First there's Fred Mitchell's "Around The Town" column which mentioned Sosa's desire to endorse the European mystery skin treatment in the U.S. Then David Haugh wishes the slugger a happy 41st birthday by asking some of his former teammates about his new face and interviewing British cosmetologists about why Sosa would do such a thing. Then he lobs this little dig at the end: "If Sosa says he's not trying to look like Michael Jackson, that's good enough for McRae. But cynics who remember the way Sosa played right field at the end of his career may point out it's not the first time he has resembled Jackson."

And The Trib's John Kass did everything but suggest he wouldn't fuck Sosa's face with Bea Arthur's dick:

• "pale as some manly Lady Gaga"
• "new Sammy looks like a boneless veal cutlet."
• "It's as if someone carefully deboned Sammy's face, rolled the skin and dipped it in an egg wash before dusting it with flour."
• "Maybe Sammy just wants to look like one particular, albeit dead, European male: Harry Caray."

***** (H/T J. Ash)

Thanks for your continued support of Deadspin. Barry will be posting later at some point.

Sosa told Univision's "Primer Impacto" his spooky pallor is a result from aggressive rejuvenation treatment that's backfired a bit. "It's a cream that I have, that I use to soften [my skin], but has bleached me some. I'm not a racist, I live my life happily."

Sammy wouldn't reveal the name of the cream (only that he purchased it in Europe) but he said his over-usage and the bright lights were the culprit.

After doing some half-assed Google research, it appears Sosa probably used a skin care product containing an enormous amount of Hydroquinone, a skin bleaching agent which, if used improperly could cause someone's skin to turn the color of old dog shit. Super White Sammy turns 41 tomorrow, by the way.

Sosa: Facial Cream Caused Lightening Of Skin [ESPN]

Because Chicago's baseball writers haven't had anything to write about for three months now, this has become the story in the Second City. The Tribune went to one of Sosa's friends, who gave a perfectly reasonable answer for why he Slammin' Sammy had an MJ look going the other day.

He is going through a rejuvenation process for his skin," [Rebecca] Polihronis said. "Women have it all of the time. He was surprised he came out looking so white. I thought it was a body double. Part of (the photo appearance) is just the lighting.

"He is in the middle of doing a cleansing process to his skin. The picture is deceiving. He said, 'If you saw me in person, you would be surprised. When you see me in person, it is not going to seem like the picture.'"

But this isn't just a case of Sosa forgetting to wash off the moisturizer before going out on the town. Discoloration and lightening is a common side effect of laser treatments he might be undergoing "after years and years (of playing baseball) in the sun."

So now that we have our answer, we can all go back to pretending Sosa never existed.

Sammy Sosa Says Skin Rejuvenation Process Reason His Skin Appears Lighter [Chicago Tribune]

Guesses include botched plastic surgery to vitiligo to "really bad make up" but unless Mr. Sosa was looking for some way to make his eyes more lemur-like, I don't think this was intentional. SI's little blurb gives no clues either:

Slammin' Sammy is clearly keeping himself occupied these days. Here he arrives with a rather distinguished guest at a Person of the Year ceremony in honor of Juan Gabriel at Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas on Nov. 4.

Yes. Clearly. Not so clear? Why he now has the same skin tone as Bryce Howard. Come on, SI. Get to the bottom of this.

****

Thanks for your continued support of Deadspin. Weed Against Daulerio will be on for parts of the day tomorrow. Barry on Sunday.

The Cub legend appeared on the "Waddle & Silvy" show on Radio DisneyESPN 1000 to talk sports, so of course, he was asked about his former teammate Sammy Sosa and his supposed steroid use. Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Ryno says, "I don't think so."

"It's something that's against the law and against society," Sandberg said. "It was cheating in the sport.

"I think it has to be spoken very loud and clear on the stance, and baseball needs to stand as they have. I'm very, very satisfied with the testing program they have in place now. For a guy who's tested positive today under what happens now, like Manny Ramirez, it almost takes an idiot to participate in that. For the society, for the up-and-coming players and youth out there, I don't think those guys should be recognized at all."

Won't someone please think of the society? But surely Sandberg, who played with Sosa for five seasons in Chicago, must have known something was amiss?

"I was around Sammy for about five years before I retired, and there wasn't anything going on then," Sandberg said. "I did admire the hard work he put in. He was one of the first guys down to the batting cage, hitting extra. I figured he was working out hard in the offseason to get bigger. It was just happening throughout the game, that even myself was blinded by what was really happening, maybe starting in the '98 season.

