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Home » Testosterone » Sportswriter Rick Reilly recalls the time he called Sammy Sosa on his bluff – South Bend Tribune

Sammy Sosas Long Gone Summer was a seemingly endless joyride.

But Sosas later years in Chicago featured a corked bat, a smashed boombox, a premature walk-out and a memorable incident with Rick Reilly, then the back-page Life of Reilly columnist for Sports Illustrated.

Reilly had read Sosas remark that hed be first in line for steroid testing once the players union approved it.

He said: I want to be the first to be tested. I want to show everybody Im clean, Reilly remembered. I was dumb enough to think he might go, like he was really serious.

Before a June 2002 game at Wrigley Field, Reilly approached Sosa for an interview. After asking some tame questions, Reilly pulled out a 3-by-5-inch index card and told him: I found a place nearby where you can go and get tested. Youll get the results in a week.

Foam was coming out of his mouth, Reilly recalled in a phone interview. His eyes got the size of small dinner plates and he started screaming at me in Spanish and English. In Spanish it was something about my mother. In English it was: You think youre my father?

He said: Youre gonna get me in trouble! Well, what trouble could there be if youre clean? That really (ticked) him off. He said: Youre trying to get me thrown out of the players union.

Sosa had a point. Going rogue would not have earned him plaudits in the clubhouse.

He screamed at me: I look like this because I work out three times a day in the offseason, Reilly said. I wanted to say: Yeah, thats the beauty of steroids. Steroids themselves dont make you big; they give you the energy and the drive and the testosterone to work out three times a day. ...

Reilly, an 11-time National Sportswriter of the Year, wrote in his SI column then: The funny thing is, I doubt Sosa is on steroids. He has never missed more than six games in any of the last five seasons But plenty of people wonder: Heres a guy who went nine years without ever hitting more than 40 home runs. In the last four seasons hes hit 66, 63, 50 and 64. Heres a guy who was once a skinny, 165-pound, jet-footed Texas Ranger. Now hes a bulky, 230-pound Mr. Olympus.

Looking back, Reilly said, hes surprised he wrote that.

Now we know he was about as clean as a mafia accountant, he said.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Sportswriter Rick Reilly recalls the time he called Sammy Sosa on his bluff - South Bend Tribune

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Home » Testosterone » Sportswriter Rick Reilly recalls the time he called Sammy Sosa on his bluff – South Bend Tribune