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Sammy Sosa Did Nothing Wrong* | Baseball Bits

PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/foolishbaseball TWEETER: https://twitter.com/FoolishBB _________________________________________________________ Sammy Sosa did nothing wrong. It's a strong claim. Between the Sammy Sosa corked bat, Sammy Sosa congress, and Sammy Sosa steroid suspicions, he's gotten a bad reputation. Now a pariah, Sosa appears in baseball contexts and is barred from participating in the Sammy Sosa Cubs organization. The steroid era in Major League Baseball hasn't been squared away, and possibly never will be, but I believe no player has gotten the short end of the stick more than Sammy Sosa. You can check his Sammy Sosa Hall of Fame ballot performances to be sure of that. Perhaps it's time to forgive, but perhaps there's nothing to forgive at all. As you'll learn in this episode of Baseball Bits, a Foolish Baseball production, the corked bat was likely an isolated incident, the testifying to Congress has largely been misconstrued (especially with regards to the English language), and the ties to PEDs from the MLB 2003 testing aren't reliable. It's the same connection David Ortiz had. Finally, yes, he has Sammy Sosa lighter skin. He doesn't quite look like the guy who starred for the Cubs and Sammy Sosa White Sox. But that's not really a baseball issue, right? __________________________________________________________

Comments

Francis Alipranti

Thank you for this, Bailey. I always thought that my opinion that the corked bat issue should be a nonissue, especially since it’s been shown to more likely than not be a hinderance to hitting than a help (due to a decrease in energy transfer), was a very unpopular stance.

gene

banger video. not who i was thinking of when i heard the teaser you gave on wake n jake, but you've given me a new hill to die on in online baseball discourse, which is all i really ask for these days

Tom Barrett

As a Cubs fan that grew up in the 90s/00s, Sosa was a huge part of how I fell in love with baseball. This video perfectly articulates what I’ve been feeling ever since he left the game, so thank you for that. Is there still a chance he did PEDs? Yeah, totally. But, the way he’s been treated by people all over the game has been a bit unfair compared to others. He’ll always be one of my favorites because of the impact he had on my love for the game

gene

my first thought was Curt Flood. not that anyone really drags him through the mud anymore, but he sure got his share. there's a lot of interesting stuff to be said about his life and career beyond what's relatively common knowledge. and in typical red sox fashion, carl yastrzemski gets to be the villain.

Connor

Really fantastic video, Bailey!

Maxwell Skipworth

I'm not convinced steroid guys should or shouldn't be in the hall. But thank you for enlightening me about Sammy Sosa. I was operating off quite a bit of bad information.

JP Stroman

The typical conversation around the Steroid Era in baseball is so devoid of nuance as to be maddening. Glad to see you're willing to look beyond the neat, simple sound bites and dig deeper. While I don't think it's as easy as you make it sound to make a statistical case for Sammy as a big HOF snub (his career WAR is way below the standard of the average HOF RF, for instance), I do agree that his legacy has been badly mishandled and he hasn't been treated fairly.