Published: June 21, 2009 11:39 pm      

MARK MAYNARD: Sosa baseball's latest phony 6/21/09

The revelation this week that Sammy Sosa was one of the 104 who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003 hardly rates as surprising news.

It’s like telling someone water is wet.

What a hypocrite and phony Sosa has turned out to be.

He joins the growing list of baseball elite who will have their noses pressed against the Cooperstown windows, hopefully for a lifetime.

Back in 1998’s baseball lovefest, Mark McGwire and Sosa put the game on their really, really broad shoulders in a home run duel for the ages. It was the shot in the arm (pun intended) that baseball needed after the 1994-95 strike.

My family visited Cooperstown in the summer of 1999 and right there in the hallowed halls were giant cutout posters of McGwire and Sosa chronicling the greatest home run contest ever. It was triumphant for them. They were super-sized and every home run McGwire and Sosa hit from that season was recorded. When it happened, where it happened and off what pitcher. It was great for baseball.

Or so we thought.

McGwire later admitted using Androstenedione – legal then but not now – while Sosa joked that he got big and strong by taking Flintstones vitamins.

Big chuckle then, not so much now.

Baseball is so scarred right now that you trust nothing. Cheaters have obliterated the revered home run records of Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Roger Maris.

Sosa joins Barry Bonds, McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Gary Sheffield and Jose Canseco in a wing of the Hall of Shame. Some pitchers have a place too. Roger Clemens is captain of the Shamers.

Canseco, amazingly enough, has come out looking more righteous than anybody in the whole steroid mess. He’s the one who first started openly talking about the steroid culture in baseball, a culture that he freely admits being part of during his career. He wrote a book about it and named names.

Turns out, Canseco has been the most honest of them all. Think about that.

Baseball turned its collective head during the steroid era and even nurtured the culture by not dealing with it. They’re dealing better now, but the game has been seriously damaged because of it.

History and records are so much a part of baseball and what steroids have done is alter that part of the game. For 37 years, every fan of baseball knew what the No. 61 meant. It was the number of home runs hit by Maris in that 1961 season for the Yankees. It was one of the unbreakable records it seemed.

Then in 1998, it was McGwire and Sosa who both broke the Maris mark as we cheered their every swing.

Nobody questioned why because it was so good for baseball.

Or so we thought.

Now more than 10 years later, the talk of HGH, performance-enhancing drugs and steroids seem to dominate our headlines. The home run totals are down.

But when a player does go on a home run tear, we don’t give him the benefit of the doubt. We wonder aloud ‘Is he using?’ That’s become our culture as sports journalists and as baseball fans. Question everything.

Anybody who performs above and beyond is questioned. It’s unfair but it’s the new culture for baseball fans and those who cover the game.

Players might as well get used to it. If they don’t like it, talk to the Players Association about tougher testing. When a cheater is caught, toss him out of their union. Eventually, you’d have a clean league again. Today’s players are forever stamped as being from the Steroid Era. But it doesn’t have to be that way for the next generation of players.

MARK MAYNARD can be reached at mmaynard@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2648.