SamSaid!

THE SAMMY SOSA SYNDROME

     Sammy Sosa is a professional baseball player employed by the Chicago Cubs. He is paid an immense salary to hit baseballs  –  a long way. He is a premier slugger. A short time ago, Mtr. Sosa was caught cheating and was suspended from playing for a week or so. His crime was “corking” his baseball bat.

     To the uninitiated, corking a bat means drilling a hole in the end of the wooden bat and filling it with cork  –  a much lighter substance. The bat remains strong, but is lighter in weight. The numbers tell the story. The speed of a pitched ball is about 90 miles per hour and travels about 60 feet –  from the pitcher's mound to home plate. If 60 mph is 88 feet per second, 90 mph is 132 feet per second. Obviously, a batter doesn't have very much time to swing at the ball when it travels such a short distance (60 feet) at such a high speed. Hence, a strong lighter bat is an advantage to the batter when only a fraction of a second is involved in swinging the bat. Corking the bat is not new  –  conniving players have tried to get away with it for years. Some get caught, some don't. Mr. Sosa got caught.

     I have a hard time undertsanding why people who have it all  –  fame, wealth, notoreity, power, secure future, adoring fans, etc. –  feel the need to cheat or steal just to get more. There are only so many “toys” to be bought  –  mansions, jewelry, cars, boats, planes  –  and at some point immense wealth becomes almost irrelevant. I can't quarrel with the desire to maximize talents and skills to accumulate more wealth. But why stoop to dishonesty when so much is available by legitimate means?

     I don't mean to pick on Sammy Sosa, because the syndrome applies to so many others, such as Winona Ryder, Union leaders who loot the treasury, corporate executives of companies like Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing, Tyco, Adelphia, et., al. Call it the The Sammy Sosa Syndrome. As good a name as any.  “Cheating and stealing are OK as long as you don't get caught”. And to make matters worse, sometimes the penalties are no more than a slap on the wrist. Not much of a deterrent. In days of moral relativity, there is no such thing as “right and wrong”. More and more, the guilty shrug off guilt as if saying “What's the big deal”?

     Mr. Sosa's reputation is gone. It wasn't just a “mistake” as he terms it. His act was deliberate, pre-meditated and concealed. No sympathy from me. He now is just one more reason the change channels.

    “Cheating and stealing are OK as long as you don't get caught”.  Not so. Sorry, Sammy!