Ken Davidoff's baseball insider

I attended Sammy Sosa's first day at Rangers spring training, back in February, and if you had bet me then on the likelihood of Sammy reaching the 600-homer mark, you could've taken me to the cleaners. Wow, did Sosa look bad taking batting practice, and he was coming off a year of retirement, on top of a horrid 2005 with the Orioles.

On Wednesday night, Sosa hit number 600, his 12th homer of the season, a highlight in an otherwise miserable Rangers campaign. Sammy has now authored one of the more memorable comebacks in recent baseball history. Good for him. Good theater for the rest of us.

But when Sosa finally does retire for good, how about his Hall of Fame candidacy?

His, I think, will be the most challenging case. Every logical instinct says that this guy, like his contemporary Mark McGwire, used performance-enhancing drugs. Yet we've got virtually nothing on him.

I don't think we need trial standards when it comes to determining a player's guilt on the steroids issue. I didn't vote for McGwire last year, because of 1) his refusal to answer the steroids question during the infamous Congressional hearings of March 17, 2005, when, a month earlier, not under oath, he categorically denied using PEDs; 2) the revelation by Congressman Tom Davis that the day before those hearings, McGwire offered to testify about his steroid usage in return for immunity, which Davis rejected; and 3) the New York Daily News report in March 2005 that detailed McGwire's steroids cocktail from his playing days.

For Barry Bonds, we have this. For Rafael Palmeiro, there's an actual positive drug test from 2005.

But what about Sammy? His Congressional testimony was pathetic, as he pretended to speak poor English, but nowhere as damning as McGwire's. There are no known positive tests. And not once has a journalist tracked down a potential supplier.

The corked bat in 2003 was bad, yet not bad enough to keep him out of Cooperstown. Corking your bat doesn't break any federal laws.

So for now, Sammy makes my ballot, because there's not enough hard evidence. Perhaps some day a skeleton will emerge from Sammy's closet. Not yet, however. The only thing keeping Sammy out of the Hall is the fact that he's still playing. Playing surprisingly well, for that matter.