"I think it's very unfortunate. I think suspicions were there as they are with some other players. Those players are now put in a category of being tainted players with tainted stats. I think it's obviously something that was going on in the game. Players participated in it and, as the names have come out, I think that they will be punished for that."

So nothing then? No suspicion over power jumps like say ... going from 19 to 30 to 40 home runs over three seasons? Or hitting 14 over the course of two years, taking a year off, then hitting 25 the next season? I'm not insinuating anything—because that would be wrong—but geez with all those "tainted" players ....

Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg says Sammy Sosa doesn't belong in Hall [ESPN Chicago]
Ryne Sandberg: Sosa doesn't belong in Hall of Fame [Sports Pros(e)]
Manny Ramirez gets cheers, goes 0 for 2 in rehab game [ESPN]

Wilstein has been nominated for the Hall of Fame's J.G. Taylor Spink Award by the Seattle chapter of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, which is unstinting in its efforts to be wrong about pretty much everything. The award recognizes "meritorious contributions to baseball writing." What Wilstein did, to put it simply, was cast suspicion on a man doing something perfectly legal with his own body, thus setting the terms of a story that has ended with federal investigators tap-dancing on the Fourth Amendment, merrily committing crimes far greater than anything they were investigating in the first place. What exactly is meritorious about that?

Go back and read the story that started it all, in 1998. This was in August, in the teeth of the Sosa-McGwire pursuit of Roger Maris' record. Wilstein built an entire feature around a bottle of Androstenedione that he spotted on the top shelf of McGwire's locker. Andro was perfectly legal and available over the counter at the time, but that didn't stop Wilstein from whipping up a little hysteria:

Sitting on the top shelf of Mark McGwire's locker, next to a can of Popeye spinach and packs of sugarless gum, is a brown bottle labeled Androstenedione.

For more than a year, McGwire says, he has been using the testosterone-producing pill, which is perfectly legal in baseball but banned in the NFL, Olympics and the NCAA.

No one suggests that McGwire wouldn't be closing in on Roger Maris' home run record without the over-the-counter drug. After all, he hit 49 homers without it as a rookie in 1987, and more than 50 each of the past two seasons.

But the drug's ability to raise levels of the male hormone, which builds lean muscle mass and promotes recovery after injury, is seen outside baseball as cheating and potentially dangerous.

The story established the model for everything that has followed: insinuation, heaps of pseudo-science, a whiff of Drug War-era moralizing, the assumption that use is the same thing as abuse, the fat paragraph of scary side effects in which the writer essentially holds a flashlight under his chin and goes whooooooo, a quote or two from Gary Wadler, who remains the go-to drug warrior for journalists too embarrassed to quote someone named Dick Pound.

This isn't meritorious journalism. It's Nancy Reagan in newsprint.

Wilstein went on to become one of journalism's most persistent steroid crusaders, kibitzing baseball's evolving drug policy at every turn, finding an excuse to summon the specter of PEDs even when he was writing about tennis ("At a time when other pro sports have been beset by problems with steroids, the arrests of stars and confrontations with fans, tennis stands to gain as a civil alternative") and, I shit you not, the Iditarod.

"No one has been found to be doping their dogs, but there are suspicions among some mushers that it's been done, if not in the race, then in training. Anabolic steroids and blood doping - the injection of whole blood, packed blood cells or blood substitutes - could help make the dogs stronger and enhance their endurance and resilience."

He helped create a phony atmosphere of crisis that certain overeager federal investigators could exploit to such an extent that their flagrantly illegal seizure of baseball's 2003 steroid tests results — which included the results of players outside the scope of their search warrant, not to mention records for people with no connection to the BALCO case or even baseball — was mostly cheered. (I wonder if people will cheer when this case shows up before the Supreme Court.) When Sammy Sosa's name was whispered into the ear of The New York Times earlier this week, no one, that I saw, called for an investigation into the leaks (a crime for which someone will eventually get tossed in the federal hoosegow), and no one, that I saw, expressed any outrage that Sosa's name emerged only after a lot of people had their Fourth Amendment rights trampled. Instead, people demanded more names, more names, more names — hell, the whole damn list.

Wilstein didn't do any of this himself, of course, but this is his legacy as much as it is anyone's. (Geoff Baker, Mariners beat writer for the Seattle Times and the chairman of BWAA's Seattle chapter, called Wilstein one of "a select few" who worked diligently to uncover doping in baseball.) Wilstein is retired from sportswriting these days, seemingly content to be turned into an instrument by which his former profession simultaneously flays itself for not bulldogging the steroids story hard enough and congratulates itself for starting the conversation. He now writes children's stories.

