Published: June 16, 2009

Sammy Sosa, who joined with Mark McGwire in 1998 in a celebrated pursuit of baseball’s single-season home run record, is among the players who tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003, according to lawyers with knowledge of the drug-testing results from that year.


At a March 2005 hearing called by the House Government Reform Committee, Sammy Sosa denied using performance-enhancing drugs.

The disclosure that Sosa tested positive makes him the latest baseball star of the last two decades to be linked to performance-enhancers, a group that now includes McGwire, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Rafael Palmeiro.

Sosa, who is sixth on Major League Baseball’s career home run list and last played in 2007, had long been suspected of using performance-enhancing drugs but until now had never been publicly linked to a positive test.

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 2003 test that ensnared Sosa was the first such test conducted by Major League Baseball. Under guidelines agreed upon with the players union, the test results were to remain anonymous but would lead to testing with penalties the next year if more than 5 percent of the results were positive.

That is indeed what occurred. But for reasons never made completely clear, the test results were not destroyed by the players union and the 104 positives were subsequently seized by federal agents on the West Coast investigating matters related to the distribution of drugs to athletes.

The union immediately filed court papers alleging that the agents had illegally seized the tests, and over the past six years judges at various levels of the federal court system have been weighing whether the government can keep them. An 11-judge panel in California is preparing to rule in the case, but regardless of its verdict, the losing side is expected to appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

As the union feared, the names on the list have begun to emerge. In February, Sports Illustrated reported that Rodriguez was on the 2003 list, and Rodriguez subsequently acknowledged that he had used steroids for three years. Now, Sosa’s name has been disclosed.

The lawyers who had knowledge of Sosa’s inclusion on the 2003 list did not know the substance for which Sosa tested positive. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified as discussing material that is sealed by a court order.

A lawyer for Sosa, Jay Reisinger, declined comment, as did an official with Major League Baseball.

Sosa, who lives in the Dominican Republic, became a national figure with the Chicago Cubs in 1998, when he and McGwire, of the St. Louis Cardinals, engaged in a compelling race to overtake Roger Maris’s single-season home run record of 61. McGwire passed Maris first and ended up with 70 home runs. Sosa followed close behind with 66.

In the seasons that followed, Sosa exceeded 60 home runs on two more occasions. But he was fading as a player when he traveled to Washington in March 2005 to testify with Palmeiro and McGwire and others at a hearing called by the House Government Reform Committee to examine the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.

At the hearing, Sosa testified that “everything” he had heard “about steroids and human growth hormones is that they are bad for you, even lethal” and that he “would never put anything dangerous like that” in his body.

“To be clear,” he added, “I have never taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs. I have never injected myself or had anyone inject me with anything.”

During that hearing, McGwire, by then retired, repeatedly declined to answer questions about possible drug use, saying he was not there to talk about the past. His statements were widely viewed as an admission of guilt, and since then he has had little involvement with baseball except for privately serving as a hitting tutor for several major leaguers. To win election to the Hall of Fame, a player must be named on 75 percent of the ballots cast; McGwire has yet to be named on 25 percent of them.

At that same hearing, Palmeiro pointed his finger at committee members as he said: “I have never used steroids. Period.” Five months later, he was suspended for 10 games as a result of a positive steroids test.

The committee declined to ask the Justice Department to investigate him for perjury, in part because it felt it could not establish that Palmeiro was lying at the time he testified.

Unlike Palmeiro, Sosa testified after he had tested positive, not before, but it is not clear if the committee will want to pursue the matter.

The committee did refer Clemens to the Justice Department for investigation of perjury after he repeatedly denied using performance-enhancing drugs in a public hearing in 2008, and Clemens’s statements are now being studied by a federal grand jury.

Bonds, who set a single-season home run record of 73 just three years after McGwire hit 70, holds the career mark for home runs, with 762. He is also the target of legal proceedings: he is awaiting trial on charges that he lied to a federal grand jury in December 2003 when he testified that he never knowingly used performance-enhancers.

