In “Long Gone Summer,” the ESPN 30-for-30 that aired Sunday night, Sammy Sosa seemed to get as close as he ever has to admitting to taking performance enhancing drugs. Then, in an interview with David Kaplan for Sports Talk Live on Monday, Sosa walked back those comments.
He pinned the confusion on English being his second language.
During “Long Gone Summer,” in response to a question about Cubs ownership wanting Sosa to come clean on steroid use, the retired right-fielder said, “Why do they worry about me when pretty much everybody in that era did it?”
That era, of course, was dubbed the steroid era.
Sosa evidently saw fans on Twitter seize on his comments.
“That’s why when people tweet what I’m trying to mean, I’m not trying to mean anything,” Sosa told Kaplan. “Nobody, for example, played with me on my team.”
How would a stranger know how to interpret anything I may have implied, Sosa seemed to ask.
MLB
“What I’m trying to say is in the game of baseball, (everyone) has their own issues,” Sosa said. “So, I see Mark (McGwire) and I as the ones that get the blame. That was what I was trying to say.”
Ten years ago, McGwire admitted to using steroids during his baseball career. Sosa, on the other hand denied steroid use before congress in 2005. Then in 2018, Sosa insisted on E:60, “I never had a positive test in this country,” despite being among the 104 players who tested positive in MLB’s 2003 testing survey, according to a 2009 New York Times report.
If there was any thought that the newest ESPN documentary on the 1998 home run chase might inspire Sosa to change his stance, Sosa closed that door on Monday.
“I was the type of guy that I always wanted to be in the right lane,” he told Kaplan. “That’s why we fight, to let the whole world know that I never took anything.”