PHOENIX -- Mark Grace brought his own corked bat to Arizona's game against the Chicago White Sox on Wednesday night.

Sammy Sosa's longtime teammate with the Chicago Cubs is having a lot of fun with the issue, and other major league players haven't shown much sympathy.

After batting practice Wednesday, Grace brought a bat back from the cage and proudly showed it to teammates and reporters in the Arizona Diamondbacks' dugout.

Atop the bat was a roll of tape around a long cork. The tip of the cork stuck out like the top of a champagne bottle.

"Hey guys," Grace said. "This is my bat. I didn't know it was corked, I didn't know it was corked."

He placed it in the bat rack and walked into the clubhouse as Arizona prepared to play the White Sox.

Grace, whose sense of humor and irreverence makes him one of the most popular and colorful players in the game, had this reaction Tuesday night to Sosa's woes:

"Had I known there were corked bats in the bat rack, I certainly would have been using them, too," Grace said. "I'd have probably hit 25 home runs. It's weird. Instead of hitting them 500 feet, he wants to hit them 550, I guess."

Phillies infielder Tyler Houston, who played with Sosa with the Cubs from 1996-99, said Sosa will be stigmatized because of the cork discovery.

"He's going to have a lot of problems," Houston told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "It's going to be hanging over him now. ... I'm not writing any books anytime soon. At least not while I'm still playing. There's lots of stuff I know that I'm not going to talk about. I'm not going to comment on that.

"What's funny is that the announcers [on TV and radio] are saying, 'I used one once.' It's just funny that everybody did it on accident one time."

David Wells, who is scheduled to pitch against the Cubs when the Yankees open a three-game series at Wrigley Field on Friday, uncorked a strong opinion on discipline for Sosa.

"He shouldn't play [in the series]," Wells said. "I know it's a big series and all that, but it doesn't mean [garbage]. He got caught. But if he does play, it won't make any difference to me."

Former Cubs pitcher Terry Mulholland, now a reliever with the Indians reliever, was asked the difference between a hitter using an illegal bat and a pitcher who doctors the ball.

"You can check a ball any time, from the first pitch to the last," the 40-year-old veteran told the Akron Beacon Journal. "But the rule about bats is that you can check one from a team and that's it. The other guys go scurrying to the locker room to get rid of their corked bats."

That hitters don't spread it around that they are corking their bats makes it almost impossible to know who's using illegal and who isn't.

"There's no way of knowing," Indians manager Eric Wedge told the Beacon Journal. "When I was a player, there was no way to know. But I don't believe it's something that's very prominent."

Said Indians shortstop Omar Vizquel, "We didn't know that Albert was doing it until we found out in the press and from the commissioner."

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.