McGwire Author Wilstein Nominated for Baseball Writers' Award [Bloomberg]
A Hall of Fame Find by a Sports Reporter [The New York Times]
Legal in baseball [SI.com]

The Times' Michael Schmidt, who's sourcing the story to "lawyers with knowledge of the drug-testing results," writes:

In a recent interview with ESPN Deportes, Sosa, 40, said he would "calmly wait" for his induction into baseball's Hall of Fame, for which he will become eligible for induction in 2013. But his 2003 positive test, when he played for the Chicago Cubs, may seriously damage his chances of gaining entry to the Hall, a fate encountered by McGwire, who has attracted relatively little support from voters in his first three years on the ballot.

The 2003 positive test could also create legal troubles for Sosa because he testified under oath before Congress at a public hearing in 2005 that he had "never taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs."

The real outrage here, as it was with A-Rod, is not who's on the list but who's doing the leaking, a story that for obvious reasons The New York Times will not be writing. You'll remember that those tests results were supposed to be confidential — a perfectly reasonable expectation of any employee who submits to a drug test — yet now they're trickling into public view, merely because somebody wants to remind you to care deeply about steroids in baseball again.

The lesson for all Americans: Just say no to drug tests.

Sosa Said to Test Positive in 2003 [New York Times]

"I still don't have an offer, and I shouldn't be looking for offers out there," said Sosa, the National League MVP in 1998 and the only hitter to surpass 60 or more homers in a season on three occasions. "Any team who wants to sign me should have the initiative and make an offer."

Sosa is hoping to catch on with the Dominican entry into the World Baseball Classic, which is only a couple months away. Physical attributes aside, it's questionable whether Sosa is a box-office asset. As one of the living artifacts of a performance-enhancement era baseball seems all too eager to bury, Sosa might want to brush up on his language skills while he's waiting by the phone. Specifically, learning the Spanish translation for "snowball's chance in hell."

Sosa still waiting for offer [That one sports network]

Constant MLB.tv ads have featured the following copy:

“Willie Mays, September 22, 1969…600.
Babe Ruth, August 21, 1931…600.
Hank Aaron, April 27, 1971…600.”



Then the screen flips to Griffey, who sits at 599, and he says, “Ken Griffey Jr…. keep watching.”

This ignores, of course, Sammy Sosa and that Bonds guy, who actually reached a rather lofty milestone just last year. (And it really was just last year.) The big question has been how MLB would handle the steroid era, and we're already getting a pretty good idea: Just ignore it. Boy, doesn't Tim Forneris feel even dumber now?

As Griffey Approaches 600, MLB Whitewashes History [Wicked Good Sports]

We appreciated Lone Star Ball's stance on this: "Yay! Now let's call up Jason Botts."

Seriously, though, now that Sammy Sosa has his 600 homers — and still has his defenders, in Chicago and elsewhere — the question arises: Is he going to make the Hall of Fame? Obviously, his numbers say he should be in there ... but so do Mark McGwire's.

Surprisingly, almost everyone at ESPN thinks he should be in, which is odd, we think. The majority of "voters" say that because he's never tested positive for any steroids, they shouldn't be a factor in any decision making. Which doesn't make any sense, because McGwire never tested positive either, and no one's rushing to put him in the Hall. We're not saying Sosa shouldn't be in, or he should, but any decision you'd make on him, you'd have to apply the same to McGwire.

But really: Where's Jason Botts?

Sammy Hits 600, But Will He Go To The Hall? [UmpBump]
Standing Up For Sammy [100 Percent Injury Rate]
Sammy Hits 600 [Lone Star Ball]

In general, we remain confused how to respond to Sosa's quixotic comeback and "drive" for 600 homers. Mark McGwire retired, vanished, and we were all had to deal with what was left in his wake. Barry Bonds keeps hitting eff-you homers and confronts us, daring us to doubt him. But Sammy just plods along, quieter, meeker, happy to be playing the game but still probably pretty much an asshole. One of the three biggest names in the whole steroid mess, remaining out there, plugging away, about to hit a 600th homer than hardly anyone will notice. How Sosa continues to dance between the raindrops is beyond us.

Anyway, yeah: It would have been nice to see how Cubs fans would have treated him. Oh well.

And We Meet Again ... [The Cobra Brigade]
Lonely 600 [Uwe Blog]

We just stumbled across this old video for Sammy Sosa's High Heat, a 2001 video game that's "so reeeeeeal." In light of Sosa's recent resurgence, and his gallop toward his 600th homer, we thought you might find it amusing.

