An ACB Tribute to One of the Greatest Cubs of All-Time

I was fifteen during the summer of 98, and was barely a baseball fan at the time, let alone a Cubs fan. My family is full of Cubs fans but as I grew up in the DC area and didn't have cable for most of my childhood, my baseball fandom was pretty much confined to watching the playoffs, so I didn't see much of the Cubs. Sosa changed all of that for me - the summer of 98 was when I became a fan of baseball on my own terms. Sosa just had fun playing baseball, and he shared his joy for playing baseball with everyone who watched him. Despite the fact that McGwire "˜won' the HR chase, Sammy really seemed to be the player who kept it going and kept it friendly. He was right there to greet McGwire when he broke the record, and I still couldn't believe that the record was broken with both men on the field - it's probably still the best baseball moment I've ever witnessed.

My other favorite moment was years later, during the 2003 playoffs. My future wife and I had just moved in together and were still getting used to each others' habits/hobbies/etc. She seemed kind of unsure about this whole Cubs thing, though she did enjoy watching games with me. Just before the playoffs, mlb introduced their "I live for this" ad campaign, and one of the ads starred Sosa (sadly I can't seem to find it online anywhere). He gushed (in only the way that Sosa can) about how lucky he was to be playing baseball, and to play at Wrigley field. My wife "˜got it' why everyone was such a huge fan. She became a huge fan of Sosa (and later, Kenny Lofton and Eric Karros, among other Cubs) and dove right into the 2003 playoffs with me. As awful as the outcome ended up being, it was one of the best experiences of my lifetime, and I'm glad I got to share it with her.

Some audio clips from 98
Sosa HR montage
Sosa addresses the fans

There's an old Jacobite ode that goes like this:

'Sé mo laoch, mo Ghile Mear,
'Sé mo Chaesar, Ghile Mear,
Suan ná séan ní bhfuaireas féin
Ó chuaigh i gcéin mo Ghile Mear.

Roughly translated, it means:

He's our champion, our dashing Hero
He's our Caesar, our dashing Hero
We've found neither peace nor fortune
Since our dashing Hero went away.

Sammy is retiring today.  It will be the end of one of the saddest chapters in Cubs history, a chapter filled with Rick Reilly ambushes, TribCo hatchet jobs, corked bats, two-faced fans, and the pallor of PEDs.  But it's also a chapter filled with some of the best times we've seen as Cubs fans.  It's a chapter about the best Cub player I've ever seen.Maybe someday, the Cubs will wise up and have Sammy back, and he'll sprint out into RF one last time, and say the goodbye he was never allowed to say.  Some say Sammy wouldn't do it, but I think he would.

You see, Sammy, like Bonnie Prince Charlie (the real "Mo Ghile Mear"), always had a marvelous sense of occasion.

Everything about Sammy was huge, larger than life. The moonshot homeruns, the bulging biceps, the hop, the sprint, the poverty relief flights he made nearly ever summer to his native Dominican Republic, Sammy always did it big.  But the thing I'll always remember about Sammy was the quietest HR trot he ever took

It was September 27, 2001.  Just 16 days after the tragedy of September 11, and nine days after baseball resumed.  For some, it was far too soon to begin to play games; for others it was a welcome return to normalcy, a brief respite from the twin specters of death and hate that hung over us.  Most just didn't know what to do.

But Sammy knew exactly how to handle it.

As the Cubs took the field to begin the game, Sosa did his customary sprint into right, only this time, instead of a few baseballs, Sosa carried a small American flag.  And as the right-field bleachers sounded his arrival, Sammy smiled up at them and held out his little flag as he jogged along the wall.

In the bottom of that same inning, with two outs and no one on, Sammy sent a Shane Reynolds pitch in the right-center field bleachers for his 59th HR of the season.  As the frustration and pain of the past two weeks exploded into a massive cheer, Billy Williams handed something to Sammy as he round first base.

And there it was.  Fluttering in Sammy's right hand was that little American flag.

