Baseballhead:
Put A Frickin' Cork In It

Michael Cox

This week Baseballhead is brought to you by the Incredible Hulk movie. As best as I can figure from the trailer, it's about a guy who gets really angry and turns into Shrek.

It's been an exciting week following the media, and in the end I learned two things: ESPN is attempting to be the worldwide leader in sportswriters with opinions, while FOX Sports strives to become the worldwide leader in teenage skateboarders suffering injuries while their buddies videotape them. The third thing I learned? Sammy Sosa is a bad, bad man.

Sosa's misdeed has unfortunately opened that most oxymoronic (or maybe just moronic) of Pandora's boxes: sportswriters pontificating pompously on "integrity." Of course, when you think of pomposity one's mind immediately locks in on George F. Will, whose own legacy is best summed up with the old SNL "George F. Will Sports Machine" sketch. Sure enough, Will was babbling pseudo-profundities about the mythical asterisk, which he presumed must now accompany any Sosa feat in the record book. (Personally, I mentally add an asterisk to any statement Will makes, but that's just me.)

The story was judged to be so big that ESPN.com created a special page for Sosa corking coverage. Jayson Stark wrote the expected column of hyperbole, calling the incident "the night Sosa's world changed forever":

Now people will ask if his whole career, his whole rise from raw strikeout machine to one of the great sluggers of all time, was phony and tainted... Now people will look at a man who was once one of baseball's most beloved figures and ask: "Why?" And no matter how reasonable or unfathomable the explanation, will anyone be interested in accepting it?

Considering I haven't heard one normal regular person ask any of that stuff yet, I'd say Stark was simply doing his best to fill column inches.

Meanwhile, Dan Patrick showed why ESPN hired him in the first place (i.e., the hair):

Sosa claims that he used the now-infamous bat to put on a show for fans during batting practice. But during home games, batting practice occurs prior to fans being admitted to the park. Perhaps it's something of a road show, but I doubt it.

"I doubt it"? What kind of argument is that? Of course, Patrick is the guy who allowed a drunk-sounding Rick Reilly to ramble about Sosa's alleged "daddy issues" on national radio last year, so I don't expect much. But then Patrick goes on to refute science itself:

And by making that argument, the idea that advantages of a corked bat are overrated, and that it doesn't give the batter more distance is also squelched.

So because Sosa thinks cork helps, all the laws of physics are unconstitutional?

But none of these writers compared to the wit and wisdom of AP writer Steve Wilstein, who once again moved his profession down to the lowly depths plumbed by stock analysts, when he proclaimed that the incident besmirches all of baseball—nay, the entire sporting world:

From Little League to the Olympics, sports are supposed to build character and teach integrity. Yet at every level, there are players, parents, coaches and officials who would just as soon cheat and lie in pursuit of fame and fortune.

Excuse me while I try and keep down my between-meal snack.

OK, I'm good.

The incident also created a rift between major-league pitchers and batters-the batters defending Sosa, and the pitchers condemning all batters as damned corkers. Hall-of-Famer Joe Morgan admitted doing the exact same thing as Sosa once and I haven't seen Will demanding an asterisk on his plaque.

On the other side we have Terry Mulholland, whose primary purpose in MLB is apparently to give sage veteran quotes, thinks cork is to hitters what Canseco says steroids are to 80 percent of major-leaguers: "The rule about bats is that you can check one from a team and that's it. The other guys go scurrying to the locker room to get rid of their corked bats."

In all this mountain of opinion and "analysis," one fact was almost completely ignored: a corked bat doesn't help to hit home runs. In fact, according to the laws of physics, it makes a home run less likely. If you remember, the old theory, back when home-run sluggers used heavy bats, was that cork is springy, so it adds spring to the bat. In fact it doesn't-cork actually absorbs some of the energy the bat should be applying to the ball.