Notes on a day in baseball:

• M-I-C (See If The Bat Is Corked) .... Walt Disney's thoughts on performance enhancing drugs were never recorded, so it's unclear what he would have thought of Sammy Sosa's 597th career home run on Wednesday. Sosa hit the blast at Disney Wide World of Sports Park on the Disney World campus in Kissimmee, Fla., making that the 45th park in which he has homered, extending his record. It didn't help the Rangers, however, who fell to the Devil Rays, 11-8, behind Carl Crawford's bases-loaded triple. Sosa's two-run, opposite-field homer off of Casey Fossum (3-3) was his ninth homer of the year. The ball left the stadium, cleared Critter Country and bounced into Mr. Selig's Wild Ride, where it was scooped up by the ever-vigilant custodial crew. We are glad to be reminded that major league games are being played at Disney World, a magical place of fun and adventure for all. Our only hope is that, somehow, Bobby Cox can break the record for career ejections there.

• A Little Chien Music. Meanwhile, Chien-Ming Wang's pitching salvaged an 8-1 win by the Yankees, who split a doubleheader with the White Sox. Hideki Matsui drove in four runs. Wang (2-3) allowed six hits and a run over seven innings. In the first game, John Danks outpitched Mike Mussina to give the White Sox a 5-3 win. It all happened at U.S. Cellular Field, which has fewer fun rides than Disney World, but, on the bright side, the lines are shorter.

• In Other Sosa News ... Jorge Sosa needed about five hours to beat the Cubs, which he did with a seven-inning one-hitter that led an 8-1 win for the Mets. The game was plagued by a 3:07 rain delay. Sosa, by the way, had started the season 4-0 with a 1.13 ERA at Triple-A New Orleans.

• Meanwhile, In Adventureland ... C.C. Sabathia went eight innings and Trot Nixon drove in three runs to lead the Indians to a 7-1 victory over the Twins.

• Ah, Fantasyland. The Washington Nationals, winners of five of their past six, used seven pitchers in a 6-4 win over the Braves. Ryan Church's three-run double in the eighth was the difference.

Anyway, yesterday, in his First Big Public Move, Mitchell ... asked for the medical records of some old Baltimore Orioles. And some of these names will SHOCK YOU: Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa, David Segui, Jason Grimsley ... seriously! Those guys!

Investigators have looked deeply into the Orioles, among other organizations. Mitchell's staff has interviewed at least nine members of the Orioles' front office and training staff, and has searched at least six of their personal computers for evidence relating to performance-enhancing drugs, the official said.

You know, at this rate, by 2011, Mitchell could end up getting a hold of a guy who once glanced at Barry Bonds' medical records while waiting in line to pee in a cup. Go get 'em, George!

Sosa And Palmeiro Cited In Steroid Investigation [New York Times] (via Steroid Nation)

Among the worthless — but muscular! — heap of relics from the 1998 Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run chase? The priceless Slammin' Sammy: The Sammy Sosa Story, an animated "feature" about Sammy Sosa and "how a hero became a legend."

We found it apropos, considering Sosa is looking like he might make the Rangers' roster. They've got all kinds of fun clips right here, including the revelation that Sosa grew up speaking English before forgetting it, of course. That'll happen.

Say It Ain't Sosa [The Greatest Blog In The World]

"I'd love to have him hit fifth behind Mark Teixeira if he shows he can hit Major League pitching," manager Ron Washington said. "As we get into Spring Training, his performance will show what we can do with him.

We suspect the Rangers' AL West rivals would also like to see Sosa hitting fifth behind Mark Teixeira. By the way ... steroids are still illegal, right? Just checking; we wanted to make sure to have all the facts.

Rangers, Sosa Agree To Deal [Rangers.com]

According to an interview in Chunichi Sports, an unnamed player personnel official with the Yokohama Bay Stars called a recent attempt by Sosa's agent to get him a roster spot with the team for a $500,000 salary as endeavoring "to perpetrate fraud on us." In addition, the bigwig expressed strong doubts about the former Cub's character. Alluding to the still unproven rumor that Sosa took steroids as well as the corked bat incident, he smirked, "guys who use performance enhancing drugs and break the rules aren't real sportsmen."

He then elaborated, "besides, he's fat now. Where would we play him? He would probably go home in two months."

We sympathize with Sosa; the process of aging can work depressing wonders on the complex physical construction that is the human body. Now that no MLB or Japanese teams want Sosa, we would like to respectfully extend an invitation to play on the Gawker Media bowling team. They certainly do not test for illicit substances there, thank heavens.

Yokohama Bay Stars Official Blasts Sammy Sosa [Japan Baseball Daily]
Sammy Sosa-San Could Rack Up The Yen [Deadspin]