Time for the cries demanding immediate justice to yield to mercy.

Sammy Sosa is not a criminal or an incorrigible cheater. His place in baseball history need not be marked with an asterisk or question mark. There’s no reason for his approval rating with the American public to dip to the level of Saddam Hussein or Barry Bonds.

Within minutes of Sosa’s popping the cork and unwittingly proposing a toast to shortcuts and corner-cutting Tuesday night, the judge and jury on the other end of your television set had him tried and convicted for assault on the fiber of baseball.

In retrospect, they sound ridiculous.

Between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. that night, every prodigious poke in Sosa’s career was held in contempt. Pundits stirred him into the same frying pan as Pete Rose and Joe Jackson. Somehow, given little more than a splintered Louisville Slugger, a few commentators extrapolated that evidence and dredged up ongoing questions about steroids that were loosely related, at best.

In response, Sosa did the most intelligent thing anyone accused of a gross evil should.

He opened the book of his life.

Take my bats, please. X-ray them until your skin takes on such a glow that you don’t need a flashlight for six months.

Check the ones exhibited in Cooperstown, too. Scan ’em. Cut ’em open. Measure each one for excessive pine tar abuse.

Maybe Sosa wasn’t given a choice in those matters, but he didn’t stand in Major League Baseball’s way, either. He did everything but offer the commissioner’s office a set of references.

There’s no better damage control than the truth, and the truth about Sosa is that every other device in his repertoire – including the other 76 bats on his current shelf and a smattering of the tools used in his 66-homer season of 1998 – passed the physical.

While that’s no reason to dismiss Sosa’s case completely from the court of public opinion, it darned sure means the charge drops from a felony to the equivalent of a traffic ticket.

If nothing else, the test results support Sosa’s outlandish claim that he unwittingly pulled a batting practice bat – the one piece of embellished lumber in his rack – prior to his fateful at-bat against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

It was a mistake.

A foolish, careless, juvenile mistake, and one not easily justified by Sosa’s silly contention that he used the bat in batting practice to put a smile on children’s faces. But a mistake nonetheless.

Baseball stands as a frighteningly easy target these days with its inflated salaries and power numbers and diminished television ratings.

Think it’s the only professional sport, though, where players creatively interpret the rulebook in an effort to gain an advantage? Keep thinking.

Offensive linemen cheat on every play in football. It’s called “holding.”

You can bet that Dr. James Naismith does a 180-degree tuck in his grave every time an NBA guard drives the lane for a deuce, facing no consequences for a traveling violation so obvious that a fourth-grader could whistle it.

Maybe NASCAR isn’t your bag, but accept this blanket statement as gospel: Everybody cheats. Those cited in the transactions wire for $10,000 fines are either the unfortunate souls who were caught or the ones found so far outside the rules that tolerance or a “stern warning” would ring hollow.

Experience shows us that even boxing, cycling and figure skating are capable of front-page scandal.

For whatever reason, baseball is viewed differently; as being “above” the fray. Perhaps it’s because the only people still consistently watching are the ones who have romanticized the game to death.

Time for all to dismount the high horse.

Sammy Sosa got caught. After the obligatory appeal, he’ll serve his eight-game suspension and his time in some fans’ doghouse with the class we’ve come to expect.

He also remains the best ambassador baseball has at the moment. The embattled game would be wise not to kill its wounded.

Kalle Oakes is sports editor. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].