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What: “Sammy Sosa: Making History” videotape

Price: $12.98

Sammy Sosa didn’t make baseball’s all-century team, as did Ken Griffey Jr. and Mark McGwire, but when it comes to feel-good stories, Sosa’s is definitely all-century.

After watching this 55-minute tape, the obvious question is, does this guy have any flaws? He really seems too good to be true.

Of fans, he says, “Those people up there pay our salary. It doesn’t cost you money to go up there and spend some time with those people.”

Of reporters, he says he understands they have a job to do and that by talking to them he can spread good will. “I want other people to feel good too.”

Of his mother, he says, “I wish you could be in my heart to feel how I feel every time I talk about my mother.”

He also talks lovingly of his wife and four children and his two sisters and three brothers.

The producers of this tape, VisionQuest Communications of Dallas, specialize in products that emphasize positive values. Sosa could be the company’s poster boy.

The producers rely a little too much on talking heads. There are too many tributes, particularly in the beginning. But once the viewer is taken back to Sosa’s roots in San Pedro de Marcoris, Dominican Republic, Sosa’s fascinating story is well told.

Sosa was 7 when his father died and he and his brothers had to wash cars, pick fruit and shine shoes to earn 50 cents to a dollar a day. The tape traces Sosa through his youth in the Dominican to his signing with the Texas Rangers in 1985 when he was 16. There is a look at the early days of his career and trades that took him first to the Chicago White Sox and then the Cubs. The tape also shows the steps he took to go from a good player to a superstar who hit 66 home runs in 1998 and 63 last season.

There is a visit to the plaza he built in his hometown. Among the stores there are a beauty salon he gave to one sister and a boutique he gave to the other. There also is a visit to the home he gave his mother.

The tape, in video stores since mid-November, is available in English or Spanish. Fox’s James Brown narrates the English version; Jose Mota, son of Manny, the Spanish version. Typically, portions of the proceeds go to Sammy’s foundation for relief efforts in his homeland.

Cub announcer Chip Caray says in the tape that of all the things he’s seen Sosa do, he was most impressed the day of a big game in Houston in 1998, when Sosa helped load relief supplies for victims of Hurricane George in the Dominican.