as well as every single one of bats that he used at the time with the Cubs. Not one of them showed any evidence of being corked. If this was a regular practice of Sosa’s, I am sure that some of his other bats would have been corked as well.
Yes, his excuse was pretty lame, saying that he inadvertently grabbed the wrong bat and that he used that bat during batting practice to put on a show for the fans. Nevertheless, was he lying? We will never know, but to assume that he was, and because of this one incident, that he was an all out everyday cheater and that it proves he was on the juice is a bit unfair.
Players throughout the history of baseball have used “cheating” tactics in order to beat the other guy. Pitchers used spitballs, Vaseline, sweat, thumbtacks, sandpaper, and anything else they could get away with to make the ball move in an unorthodox way.
Fielders have used stick-um in their gloves and batters have used pine tar, cork, and even superballs on and in their bats.
Many of these players are already in the Hall of Fame.
However, do not get the idea that I am condoning these practices, I certainly am not, but people treat Sammy Sosa as if he were the only one to ever get caught doing it.
Needless to say, because of all of these assumptions, Sosa is going to have trouble making it into the Hall of Fame. Just because he was in a head-to-head race for the home run title with Mark McGwire, and McGwire has been linked to steroids, the assumption is that Sosa must have been doing them as well.
Of course when drug testing become public, Sosa's stats dropped dramatically, but he was 35 years old. As a player gets older, it is inevitable that his stats will drop. Your body just is not able to do the same things it used to. So again, because of this people assume that Sosa must have been on the juice.
In addition, if you look at Sosa now, he is no longer bulging at the seems, so they mark it down as another assumption that he was on steroids before.
I would gander that Sosa is not working out even half as much as he used to. You do know that if your body is used to working out on a regular basis, that once you stop or even cut back that your body will shrink, right?
Ex Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood had this to say when he was asked about Sosa.
"Sammy never failed a drug test, never got caught up in any of that stuff and there's no evidence that anybody has against him that he did something wrong. As his teammate for many years, he's one of the guys I remember who came in and was prepared to go every day. What he did in his career was amazing and he deserves some credit for it, I think."
Current Cubs first baseman Derrek Lee had this to say about Sosa in the Hall of Fame.
"His numbers [say so], Nothing has been proven. I don't think you can keep him out just on the assumption. I guess you have the corked bat stuff, but that's all you have that's proven against him. I think if you look at the numbers, he's easily a Hall of Famer. I think he carried this franchise a long time. The guy was the franchise for a long time, put up Hall of Fame numbers, and put fans in the seats."
He was for a time The Greatest Cub on the team. He ran out to his position in right field at full speed, was good defensively, and had a monster of a bat, with no doubt Hall of Fame statistics on his resume.
It would be a crying shame to let peoples assumptions without any proof keep a player like Sosa out of the Hall.
When we are all old men and women in our rocking chairs and Sosa is long gone, we will still be talking about him.
I am only hoping that part of those discussions will include the memory of Sosa being inducted into the Hall of Fame.
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11 comments
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Innocent until proven guilty is a fairy tale, even in the court of law. If it was true, there would not be so many people incarcerated who have not even been tried... As for baseball, and the hall of fame, it seems Shoeless Joe Jackson never got a fair trial in the Black Sox scandal, and according to several books on the subject could not be linked to the betting, but was left out of the hall. Could Sosa be a modern day Joe Jackson?
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Wow, Gator, very philosophical. It's been a while since I've seen any comments on this site that I considered to be very intelligent. I completely agree. While the media has made the players and their sports more accessible over the last few decades, they have also ruined them to a certain extent. I don't know when, exactly, the general public began to scutinize sports so much (probably when mainsteam media barged into the locker rooms/players private lives), but it is no longer about enjoying the game, as much as it is worrying if everyone is walking the straight and narrow. I'm not quite sure what negative impact steroids would have on fans, or if it even would, if it weren't for the media outing the "problem".
