No, some scheming pitcher didn't powder Sammy Sosa's face with a rosin bag, payback for all those home runs the slugger walloped during his career. Nor is Sosa paying tribute to the late Michael Jackson.

So just what is the cause of Sosa's dramatic change in complexion?

According to Sosa, it's nothing more than a facial cream he has been using to soften his skin.

``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,'' Sosa told ESPN Deportes.

The new-look Sosa first came to -- ahem -- light when he made an appearance last week at the Latin Grammys in Las Vegas.

Sosa didn't identify the cream but said it came from Europe.

``I spent many years, playing [in the field] at 1:20 p.m. in Chicago for 19 years, [and] you know that the skin gets damaged, and so what I did, now that I'm not playing, not getting so much sun, well I have a cream that I apply before going to sleep, and it lightens my face a bit,'' Sosa said during a Spanish-language interview on Univision from his Miami home.

Sosa hit 609 home runs during his major-league career, which ended in 2007.