Is Former Baseball Great Sammy Sosa Bleaching His Skin?

Anybody who was hanging at the Latin Grammy Awards over the weekend may have been surprised to see former baseball great Sammy Sosa. Not because he's an athlete at a music awards show, but because his skin tone seemed a bit lighter than what many folks remember. In photos from the night, Sosa seems to have brightened quite a bit from the last time we saw him. Is he bleaching his skin or is he suffering from vitiligo, a disorder that causes depigmentation of the skin? According to former Chicago Cubs employee and Sosa friend, Rebecca Polihronis, neither is the case. Polihronis told the Chicago Tribune:

He's not trying to be Michael Jackson. He is going through a rejuvenation process for his skin. Women have it all of the time. He was surprised he came out looking so white. I thought it was a body double. Part of (the photo appearance) is just the lighting. He is in the middle of doing a cleansing process to his skin. The picture is deceiving. He said, "If you saw me in person, you would be surprised. When you see me in person, it is not going to seem like the picture." People who saw him in person did not react the same way. He can't believe it is such a big deal.

The skin rejuvenation process is supposed to help make someone look younger, remove wrinkles and blemishes. That still doesn't explain Sosa's green eyes in the picture (he was born with brown eyes) and his now straightened hair. Is Sosa, who is Dominican, ashamed of his appearance? It wouldn't be a surprise since there are many Caribbean Latinos who are ashamed of their blackness. In the last U.S. census, almost 80 percent of Puerto Rico's 4 million residents checked off "white" as their race. It's not uncommon to find dark-skinned Latinos with the "white is right" mentality.

This could be the case with Sosa. Journalist Raquel Cepeda ran into the slugger a year ago at a film festival in the Dominican Republic and noticed the difference in his appearance.

"When he sauntered into the lobby of the venue in Santo Domingo, I almost caught a whiplash when I caught sight of him," Cepeda wrote on her blog, djalirancher.com. "There was something different about him. Sure, all people evolve as their circumstances change, but this was different. Sosa was a little lighter than when I saw him last. Maybe he was sick, I thought. He was wearing what looked like an ill-fitting zoot suit, and his hair was conked-permed straight. I swear he was wearing light contacts."

This was a year ago. Could this be the new, permanent Sammy Sosa that we're seeing?

"He has always been concerned with the way he looks," Polihronis said. "Probably just bad timing going to an awards show. He was doing a dermatological skin process after years and years [of playing baseball] in the sun. It did come out looking weird [in the picture'."