FanHouse SammySosa

Welcome to The Dugout generation 3 - FanHouse Backporch edition. I'm happy to be working with the people in this section now, because it gives the strip a more obviously comedic, less newsbite-oriented environment within to prosper. It also gets me away from psychotic Yankees fans who think that every sentence they read is a serious, literal truth, and that one guy who googles "Mark McGwire" or whatever every three months and gets defensive. Also, I run an exponentially smaller chance of being called an idiot for my opinions when my comic is sandwiched between womens soccer updates and liveblogging of the World Checkers Championships.

Today's Dugout is after the jump. Warning: it will give you nightmares.

This morning, things just seemed different. I could tell. I had a little more spring in my step. The air tasted just a little more sweet. Little did I know that we'd be finding out Sammy Sosa had tested positive for banned substances in 2003! It was closure. Like figuring out the ending to a movie in the first five minutes, then having it last for 15 years.

Stories this obvious need an esoteric approach, and until the Roto Rush starts contemplating Heaven as a series of interlocking plane terminals and hotel suites, that's our job.

This morning's Dugout is after the jump.

At least three times, maybe more, I've asked Sammy Sosa if he ever has used steroids. Each time, he testily answered no, once stating that the only performance-enhancing substance he took was a "Flintstone vitamin." He had this goofy, cartoonish way about him that made you want to believe him, even though deep down, as someone who noticed that his head and upper body were swelled disproportionately to human reality, I knew he was as stone-cold guilty as any of them.

Now, at last, the other syringe seems to have fallen. In a development that will shock no one but the lying, denial-ridden Sosa himself, baseball's sixth-leading home run slugger of all-time reportedly is on the list of 104 players who tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003. Assuming the New York Times report is correct, it means Sosa becomes the latest in a staggeringly prominent line of fallen, cheating, juiced-up heroes who have turned the game's steroids debacle into pro sports' biggest scandal ever.

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After you got over the "utter shock" of learning that Sammy Sosa had reportedly tested positive for peformance-enhancing drugs, you might have been tempted to think: "Well, there goes his Hall of Fame chances."

This Hall of Fame voter is here to say: Not so fast.

Without getting into all of the details of my well-chronicled position that I'm going to vote based on performance, regardless of alleged or proven steroid use, I'd simply like to remind people that a lot of things can change with time.

The first time the name Sammy Sosa will appear on a Hall of Fame ballot will be December 2012. Provided he gets at least 5 percent of the vote each year, his name will stay on there until 2027. That's a long time.

Long suspected of using steroids, it appears there is finally a smoking gun linking former Cubs, White Sox, Orioles and Rangers slugger Sammy Sosa to performance-enhancing drugs.

Sosa, who is sixth on baseball's all-time home run list, was, along with Alex Rodriguez, one of the 104 players who tested positive for a banned substance in 2003, according to a report in the New York Times.

Sosa rose to national prominence in 1998 when he and Mark McGwire chased Roger Maris' single-season home run record. That chase is often credited with saving baseball after the 1994 player strike that resulted in the cancellation of the World Series, but in recent years Sosa, like most of the other cartoonish sluggers of the late 1990s and early 2000s, has fallen under suspicion of steroid use.

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Once one of the most beloved sports figures in Chicago, Sammy Sosa, will quietly announce his official retirement from baseball sometime in the near future. He was de facto retired anyway, having not played since 2007 and seeing minimal major league interest in his current services. This move simply means he'll quit trying to find work.

Sosa retires with numbers that would have made him a sure-fire first-ballot Hall of Famer in any previous or probably future generation. With players who excelled between the early 1990s and 2004, however, there is an obvious cloud of performance-enhancing drug suspicion hanging over them. On that subject, he just doesn't want to talk about it.

So another baseball hero got snared in the performance-enhancing web. Today, Manny Ramirez.

Tomorrow, Roger Clemens?

Oh yeah, never mind.

Alex Rodriguez? Sammy Sosa? Mark McGwire? Barry Bonds?

You really do need a scorecard to keep up with the falling stars. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of trying to remember who's on first and who's on Winstrol.

You're never going to get rid of the dirty people. The only way to clean up the game is to get rid of the rules that turn people into dirtbags.

OAKLAND -- Rangers hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo has a thing for fixer-uppers.

In 2007, the Rangers signed Sammy Sosa out of his one-year retirement and coaxed another 21 homers out of him.

In 2008, the Rangers got Milton Bradley after he had spent most of the previous year on the disabled list, and Bradley became an All-Star.

Now, the Rangers have Andruw Jones, a former MVP-caliber player who was run out of Los Angeles after a disastrous year. A month into the season, Jones seems to have rediscovered at least a part of his game.

Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a nod to what's ahead.

You Oughta Know ...
That Rangers second baseman Ian Kinsler had a pretty good night, rolling all sorts of rare feats into one ballgame. The headline is that he hit for the cycle, the first Rangers player to do that since Gary Matthews Jr. on Sept. 13, 2006.

He also had six hits, the first Rangers player to do that since Alfonso Soriano on May 8, 2004, but that was a 10-inning game. So Kinsler is the first in team history to have six knocks in a nine-inning game.

Now, the big one: Kinsler is the first player in major league history to have six hits in a game in which he hit for the cycle.

After Cliff Lee got rocked on Opening Day, it's hard to blame him for being in a bit of a bad mood afterward. You work hard all offseason to get yourself ready for the new season, and then after your team gives you the honor of taking the mound in the first game, you go out and give up seven runs in five innings as your team gets pasted. It's not much fun.

Still, that's no reason to go out and blame your teammates for your performance afterward, which is what a lot of people thought Lee did to Victor Martinez on Monday. Lee said that none of it would have happened if Martinez "lays out and is able to catch that ball."