In the grand scheme of things, it was only a small gesture.  But in that place, on that night, it was the perfect gesture.

I don't go in, at all, for jingoism and sunny-day patriotism.  In fact, some of my work is devoted to deconstructing the underpinnings of those things.  However, what Sammy did that night wasn't some sort of puffed-up xenophobia.  It wasn't "my country, right or wrong," nor was it "AMERIKUH! FUCK YEAH!"  It was instead a simple, subtle way of saying,"I feel your pain." As Sammy said after the game,"What happened in New York affected everybody, the whole world." It was that rare moment when Superman takes off his cape, when the massive superstar takes a chance, lowers the facade, becomes a regular person again, if only for a brief moment.

2001 was Sammy's swan song.  It was his finest season, the peak of an amazing career that looked improbable at the start, and he would never again be the same player.  In 2002, he began a steady decline, and by 2004 Sammy would be sounding a lot of sour notes with the Wrigley faithful.

But for one night in September, he was pitch-perfect.

When Mercurial Outfielder first suggested doing a series of posts about our favorite memories of Sammy Sosa, like many of you I immediately thought about the home runs.  I'm going to be doing more than one of these today and I think it's important we remember that Sammy Sosa was a 5-tool player when he was young.  He was the young superstar talent that this team had really needed.  And in Sammy's first full season with the Cubs in 1993 he delivered.  He only played in 67 games in his first season with the Cubs the year before.  He played in 159 in 1993.

The first thing I remembered besides the home runs was the game on July 2, 1993 at Colorado in which Sammy went 6-6.  5 of those hits were singles and the other a double.  Part of the reason I remembered this game was that Sosa had 3 stolen bases.

Sosa didn't have a great 1993.  He hit only .261/.309/.485.  The slugging was very good.  Not so much for the OBP.  Sosa was 24 years old and despite the low OBP he hit 33 home runs, 25 doubles, and 5 triples.  He had 290 total bases.  He also stole 36 bases that year.  It was one of only 3 years in which he stole 30 bags or more.

In that July 2 game, Sosa also stole 3 bases.  The Cubs scored 11 runs on 21 hits that game so there was offense all over.  Sandberg had 3 hits.  Grace added a couple as did Steve Buechele and Steve Lake added 3 hits of his own.  But 6-6?  That's something else.  That's a game to remember and I always have.

In the 1st inning, Sosa hit a groundball double to LF driving in Mark Grace.  He promptly stole 3rd.  In the 3rd inning Sosa hit a line drive single to LF.  Sosa singled and stole a base in the 5th and 6th innings.  Sosa then singled again in the 7th and 9th innings (caught stealing in the 9th).

Later that year at home against the Dodgers in late September, Sosa went 2-3 with a walk and a hit by pitch.  He stole 4 bases that game.  Sosa was hit by a pitch in the 4th inning and stole 2nd base.  He walked in the 5th and stole 2nd.  He singled in the 7th and stole 2nd.  And in the 8th he singled and stole 2nd.

At this time of Sosa's career he wasn't only a threat at the plate, but also on the bases.  He was a complete player.  It was a lot of fun to watch and I'm thankful I got to see it.

Cubs fans were given so many great moments by Sammy Sosa that it's hard to single out just one.  He had such an incredible string of games in June of 1998 that it was almost surprising when he went to the plate and didn't hit a home run.  Every at bat was an event not to be missed.  He was a true force of nature at the plate.  I remember watching in disbelief and thinking that it was perhaps the most awesome stretch of play that I would ever witness by a Cub.  Sammy's 20 home run month was the pinnacle of the greatest season I've ever seen produced by a Cubs player.  Over ten years later, I can say with confidence that the Cubs winning it all would be the only thing that could top it.  Let's just say, I don't expect to see it surpassed any time soon.

