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What is it that makes the bat - or rather, a particular bat - so important to a baseball player? Players need a bat in their hands to get on base and to score runs, but that's only part of the fixation. New York Yankees' star Ichiro Suzuki, a two-time American League batting champ who, as of 2013, holds the Major League record for most hits in a season with 262, reportedly keeps his favorite bat in a silver case. Richie Ashburn, the slap-hitting 1950s Philadelphia Phillies outfielder, took to sleeping with his favorite bat in an effort to prolong a hitting streak. (The problem was not the different wood but the glue which apparently increased the speed of the ball off the bat). Makes zero sense to me as we continue our march towards letting Sammy Sosa back into our hearts.In the 1920s, Babe Ruth once got himself out of a slump by switching to a bat that was made of four pieces of wood glued together, which had a peculiar sideways grain-that is, until the baseball commissioner ruled that his new piece of equipment was illegal, which prompted a national controversy. So many more questions that no one wants to answer but you'll gladly alienate Sammy for actually helping the game. Just a bunch of electric buzzers and shady monitors and trash cans and dudes mainlining horse roids and Jeffrey Epstein's cover up. The last? Slammin Sammy Sosa according to our good friends at Wikipedia:ġ7 years later and there isn't a corked bat in sight. What you likely didn't know prior to this blog is that only six (6) players in MLB history have gotten busted. One thing you won't hear from critics though is how Sammy basically put an end to corking bats. You'd honestly think he fucking killed somebody with a corked bat by the way people talk about it. All critics have is the corked bat, and they love to wave it in my goddamn face like some kind of napoleon complex trophy. The reason they do that is because Sammy Sosa never failed a PED test meaning there's no objective evidence he ever cheated otherwise.
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Point is people love to use his corked bat "allegations" as a reason to tarnish Sammy's legacy.
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