Like Sosa, Bonds and Clemens last played in 2007 and, at this point, also seem destined to appear on the 2013 Hall of Fame ballot. That fact, in itself, would seem to guarantee that the issue of drug use in baseball is likely to reverberate for years to com

people will say I am gloating but the fact is I knew Sammy was a big phony a long long time ago and so did a lot of the sports writers who did not personally like him because he was a big phony and I am not talking about steroids

NEW YORK (SI.com) -- Sammy Sosa, whose memorable home run race with Mark McGwire in 1998 is credited with helping revive baseball after the 1994 players' strike, tested positive for steroids in 2003, according to the New York Times. The Times cited "lawyers with knowledge of the drug-testing results from that year."

Baseball conducted the 2003 survey testing to determine if full-scale testing was necessary. There were 104 positive results. It is during this same survey testing that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids, which was reported by SI.com in February.

Sosa is just the latest Hall of Fame caliber player to be connected to steroids this season, following Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, who is currently serving a 50-game suspension for failing a drug test.

In March 2005, Sosa was among a handful of players, including McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro, who testified before Congress about steroid use in baseball. Sosa has denied ever using steroids or performance enhancing drugs during his 18-year career, which ended in 2007. Just a few weeks ago Sosa claimed he was innocent of suspicions that he used steroids and said he would "calmly wait" for his induction into the Hall of Fame.

This is not the first time Sosa has been involved in a cheating scandal. In 2003 he was found to have used a corked bat during a game. He finished his career with 609 home runs, which ranks sixth on the all-time homerun list. He will be eligible for the Hall of Fame beginning in 2013.

Why do you even care Fred, It;s all about the Capital that was made......

where is the glimmerbrain to comment on Corky telling fibs again

Kurt Streeter:
Reports of Sammy Sosa's name on positive-test list are no shocker
After leaks that the former slugger tested positive in 2003 for performance-enhancing drugs surface, it becomes clear baseball should release full list and show remorse.
June 17, 2009
Who among us was taken aback by the news that Sammy Sosa used performance-enhancing drugs to fuel his bulked-up career?

We'd already witnessed Sosa's flim-flam act before a congressional committee investigating steroids, his sudden inability to speak English after hard questions came.





We'd already had a chance to look with a long view at his career: skinny guy with promise morphs into mammoth-muscled home run machine, and then, like a changeling in a bad movie, morphs back into a virtual beanpole once the steroid rumors begin to swirl.

When Sosa recently announced his retirement, saying he'd done things the right way and would now wait patiently to enter the Hall of Fame, I wasn't alone in wondering whether he'd stumbled upon a new drug of choice.

And so it goes: according to the New York Times, Sosa's name reportedly is on the list of 104 major leaguers who came up dirty in a league-wide 2003 test. The longtime Cub now joins fellow fraud Alex Rodriguez as the first two unlucky losers whose names have been leaked from a test the players agreed to on condition of anonymity.

Of course, from the game's players union and its league headquarters, there's much gnashing of teeth about the fact confidential doesn't quite mean confidential in this particular case.

Sure enough, it'd be nice to know that secrets can be kept when they are promised.

But there's an even bigger picture here -- doping is steadily unraveling the trust of sane-minded fans.

To say nothing of its ungainly present, baseball's performance-enhanced past continues to cast a dark, tenacious shadow.

At this rate -- 102 names left, one leaked every few months -- baseball and its fans will have to endure days such as Tuesday for about 25 more years. Baseball, baseball fans, baseball players, can you stomach that?

It's time to shake things up. The game needs to adopt a stance that sits squarely, for once, on truth and reconciliation.

The game's players and owners should come together, releasing every name and detail available from the 2003 list. They should do it this season. Importantly, they should do it while showing real remorse instead of their typical menu of slippery misdirection, sliver truths and outright lies.

Think that's off-base? Tell that to former AL MVP Don Mattingly.

"I'd just go ahead -- if there's 103 guys, let's get 'em all out," Mattingly, now a Dodgers hitting instructor, said before Tuesday's game against Oakland. "We'll know who's who and go from there. We'll get it over with."

