Foreign Substance in Tribune Reporting: Mediocrity

We've been waiting for years for the Tribune's big scoop on Sammy Sosa, a stunning investigative splash that explains how Sosa went from skinny mediocre player to incredible hulk and back again, the kind of reporting that landed a couple of San Francisco Chronicle reporters in jail for protecting their sources. So far the Tribune's been pretty easy on former Tribune employee Sammy Sosa. But today they gave it their best shot. Are you ready? Hold on to your hats. From Fred Mitchell:

Several sources close to the Cubs have told me Sosa was not the only Cubs player who used a corked bat, at least in 2003. On the night Sosa's bat exploded for all to see, officials from Major League Baseball notified the Cubs organization during the game that they had one hour to get rid of any other corked bats of Sosa's in the team's clubhouse before they came down to inspect his arsenal of bats. More than 70 marked corked bats then were extricated quickly by Cubs personnel from the clubhouse, about a third of them belonging to other players.

It wasn't quite the big scoop we were looking for, but at least it was news... in 2003. Where were Fred's sources back when the story was hot, back when cork was the most-discussed foreign substance? Who were the other players involved? What else were they injecting, besides cork, and where were they injecting it? This is apparently the best the Tribune can do, at least when it comes to negative news about the company team. Too little, too late, and even then, buried in Mitchell's cute-items column.