Carim Abu Nabaa alleges that Sosa has not paid him a commission of $150,000 on a house sale, $43,000 for a luxury watch, and $10,000 for getting Reggaeton singer Don Omar to perform at Sosa’s 41st birthday party.

I’m not sure if Sosa will end up being one of those filthy rich athletes that goes bankrupt after his playing days are over.  It’s probably not a good sign that he is spending god knows how much on strange skin treatments, yet not paying his actual bills to legitimate creditors.  A $43,000 watch?  That watch better be made of all flawless diamonds for that price.  Still no news on how many humans he has “turned” since becoming Dracula.

As many of you have seen and heard, Sammy Sosa showed up at the Latin Grammys Person of the Year event recently looking a little different.  The Dominican Dracula, as I am now calling him, claims he has had some sort of treatment on his skin that makes it look lighter than before:

“He is going through a rejuvenation process for his skin,” Polihronis said. “Women have it all of the time. He was surprised he came out looking so white. I thought it was a body double. Part of (the photo appearance) is just the lighting.

“He is in the middle of doing a cleansing process to his skin. The picture is deceiving. He said, ‘If you saw me in person, you would be surprised. When you see me in person, it is not going to seem like the picture.”

Okay, I buy it.  There has also been some speculation that the steroids may have caused it.  I could buy that too.  No explanation has come out yet regarding the green contacts, though.

I would like to posit a few theories about the “new” Sammy.

Sosa Theory 1: When he was hit by a baseball in the head, he didn’t actually survive that.  A bat bit him and he was reborn as a vampire.  After realizing he couldn’t play during the day anymore, he was traded to a team that had significantly more night games and where he could play DH and not have to stand out in the sun.  The zombie theory is similar to this as well.

Sosa Theory 2: He’s an alien.  This theory was out there for Michael Jackson too, but is it so crazy?  His eyes magically changed colors and his skin has mysteriously gone back to its original pale alien color and you’re telling me the guy is human?  And even if he did take steroids, what he did with his bat in the 1990s was pretty out of this world (you see what I did there? I’m the king of the shitty double entendre).

Sosa Theory 3: Sammy Sosa is a robot.  He never was a real living being.  The Tribune company created him in 1996 and named him after some skinny light-hitting White Sox player who mysteriously disappeared after a brief stint in Texas.

Sosa Theory 4: Or the skin treatment thing I guess, but that theory is lame as hell.

Appearing on the “Waddle & Silvy” show on ESPN 1000, Sandberg was asked whether Sosa belongs in the Hall of Fame. “I don’t think so,” he said.

…Sandberg and Sosa were Cubs teammates from 1992 to ‘94 and again in ‘96 and ‘97.

“I was around Sammy for about five years before I retired, and there wasn’t anything going on then,” Sandberg said. “I did admire the hard work he put in. He was one of the first guys down to the batting cage, hitting extra. I figured he was working out hard in the offseason to get bigger. It was just happening throughout the game, that even myself was blinded by what was really happening, maybe starting in the ‘98 season.

Ryno has a point and as some of these steroid guys become eligible for the hall, we’ll find out if that is the general sentiment among sportswriters (I’m pretty sure it is, sportswriters are old and like all old people, they think their childhood was “pure” and modern times are shitty).

Another weird, weird, weird story about Sosa has surfaced as well.  Apparently he not only wanted to hit the ball better, but wanted people to know how strong he looked as well.

It turns out Sosa had his jerseys tapered around his arms for a period of years. A study of photo archives suggests Sosa’s jerseys were tailored with elastic inside the arms from 2002-2004, while he was playing with the Chicago Cubs.

Sosa’s custom ordering came to light thanks to pictures of an authentic Sosa jersey that is currently being auctioned off by Hunt Auctions. The jersey, advertised as being used by Sosa for the game he hit home run No. 470, was from the 2002 season.

CNBC confirmed through a source that Sosa did indeed ask for the elastic arm tapering for at least the 2002 season. The source said that he could not remember another player that asked for this specification.

“I don’t know why it would be tapered like that other than it being a purely cosmetic change so that people could see his muscles,” said David Hunt, president of Hunt Auctions. “There doesn’t seem to be any other reason why he’d do it.”

What a douchebag, right?  I mean am I the last one to realize that? (yes)  It’s funny how when some players do things like this, its funny and endearing, and when others do it its just plain douchy.  I still love the guy, but now that its a fact he did steroids, I like him less and less.  No matter how much of this crap comes out though, he did save baseball in Chicago and across the country.  Don’t forget.  Just laugh at him, but don’t forget.

“Get off my yard you goddamn kids!  I know you’re all hopped up on goofballs!  Where’s Zambrano?  He’s supposed to mow my lawn!”

I was unlike most fans.  While I suspected everyone and believed pretty much any wild allegations, be it hard test results or wild Canseco allegations, I still felt that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t everyone.  Maybe it was just a few bad apples, or a lot of bad apples.  But I never just assumed everyone did it.  My example of that was Sammy Sosa.  How foolish of me, right?  Well there was never any hard evidence of steroid use by Sosa beyond a few douchebag Sox and Cardinal fans claiming his head looked bigger.  As opposed to the allegations of some bigger stars, no steroid finger-pointing at Sosa seemed to stick, until now that is.

Ok I know you’re all thinking that I am naive, and you know what?  You’re right.  I think I just wanted to believe so bad that my personal hero from the juiced era of my childhood was somehow above the rest.  In fact, I was so willing to pull a blindfold over my eyes, that this piece is actually a replacement for a piece I had drafted up about how the Cubs should retire Sosa’s number.

So while the rest of America has accepted that their heroes were nothing but phonies for the last 20 years, and has perhaps come to grips with it, I am just now feeling it hit home.  This is the first big steroid scandal in Chicago, since no other notable players on either team have been implicated up to this point.  How do we as Chicago baseball fans deal with the steroid controversy, now that it is a part of our personal baseball history as well?

I guess I’m arriving to the discussion late, but what does this mean for the Hall of Fame?  The record books?  Will Sosa be remembered as the greatest baseball player in Chicago history, or just another cheat from the steroid era?  Only time will tell, but on a personal level the betrayal cuts deep and we can’t pretend it doesn’t exist any longer.