His was a voice of reason that not everyone shared. In the cramped clubhouse before the game began stood Nomar Garciaparra, who played briefly with Sosa in Chicago. He wouldn't offer specific thoughts on Sosa. He deflected questions about whether baseball should release all the names, saying he had doubts about the testing's fairness.

"I don't believe what I hear or read," he said. "So how can I believe this?"

What was that about slippery?

I figured I'd get more from the man who stood in the next-door locker: Jason Giambi. Snared in the doping trap since 2003 grand jury testimony in which he allegedly admitted steroid use was leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle, Giambi first trotted out the old Mark McGwire play: How about let's move forward?

Fair enough. So I asked if releasing the entire 2003 list would help baseball do just that, only in a real way.

"It could," Giambi said. "I don't know. I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it."

What was that about misdirection?

Look, as much as the players wish it weren't the case and hope we'll all soon be ground into not caring, the questions won't stop until baseball comes all the way clean.

It'll be hard and ugly and still only an initial step -- baseball still doesn't test for human growth hormone, after all. It'll be shocking and painful and scandalous. But it needs to happen.

The sooner all the names come out and shoes stop dropping, the sooner we can do what's best for baseball: we can begin to move on.

Now Sosa has joined the Gotcha Gang, based on Tuesday's New York Times report that he was among 104 players testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003.

Sosa always claimed to be different, that his only link (other than inflated biceps and power numbers) was his 2005 performance on Capitol Hill, in which he suddenly lost grasp of the English language and denied using steroids in a prepared statement that was full of holes and read by a hired hand.

As silly as Sosa looked at that St. Patrick's Day hearing, he came off better than McGwire, whose flimsy "not here to talk about the past" routine left much of a nation believing he was guilty.

McGwire, a subject along with Canseco of an early 1990s FBI investigation that led to dozens of convictions, three times has been rejected in Hall of Fame voting, receiving a quarter of the votes when he needed three-quarters. Sosa, one of six players to hit 600 homers, is eligible in 2013, the same year as Bonds and Roger Clemens.

If Sosa had any chance for a Cooperstown induction, Tuesday's development seriously hurt.

That the '03 testing was supposed to be anonymous didn't assist A-Rod's cause, and it'll be the same for Sosa, at least in the court of public opinion and, in all likelihood, among Hall of Fame voters.

In 1998's summer of love, in which McGwire and Sosa helped re-popularize the game after the 1994-95 strike, McGwire admitted using Androstenedione, legal then but not now, while Sosa said he got big and strong by taking Flintstones vitamins.

It was cute at the time. Not so much anymor

Sorry ciby you are all wet ...for what ever reasons Dominican players have the highest steroid usage in the Majors and the Minors win at all costs was a way of life .Believe me I was stunned when Clemens got nailed and all 104 names will be released I hope and you will see the percentages loaded to minorities especially Dominicans ....and Sammy was always a phony jerk steroids or not Stop looking for a racial conspiracy from first base on the grassy knoll

By Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY
The news of Sammy Sosa's positive drug test Tuesday was not met with anger or disbelief, but a yawn.

Did anyone who saw Sosa's body, or his prodigious home runs, really believe he was clean?

Did anyone who watched that magical home-run race in 1998 really believe that Sosa and Mark McGwire suddenly were that much better than everyone else in the game?

They cheated. Anyone covering that home run race knew they cheated. Yet, there simply was no proof.

In 1995, working for the Los Angeles Times, I wrote what is now being reported as the first major story on steroid use in baseball. But there was no firestorm. Really, no one really seemed to care.

If that were true I would be the first to be repelled by the idea But it is not true and only whiners wanting to play the victim card would dream that one up ...the facts speak for themselves instead of young men being pressured into an education they are pressured to excel at a dumbass sport for economic reasons MLB is to blame as much as the players and that includes that cheeseball Donald Fehr the head of the dumbass union .. .How many broken lives due to this outrageous competition will be ruined because they fall short Then the Dumbass Dominican Public dont even know who Junot Diaz is that is the disgrace