Do You Believe Sosa or Conscience?

Just try to leave him out. Sammy Sosa dares you.

He is retiring from baseball -- was he still here? -- and he says he's just going to "calmly wait for my induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Don't I have the numbers to be inducted?"

Well, of course he has the numbers. Everyone knows that. But this one is going to be interesting because not one person believes he did it clean, without steroids.

Yet not one has actually made an accusation. It's just one of those things you think you know.

Not even Jose Canseco, the great steroid truth-teller, ever quite fingered Sosa. He avoided the Mitchell Report somehow, with the only mention being that he declined to answer questions. He coincidentally forgot how to speak English during the Senate hearings, even though I can tell you first-hand that he knows as many four-letter English words as I do.

So what do you do with Sosa? He hit 609 home runs, and he's the only player to hit 60 or more three times, and no one has accused him of anything.

Innocent till proven guilty? That's a legal thing. But he and Mark McGwire saved baseball in 1998 with their run for Roger Maris' home run record, when baseball commissioner Bud Selig and baseball's owners looked the other way and let steroids bring back the fans.

Sosa, a Dominican, said he's sad to see other Dominican players in trouble, especially Manny Ramirez and his 50-game suspension for steroid use.

"Manny's case has been truly hurtful," he said in the interview with ESPNdeportes.com, which broke the story of his official retirement. He hasn't played since 2007. "It hit me, but now it's time for Manny to get back on his feet and face the consequences of his actions."

Face the consequences of his ... Can you believe he said that?

Sosa was a hero in Chicago with the Cubs. But his biggest connection was with the kids. He came across as a human Beanie Baby, with the big smile and even a name that was fun to say and rolled off the tongue.

Sammy. Sosa.

Fraud. Phony.

Some people close up were already calling him that. Being real honest, I still believed. Maybe I just wanted to. And then in 2003, he broke a bat, and it was found to have cork in it.

He was cheating. He was a cheater. Face the consequences? He said he had that bat for fun, knowing it would hit balls farther from the doctoring, but only accidentally grabbed it for the game. He said he had no idea he was using it. The truth is, any baseball player can feel if his bat is a different weight. A tiny change, anything.

Sosa knew.

And then I was in the famous Chicago Billy Goat tavern -- "Cheezborga, Cheezborga," -- which is underneath a street. And some kid in a Cubs cap came in with his parents for lunch. The TV over the bar had the news talking about Sosa, the cheat. The kid wanted to know what was going on? What were they saying about Sammy? The parents panicked.

At the time, my own son could name one athlete in the world. Sammy. And at his own school, kids were hearing word that something was going on with Sammy, their parents were talking, the halls were buzzing.

The teachers had to hold a meeting to discuss what to tell the kids. Sosa had been caught cheating. And now he was going to have consequences.

Chicago started turning on him that day. From there, he played his boom box so loud that other players complained. He wouldn't stop it, as he felt he was king. And eventually, some player smashed it.

When Sosa finally left, it was so strange. He left during a game, just snuck out, and claimed that it was in the final innings, and he was cleared to go home. The Cubs didn't remember clearing him, and produced video of the player parking lot showing that he had left much earlier in the game. Without a goodbye.



At one point, something about Sosa reminded us what we love about baseball. He was joy. He was kids. He was home runs and Wrigley Field sunshine. It took all our thoughts off of salary issues and of canceled World Series. He made the game feel like the national pastime again, fighting there with McGwire, fighting together, showing a new diversity of the country and the same spirit.

"I remember thinking that his transformation looked even more dramatic than Mark's," Canseco wrote in his book, Juiced.

"It looked like he was trying to make up for lost time by bulking up faster than McGwire ever had. He gained thirty pounds, just like that, and got up to 260 so fast, you could see the bloating in his face and neck. It seemed so obvious, it was a joke."

With baseball trying to stay quiet and deny their dirty little secret about steroids saving their finances, they allowed Canseco to become The Word of steroids. So far, everything he has said, I think, has been true.

So is he accusing Sosa?

"I don't know Sammy Sosa personally," he wrote, "so I can't say for a fact that he ever took steroids."

Sosa slides in under the tag again. He was asked about steroid rumors.

"Everything I achieved, I did it thanks to my perseverance ..." Sosa said in the interview. "I always played with love and responsibility, and I assure you that I will not answer or listen to rumors. If anything ugly comes up in the future, we will confront it immediately, but with all our strength, because I will not allow anybody to tarnish what I did on the field."

Typical Sosa. He will confront accusations immediately. And in the same paragraph, asked about steroids, he declines to confront anything, saying he will not answer or listen.

Phony. Fraud.

Sosa used to explain his amazing bulk-up by saying he was on Flintstones vitamins.

And really, can you keep a guy out of the Hall for that?