Sammy Sosa's White Skin Has Twitter Freaking Out (Again)

When baseball legend Sammy Sosa was spotted in London, the former Chicago Cubs player looked lighter than ever.

Back in July, the 48-year-old made headlines for appearing with significantly whiter skin. Born in the Dominican Republic, Sosa had melanin-filled brown skin when he first arrived to the United States at the age of 21.

However, in the years that followed his baseball fame, Sosa became noticeably lighter, which caused some fans to question his appearance.

Fans were puzzled again by Sosa's new white skin tone on Tuesday after two photos of the Major League Baseball star surfaced. In both photos, including one where Sosa is doing the popular dab dance, the smiling former athlete could arguably be mistaken for a white man.

While some fans claimed Sosa's bleached appearance was because he hated his brown skin, others voiced they were worried about the former baseball player's mental state.

It was 2009 when Sosa first appeared with a lighter skin tone. However, Sosa explained his appearance resulted from using skin bleaching cream.

"It's a bleaching cream that I apply before going to bed and whitens my skin tone," Sosa told Univision's Primer Impacto show in 2009, adding that his use of the cream had nothing to do with him being ashamed of his previous honey-brown complexion. "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."

"What happened was that I had been using the cream for a long time and that, combined with the bright TV lights, made my face look whiter than it really is. I don't think I look like Michael Jackson," he noted.

Sosa did not explain why he uses the bleaching cream to soften his skin.

Others celebrities have come under fire for their alleged skin bleaching, including the aforementioned Jackson and his sister, La Toya Jackson, as well as Beyonce, Rihanna, Eva Longoria, Lil Kim and Jennifer Lopez—none of whom have actually acknowledged bleaching their skin in an effort to appear lighter.