No Corked Bats!

I’ve always loved baseball. I mean REAL baseball. Not the fat-free version featuring designated hitters, wild cards, set-up men, closers, and free agents designed for this media-driven, sound-bite generation, but the game played like God meant for it to be with pitchers who bat, champions who are the best team over the whole 162 game season, not just the team who got hot in late September, and men who loved the game enough to play a few double-headers every summer. I still follow this game played by millionaires I’ve never heard of, but I’d take the old game back in a heartbeat.

Sammy Sosa would probably turn the game back a couple of years, too, but not for the same reason I would. You know Sammy. The hard-hitting outfielder with the wide smile. Sammy has hit more than 500 home runs, a feat that fewer than 20 men have been able to accomplish. Sammy did it with such ease and grace that he was admired by baseball fans everywhere. At least he was until June 3, 2003, when a routine ground ball to second base became more famous than any home run Sammy ever hit. The bat Sammy used to hit that grounder broke on impact, and revealed that it had been hollowed out and filled with cork. It was a bat on steroids. Sammy, the home run slammer, was using an illegal bat.

Sammy quickly apologized and said he grabbed this bat by mistake. Because baseballs hit with corked bats fly farther, Sammy kept this one to entertain the crowds who came to watch him hit before the game. Anyway, that is what he said. Most baseball fans were wondering how many other times he had mistakenly carried a corked bat to the plate in a real game?

I don’t know Sammy so I can neither convict nor acquit him. He may have told us the truth, but his reputation sure took a beating. Regardless of what the real story is, lots of folks will always think that Sammy cheated.

I used to feel sorry for Sammy, but he brought it on himself. Wanting to impress those sitting in the grandstands, he stepped over the line. Ultimately, he lost any admiration he might have gained and tarnished his own image in the process. A new Sammy Sosa was born on June 3, 2003. The new one will be remembered long after the old Sammy is forgotten. And it’s his own fault.

It is fun to sneer when the rich and famous make fools of themselves, but what if you were exposed to the same media scrutiny as Sammy? What if your job was performed before 40,000 jeering spectators? How would you fare?

Be genuine. Don’t risk your integrity for a few more cheers from the cheap seats. It isn’t worth it. By the end of the 2005 season, Slammin’ Sammy had batted 8,401 times as a professional player, but the one swing that the crowd will always remember is the one with the cork exposed.

You must value integrity more than you cherish the adulation of others.

No corked bats. Not even in practice.

©2006 Doug Ellingsworth