Though the gatekeepers to the Baseball Hall of Fame seem to have turned a corner when it comes to considering the Steroid Era, one of the period's most prominent stars hasn't seen much benefit.

Sammy Sosa remains a fringe Cooperstown candidate despite his 609 career home runs, and if rumors of performance-enhancing drug use are what's keeping him out, he's here to say his detractors have it all wrong.

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Sosa gave an interview last week to former Chicago Cubs media relations staffer Chuck Wasserstrom, who now has his own blog. Among the topics raised in a wide-ranging conversation was Sosa's famed 1998 duel with Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire for home run supremacy. Asked about his memories of that summer, Sosa's answer veered unprompted into the subsequent PED discussion that has cast a retroactive pall over both men and the state of the game in the late 1990s.

“You’re never going to see that again in your life … never. You’re never going to see the show Mark and I put on … never. You’re not going to see that excitement again. We were the ones bringing more fans to the stadium … I feel proud of what I did. The only thing is, they can say whatever they want to say about me. First of all, I’m clean. They don’t have a case on me. I never failed a drug test. Never in my life. "But you know what – this is not my field anymore. I’d rather not be in the Hall of Fame and have a lot of money in my pocket than to be in the Hall of Fame and try to find money to pay my bills (laughing) … You saw me grow up, you saw how hard I was working. A lot of people say so many things, but I’m telling you — they have nothing on me. I’m not going to go out there begging, because they have no case. They had the Mitchell Report trying to find something, but they had nothing on Mr. Sosa.”

Asked a follow-up question about whether he believed he had been found guilty without any evidence being presented, this was Sosa's response:

“Chuck, it’s like Jesus Christ when he came to Jerusalem. Everybody thought Jesus Christ was a witch (laughing) — and he was our savior. So if they talk s— about Jesus Christ, what about me? Are you kidding me?”

While Hall of Fame vote totals for controversial contemporaries Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have been on the rise in recent years, making it a realistic possibility the pair could make it into Cooperstown, Sosa has polled between 6 and 9 percent each of the last four years — just above the 5 percent threshold necessary to stay on the ballot.

That lukewarm support can't be attributed solely to steroid rumors; Sosa's overall statistics beyond his home run total don't necessarily present an ironclad case, and the corked bat didn't help. But it appears unlikely he'll reach the level of support needed to be voted in by the writers or future veterans' committees.

Sosa's words to Wasserstrom make it sound like he's made his peace with that. The rest of the interview touches on his transition to being a businessman, his acrimonious departure from Chicago after the 2004 season, and the Cubs' run to the World Series title, among other topics.