By the time that bunk was debunked, lighter bats were in vogue, so the new theory was that it made the bat "faster." Well, a corked bat is approximately one percent faster than a twist-top, but that speed is negated by the fact that the bat's inertia is decreased with its mass, again reducing the transferred energy. This has been calculated by actual scientists.

And even if corking a bat was of marginal aid, cheating is a part of sports. Not an "unfortunate" part of sports, an integral part of sports. If you were confident players wouldn't cheat, you wouldn't need umpires. Even little leagues have umpires. Ever play a friendly game of basketball and hedge on whether your foot was out of bounds? Cheater, cheater. Your legacy is tainted.

I'll leave the last word on the media frenzy to "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart:

It may just be me, but "Say It Ain't Sosa" is probably the laziest headline you can do...I admit the first 800 times I read it, it was okay..."

Jon, welcome to a world where unpaid interns write the headlines.

Groundhog Day: I dutifully watched Roger Clemens' latest attempt at 300, which unfortunately was the FOX Game of the Week, meaning Tim McCarver and his amazing bag of exclamation marks. But he couldn't be worse than the media at large, who had trumpeted Friday's Yankee win as "continuing their perfect record at Wrigley." You see, they played some World Series games there in the early 1900s. (Of course, the Cubbies now hold the advantage in the 21st century.)

This game was a great pitchers' duel between Clemens and Kerry Wood, but the most memorable moment was an unfortunate one as Wood and Hee Seop Choi collided while tracking an infield pop-up. It appeared that Wood's head caught Choi's chin, knocking him out, then causing Choi's head to hit the basepath hard when he fell. (Kids, this is why a pitcher allows his infielders to make the play on a pop-up.)

In one of the oddest fan-tribute moments I've seen, the assembled Wrigley masses gave Choi a standing ovation, then began chanting his name—as Choi was immobile on a stretcher, being loaded into an ambulance.

All the while, McCarver was narrating and giving his patented expert analysis: "The (ambulance) attendant must be in the back with Hee Seop, because I don't see anyone in the driver's seat." Every time the crew got silent, I pictured a FOX producer frantically motioning them to talk. (Note to McCarver: we neither need nor want to hear your internal monologue.)

Ironically, after the blow-by-blow, neither Buck nor McCarver bothered to mention Choi's replacement at first. (It was Eric Karros, who later ruined Clemens' bid by smashing a three-run homer—the irony of which was another casualty of the broadcast duo's verbal barrage).

After only 88 pitches and with a 1-0 lead in the seventh, Torre pulled Clemens due to what was later said to be an upper respiratory infection. McCarver puzzled over it at the time, but the reasoning was simple to me: it's a close game, but Clemens could very well lose (two runners were on). George Steinbrenner stands to make a lot more money if Clemens waits to get his win on Friday at Yankee Stadium. Put the bullpen in and if they hold off the Cubs, so be it, and if they don't, Steinbrenner's a happy man.

The greatest sight of the game was the number of Cub fans who stood and cheered Clemens as he walked off the field. Of course, they cheered even louder for Karros, then demanded a curtain call.

By the way, a programming note: next week's GOTW is pre-empted by the World Bowl. That should show you FOX's commitment to MLB.

FOX is running the expected ads for the All-Star Game, and they slightly modified my predicted tag line of "This time it's for real" to "This time it counts." Thank your lucky stars, no more non-counting All-Star Games with irrelevant stars, pointless pitching, moot homers and unnecessary run-saving catches. The ad cranks up the mirth factor at the very start, when a shot of the Angels winning the World Series is accompanied by the voice-over, "This is why home field advantage is everything!"

Funny, that sounded like neither McCarver nor Buck.

Note to ESPN: Whichever intern thought "More Ping, Less Bling" would make people want to watch the College World Series should be fired. Right after you start paying him.

about the author

Michael Cox is taking applications for Strikethree.com interns. Send your rap-inspired headline samples and a photo of you in a baseball cap with a neatly curved bill to mc@strikethree.com.