SportsCenter had a s good segment on this morning in which Buck Showalter shows how one would cork a bat. It was something apparently in their archives that they dusted off after Sammy's bat-gate.

Showalter first removed a one to two inch plug from the end of the bat. He then filled it with shavings from a cork. He said that you can just wedge a cork in because any empty space creates an echo, which is a dead give-away. The shavings get pulverized as you use the bat and remove any possibility of an echo. He then took the tip of the plug he removed, checked that the grains matched up, and glued it shut. After weighing the bat he found that it was an ounce lighter (I think he said it was 32 oz. to begin with).

His last two comments I found interesting. First he said something like, "Therefore, you can hit like you have a heavier bat but swing like you have a lighter one," which is of course the point of using a foreign substance, but i thought he expressed it well.

And then he commented that you never go any further than a few inches into the end of the bat. He didn't elaborate any further. He just said it wasn't done. Well, looking at what was left of Sosa's bat, it is apparent that the cork went well up the handle as well.

That is apparently when the bat broke so easily and why the cork was so apparent when it did break. So, I am left to decide if Sammy is a bigger idiot for corking his bat, for using a corked bat against the Devil Rays (huh?), or for apparently corking it incorrectly, which led to its detection.

Because I liked it so much, I am including my ode to Sammy that I posted last night and that has already gotten lost in the detritus of my site:

Sosa Syllabic

There once was a bat full of cork,
That broke due to excessive torque.
500 homers he hit,
So he'll galdly admit,
"That's just my tuning fork"