Sosa Wanted to Show the Guns

When the news broke that Sammy Sosa had tested positive for steroid use back in 2003 last week it was kind of like when American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert came out of the closet. You didn't really need to be told anything because you could just see it. When Sosa morphed from a beanpole at the start his career to the behemoth he was at the end of it, it was pretty obvious.

I mean, you didn't need to look past those bulging biceps peeping out of Sosa's jersey to become suspicious of where he got them. Of course, as it turns out, Sosa didn't really care because he wanted you to see those guns of his. He even had his jerseys altered to do just that.

It turns out Sosa had his jerseys tapered around his arms for a period of years. A study of photo archives suggests Sosa's jerseys were tailored with elastic inside the arms from 2002-2004, while he was playing with the Chicago Cubs.

Sosa's custom ordering came to light thanks to pictures of an authentic Sosa jersey that is currently being auctioned off by Hunt Auctions. The jersey, advertised as being used by Sosa for the game he hit home run No. 470, was from the 2002 season.

CNBC confirmed through a source that Sosa did indeed ask for the elastic arm tapering for at least the 2002 season. The source said that he could not remember another player that asked for this specification.

On one level, I can totally understand why Sosa would want to do this. After all, he probably spent a lot of money to get those biceps, so it's understandable that he'd want to show them off. Still, it seems rather stupid now, doesn't it?

Sure, steroids weren't illegal at the time in the game of baseball, but they weren't exactly something the game was trying to show off. So doing things that would accentuate the effect steroids had on you does seem rather idiotic. I mean if you're addicted to heroin and you're trying to hide it from the world, you probably don't walk around in short sleeves too often.

Though I did notice that while doing a Getty Images search on Sosa that in 2003 and 2004 with the Cubs, Sammy had stopped wearing the tapered sleeves. So it seems he wised up.