How about that Corky Sosa

[Basketbill]

caught with a corked bat......now I am sure we will start hearing stories about whose bat it actually was, and how it just accidentally was used by sammy, but it sure puts an asterisk by his name unofficially.

[thetorch]

Hmmmmm, will his production magically go down now?

Plus who corks their bat in Wrigley Field? Guys hit broken bat hrs there. I could see maybe corking at Busch or something, but Wrigley is a bandbox, anybody can hit a homer there.

[kwyjibo]

You got it completely wrong. Sammy said that it was his bat and that he accepts his (future) punishment. He broke the rules of baseball and deserves to be punished.

However, I highly doubt he has done this much (and his explanation of this as a "one time" mistake is as plausible as any other wild story) because he has broken hundreds of bats in his career and this is the only one that has had cork.

Second, and most importantly-- "corking" the bat does NOT help the hitter hit the ball farther. The loss of structural integrity probably outweighs any benefit a batter would get in "bat speed". This is the main reason "corking" is a somewhat rare occurence. It is simply part of the longtime "folkloric" nature of baseball that people would think "corking" helps. I am sure it has nice "placebo" properties for the hitter though. So, even if (and that is a huge IF), Sammy used a corked bat occasionally in the past, he should be able to hit the ball further without it.

[billiken_roy]

actually espn had a 2 part segment on bat corking yesterday. first they had buck showalter show how to do it. i was shaking my head on that. every kid in america has a drill out today.

second they had some kind of physics genius on to discuss the effects. he said by corking the bat correctly a player can cut from 1-1.5 ounces off of the total bat weight that could increase the bat speed enough to give a hitter about a 5% gain in distance under idea conditions.

let's see, over the course of the season i would think a 5% increase for sammy might turn 10 flyballs into homeruns. hard telling how many one hop grounders are now line drives. it makes a difference. a big difference.

that all said, the fact they went thru all of his other bats and found nothing tells me he might be telling the truth on his "it is my batting practice/exhibition bat". god only knows what that accomplishes. but for some reason, i believe him.

[davidnark]

I don't believe one thing out of Sammy's mouth. Of course he didn't cork all eighty-somthing bats. He probably kept one corked bat around to use in games and a large number of clean bats to rely upon to cover his tracks. The eighty-something clean bats don't mean a thing; the one dirty bat he used in the game is the only bat that matters.

Sammy is a fraud and has always been a fraud. If you don't believe me, then read the article linked below. Note the reference to Sosa's Foundation. McGwire thousands to Sammy's foundation, and Sammy didn't sink a dime into it.

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/spo.../printstory.jsp

See also:

http://www.sportsline.com/u/ce/multi/0%2C1...92_52%2C00.html

[kwyjibo]

Corking a bat has two effects:

First, as you and your "physics genius" point out, it allows for an increase in batspeed. I think the increase in distance of 5% (thats 15 ft. for a 300 ft. drive) is a wild exageration but there is a distance benefit.

Actually, the greatest benefit would be in seeing the pitch longer before starting your swing. This is why "corking" is done by singles hitters and NOT SLUGGERS. If Sammy is guilty of nefarious cheating here (I really don't think he is but it is interesting to see a complete lack of objectivity here in a rush to judgement), it is too reduce his strikeouts and get a few extra singles to right.

Second, corking would not increase his home run total because the other effect is to reduce the mass and structural integrity in the hitting zone. Both of these would reduce the distance a ball flies (again though were talking 1-2%). As it says in Physics of Baseball:

"Even if the filler were quite elastic, the elastic energy of the filler cannot be transferred efficiently to the bat in the one-one thousandth second of the bat-ball collision. Such a filler would thus then take about 3 feet more off a 400 foot drive." (Yale physicist Robert Adair)

[courtside]

It dosn't boher me one bit that this is something Cub fans have to go through and debate etc...sitting back and enjoying. Obviously many people cheat in the unregulated sport of baseball. It will always put Sosa in question, by at least some...There are a loyt of other phonies out there too. I mean c'mon, who actually thought Sosa was ever sincere on anything. He redifine's me first.

In any sport you get caught, do the time, get mixed reputation and move on. I find it NOT PLAUSIBLE that he only corkled one bat. They found nothing in 76 bats...hmmm 1) Somehow if MLB found others they wouldn't share it...they have enough problems...no way they share that if they find it...sort of like waiting to spend a guy so he could make MLB more interesting to play Yankees. 2) Those bats were confiscated hours later...they could have put anything in there. I would guess, just a guess he falls in between as a sometimes ccorked guy or other things...