Rob Neyer weighs in on the Sosa controversy.

I have to admit, I'm a bit puzzled by all the hullabaloo surrounding Sammy Sosa, who's not anything like the first player to cork his bat, nor the last.

I think this is a big story, but I don't think it deserved a two-hour ESPN special, especially before all the facts came out. I didn't see the special; if someone did, can they tell me if they dug out old footage of Sosa breaking bats? My guess is that most legal bats break in two, with the handle in the player's hand and the barrel whizzing toward Roger Clemens. But corked bats, I bet tend to shatter or break lengthwise. I know ESPN and Fox and WGN have video of Sosa's bats breaking. Pull it out and let's see how bats over the last five years have broken.

Neyer goes on to repeat something on physics that I think is being misinterpreted:

What's more, Adair suggests that while lightening the bat will result in slightly greater bat speed, this effect is largely (completely?) balanced by the smaller amount of inertia, and thus the ball won't travel as far as it might otherwise have. Which is to say, corking the bat doesn't really make any difference.

One of my co-workers is a physicist, and we worked out an approximation of the increase in bat speed over lunch yesterday. The increase is about 3%. Yes, the ball might not travel as far, but remember, the decrease is only 3 feet over 400 feet. The increase in bat speed, however, could make a real difference in the ability to hit the ball square. And if Sosa hits a ball square, cork or not, it's probably going out of the park.

So for the moment, I'm staying cynical, especially after reading this in the Sun-Times:

Alderson was careful to point out that baseball security didn't reach the Cubs clubhouse to confiscate Sosa's bats until several innings after Sosa was ejected in the first inning. Could some illegal bats have been spirited away?

''That doesn't mean we have them all,'' Alderson said. ''But we are reasonably confident we have tested all the bats. It's conceivable, because we didn't have a physical presence in the clubhouse for several innings, that we do not have them all. But we are very confident we do.''

Here are the questions I would like answered:

• From video, is there any evidence that other broken bats were corked?


• Was Sosa corking one bat at a time, so if he got caught, he had an excuse?


• If it was a corked batting practice bat, why was it anywhere near his game bats? He says he's done this before in batting practice, what did he do differently this time?


• Who corked the bats? Let's go ask him how many he's corked for Sammy.

Sosa's story checks out so far. I think writers need to back off the angst and concentrate on figuring out if Sosa's story holds water.