Sammy Sosa’s Brown Skin No Longer Exists

On Nov. 12, Sammy Sosa will celebrate his 49th birthday. The Dominican-and-Haitian baseball legend is one of the greatest to ever play the sport, but even with all of the accolades he’s received over his career, it seems as though Sosa has issues when it comes to his skin color.

Sosa, who made his mark on baseball with the Chicago Cubs, was recently seen dabbing in the streets of London. It wasn’t his dab that got folks talking, but the drastic difference in his complexion … once again. Earlier this year, social media took notice of Sosa’s ever changing face:

The pink hue reminded many people of Pepto-Bismol, and although he’s not as pink any more, people are still wondering what’s going on:

It doesn’t take a genius to recognize the effects of skin bleaching, and in an interview with Univision in 2009, he admitted to using skin-lightening products:

“It’s a bleaching cream that I apply before going to bed and whitens my skin some,” Sosa said. “It’s a cream that I have, that I use to soften [my skin], but has bleached me some. I’m not a racist; I live my life happily.”

A regular person probably would have stopped using the cream after they noticed a drastic color change, but apparently, Sosa is really trying to turn himself into something other than his previously brown self. Currently there are 2,217 photos of Sosa in Getty Images. And if you look at the photos from the last couple of years, you can watch Sosa turn into a “white” man with a couple of page clicks.

Was life that bad for Sosa as a brown-skinned Dominican? One has to wonder if he hoped that his kids would come out lighter when he married a white Latina. But Sosa’s six children are various shades of brown—just look at Sammy Sosa Jr.:

Does he tell his children to love their brown skin? Or recommend bleaching products to them, too? It’s sad that Sosa really hated his skin so much that he took drastic measures to get rid of the brown skin he was born with. Maybe one day he’ll look at old photos of himself and realize that his formerly brown self didn’t need to be lightened, but chances are that won’t happen.

They say beauty is skin-deep, but self-hate is even deeper.