All week, friends have been sending me recent pictures of faded slugger Sammy Sosa with shockingly light skin. He looks "bleached." Sosa attributes his pale complexion to a cream he uses nightly. He claims his motivation is soft skin, not a racial makeover. He barely resembles the man I met in 2000, when we collaborated on his autobiography.
Back then, Sosa was an international celebrity on the heels of consecutive 60-home run seasons. His dark skin made him an iconic counterpoint to Mark McGwire, whom Sosa dueled for baseball's season home run record in 1998.
Some had accused the sports media of glorifying the white McGwire while relegating the black and Latino Sosa to sidekick status in '98. I subscribed to this sentiment – to the point of feeling animosity toward McGwire – until meeting Sosa and slowly realizing that Sosa was about Sosa.
The man now making weird headlines for his lighter skin is really only skin deep himself.
Sosa was once a shoeshine boy from the Dominican Republic who became a multimillionaire ill at ease with the responsibility of being an icon of color. I naïvely tried drawing Sosa out about McGwire for his book. Sosa has little education but is very calculating behind a magnetic smile.
He knew challenging Mc- Gwire's then-hallowed status would harm the business of Sammy Sosa. So he flicked away pesky questions like lint on his massive shoulders. He glossed over his impoverished youth and came to life only when swinging a bat or schmoozing with the upper class.
A favored photo at his mansion was of him locking arms with TV personality Barbara Walters, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Oscar de la Renta – the famed fashion designer from Sosa's country. Sosa coveted the company of rich Dominicans like de la Renta – who almost always had light skin.
While Americans are criticized for being "racist" about skin color, Sosa proves that color questions of identity are mangled in Latin America, too. In Mexico, homeland of my parents, calling someone an "Indio," or Indian, is an insult – a sad irony in the land of Aztecs.
In the largely Mexican American neighborhood of my youth, my light skin inspired taunts of "gringo" or "white boy" from classmates. The funny part: I could speak Spanish, and they couldn't.
This week, a colleague sent me Sosa's photo with the words "Whiter than Marcos?" It initially angered me, took me back to grade school and the taunts of people needing to feel superior. Isn't that how all of us get tripped up by this issue? Sosa is from a region where long-ago black, Latino players were barred from segregated big leagues because they were too dark – just as American blacks once were barred.
He was once a disciple of the late Roberto Clemente – the black, Latino baseball star of the 1960s and '70s. It's hard to know what Sosa is now except a modern celebrity driven to pose for cameras that paint him in a flattering light.
The pictures don't lie – the dude is lost.
Ironically, it was Michael Jackson – the late King of Pop and bleached skin – who sang, "I don't want to live my life being a color."
If only it were that easy.
Call The Bee's Marcos Bretón, (916) 321-1096.
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