CHEATING IN BASEBALL Sosa not the first -- or the last -- to bend rules

Baseball has a long list of players who have tiptoed outside the rules.
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Now that he's back from his suspension, how could anybody believe the cork in Sammy Sosa's bat was anything more than an innocent mistake?
Look at Sosa's verve for the game, his hop, skip and jump home run trot, the breakneck dash to right field. Would he cheat? Nah.
And Gaylord Perry never loaded up a pitch with greasy kid stuff.
And that emery board that fell out of Joe Niekro's back pocket was nothing more than an example of his dedication to personal finger nail hygiene.
Not unprecedented
The truth of the matter is that baseball players occasionally tiptoe outside the rules. There was the thumbtack that pitcher Rick Honeycutt once taped to his finger. Unfortunately, Honeycutt absentmindedly wiped his hand across his forehead -- one of Perry's favorite ploys -- and nearly poked his eye out.
All manner of items have been found in the hollowed-out barrels of baseball bats, everything from the traditional cork that Sosa said he packed for batting practice only, to the more inventive rubber balls that came bounding out of Graig Nettles' bat one day.
Invariably, the perpetrator is astounded that anyone would believe the act was anything but an innocent mistake.
Tough guy John McGraw didn't particularly care what people thought. McGraw was an ingenious third baseman before becoming a brilliant manager. He liked to amuse himself by grabbing baserunners by the belt as they traveled past him on their way home. He delayed quite a few journeys that way. And he never denied he was doing it, either.
Pitching aid
Whitey Ford often wore his wedding ring when he pitched. It was a statement of dedication to his wife and -- some believe -- a handy tool for scuffing balls. Catcher Elston Howard would only smile benignly when others suggested he might be using a sharp belt buckle for the same purpose.
Occasionally, the truth comes out. Preacher Roe confessed after retiring that the spitball was an integral part of his pitching repertoire. Everybody thought Lew Burdette threw one, too. He denied that but acknowledged that he could show you how those other nasty fellows did it.
Sometimes, the rule-benders have help. When Albert Belle's bat raised some suspicions, it was confiscated by umpire Dave Phillips, who placed it in the umpires' locker room. Just in case some illegal substance had somehow made its way into Belle's bat, Cleveland teammate Jason Grimsley volunteered to help his buddy.
Grimsley crept through a crawl space above the umpires' room and dropped in like a cat burglar, intent on replacing the suspect bat. Unfortunately, he swapped it with a Paul Sorrento model, not the best cover-up ever devised.
Stealing signs
Then there is the matter of the 1951 pennant race and the spyglass.
The story goes that the New York Giants recovery from a 131/2-game deficit in August was aided and abetted by an intricate sign-stealing scheme that enabled them to overtake the Brooklyn Dodgers.
An operative was supposedly stationed in the center field clubhouse at the Polo Grounds, equipped with a war surplus spyglass to pick off signs. The information then was transmitted to the bullpen via a buzzer system and then relayed to the batter. All of this in the few seconds from the time the catcher flashed his sign to the time the pitcher delivered.
This was all supposed to explain how Bobby Thomson hit Ralph Branca's pitch into the left field stands for the game-winning home run in the ninth inning of the final pennant playoff game that season.
It does not, however, explain how Thomson's Giants were shut out 10-0 the day before in a game in which they could have clinched the pennant. Was the buzzer busted that day? And there was the matter of Thomson's homer against Branca the day before that in Ebbets Field, where the sign-stealing system was not in operation.
The whole thing sounds a little strange, sort of like Sosa's corked bat story.