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No I believe most of the Hall of Fame voters are upset with themselves for completely overlooking the steroid epidemic. Some of them (I believe Buster Olney is one of the most vocal) have come down hard on themselves and fellow baseball writers of the 90s/00s for failing to investigate the obvious more. Don't confuse me with them. I obviously don't have a vote. If I did, some of the players in that era would get my vote, some wouldn't. It's a moot point. To those who do have the votes, most are not going to vote in players like Sosa, et al. *** Was the game clean before steroids? Hell no. There have been scandalous eras all throughout the game's history. But what separates the steroid era from the others is the mass media. 30 years ago, ESPN was just getting started. The only people covering baseball were writers from the local papers and the "Game of the Week" on NBC. 40, 50, 60 years ago, the media just focused on the game, not about what went on outside the game. It's a lot like politics. Every move made now is captured and reported. Reporters nowadays aren't afraid to look into a player's locker and ask questions about what's in there. Privacy in the clubhouse is gone. All of that in the last several years has resulted in uncovering a large, widespread use of PED's in baseball. So I wouldn't be surprised in 20 years or 30 years from now that most of today's stars in baseball are not in the Hall of Fame because the media who vote will protect the Hall from those guys because that same media overlooked the visible. They let them in, it makes them look silly for ignoring the issue.
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So, we're going to keep an entire generation of baseball players (hitters and pitchers) out of the Hall because they took PEDs? I can understand people being butt hurt about the "cheating" aspect, but to truly think that everyone that came before them played the game "clean" is a bit of a stretch. Spit balls are cheating. "Greenies" (aka amphetamines) were not exactly legal (and EVERYONE took those, it was like coffee to them). It's not like baseball is the most honorable of all sports, leave that for tennis and golf. I know the "roid" users probably won't get into the Hall, but it's like keeping Charlie Hustle out. How can you keep the greatest hitter in the history of the game out of the HoF? Yeah, so he bet on his team, I think we can get over it now. Murderers eventually get out of prison, so why shouldn't Pete Rose be enshrined in Cooperstown? Oh, and innocent until proven guilty went away in America a LONG time ago, unless you're a woman.
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Innocent until proven guilty is for the court of law. This is the court of public opinion, which is also the same court where the Baseball Writers of America vote on the Hall of Fame decide their votes. Sammy and the rest of the sluggers from the late 90s/early 00s are guilty. Be it fair or not, we don't have to use the presumption of innocence. Aside from that Sammy Sosa was one of the biggest roiders in the game. The circumstantial evidence dictates it. And if those of us who see it that way are wrong, that's too bad for him. He won't get into the Hall of Fame, the voters won't allow it. They are too protective of Cooperstown. So unless they build a separate wing to the Hall, Sammy, Big Mac, Barroid, Palmeiro, Clemens and that whole gang are shut out.
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MC, Bonds stats say that he should be in the hall, no doubt. I'm just saying that people assume too much and make judgments base on the "eye test" with Sosa. As far as Bonds, I'm not sure he should be in the Hall without an * before his name. Unless they have definite proof against Sammy as they do with Bonds,then Sammy should not be faulted because people "think" he did steroids. Innocent until proven guilty!
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I was simply asking whether you thought Bonds should be in the Hall or not. Believe me, I know all about the Bonds situation, being a Giants fan. As for Sosa, there may be nothing linking him to the juice, but do you honestly believe he was clean? His cousin probably just had the hook-up. There's no way he was clean, I'm sorry. VERY few players from that era were. I wouldn't be surprised if a large number of them are still on something, such as HGH, which is on the banned substance list, but isn't tested for. If that makes any sense to anyone, please, enlighten me.
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MC, unlike Sosa, Bonds has had direct links to BALCO along with other evidence and has been named in reports and books that basically proves he was on the juice.
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This era in baseball was so jacked up (no pun intended) by the steroid and players looking to get an advantage that I don't know who should or shouldn't go in. It pisses me off. I just hope my kid gets to watch a sport thats cleaned up and not just a bunch of players that have found another way to gain a "chemical" edge.
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What do you think about Bonds?
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I agree with you that he should make the hall of fame