With the announcement of his retirement, I thought not only of his great achievements on the field but of a story I heard about Sammy as a minor leaguer.  Sammy was in the Rangers' minor league system with Juan Gonzalez and they went to buy groceries.  Neither one knew much English and they ended up buying canned cat food thinking that the picture of the meat on the outside of the can looked tasty.  The company apparently made their product appear good enough to eat.  Sammy claimed that they ate it and that it wasn't too bad although I don't remember him having any Fancy Feast endorsement deals.  It made me wonder what it must have been like for him to come to a place so foreign to him that he wasn't even sure what he should eat.  To have come from the streets of San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic, and to rise to the heights of stardom that he did is a true success story.  Only in America.

Berselius touched on this in his memory, but I think it deserves to be highlighted.  It is my favorite memory of not just Sammy Sosa, but the game of baseball itself.  You've seen it a thousand times.  It wasn't even something Sammy Sosa did to help the Cubs win a game.  In fact, it was after something that helped the opposing team.

Let's make one thing very clear: people can rewrite history all they wish, but the 1998 home run race was one of the best things that ever happened to the game It was fun.  It was exciting.  It was thrilling.  It was awesome.  It was unbelievable.  It was a million other things, and despite cries to the contrary, it was and will always be a positive sequence of events for this game.  I don't want to get into how Sosa and McGuire saved baseball even though I could.  I don't want to preach about how important those two men were to this game at a time they were needed even though I could.  I don't want to talk about how Sosa energized a lazy and content fan base even though I could.  I just want to talk about one moment in one game between two teams and two people on one September night.

On September 8, 1998 Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris' single season home run record while playing at home against the Cubs.  How much more perfect could it be?  The same two men that captivated millions and millions of fans across the world would be on the same field when one of them broke the record.  It's amazing enough that these two could share the moment together, but the celebration was something we had never seen and have not seen since.  Two men.  Two baseball players.  One played for the Cubs and the other for the Cardinals.  The Cubs and Cardinals are one of the oldest and best rivalries in sports and on that night in St. Louis a player from each team celebrated the accomplishments of the other.  While it happened after McGwire broke the record, there is no doubt that McGwire was as happy for Sosa as he was for himself.  The two players from opposing teams celebrated on the field together during an historic moment.  That celebration was something special.

It was only a brief moment, but the 1998 season can be summed up with just one picture.

Anybody who knows anything about baseball will know exactly what happened and when it happened (at least the year).  There are few moments in sports where that is true.  This was the greatest moment of baseball that I have ever seen.  Nobody cared at that moment that the Yankees were on their way to becoming the first team to win 200 games in the regular season.  Nobody cared that the year before the Marlins became the first team in baseball to own the distinction of not being the best team in baseball, but calling themselves the best team in baseball (that was very confusing).  I've been watching this game since the early 80s.  I've watched the Sandberg game several times.  I'll always remember it.  I watched the "˜84 team do something that no Cubs team in 40 years had done.  I watched the "˜89 team.  I've seen all the seasons the Cubs lost.  I've watched Kerry Wood's 20-strikeout games numerous times.  I've watched Carlos Zambrano's no-hitter twice and have watched the highlights a hundred more.  None of them were even close to that September night.  We waited all season and watched and hoped for something like that to happen.  Both players rooted for the other despite being on opposing teams.  The two players from entirely different background became friends over something as meaningless as hitting a baseball.  The bond they shared that spring, summer, and fall became something that not just the United States shared with them, but so did the Dominican Republic, all of Latin America and all of the Hispanic speaking countries around the world.

In many ways America's national pastime had become much of the world's pastime.  That moment between Sosa and McGwire says it all.  Teams didn't matter.  Ethnicity didn't matter.  Background didn't matter.  The only thing that mattered, the only thing that brought them together, the only thing that brought so many fans together was something as silly as two grown men hitting baseballs.  That's something to remember.

In the summer of 2001 I moved from Rogers Park to an apartment in Lakeview that was probably three quarters of a mile from Wrigley.  I remember being on the back porch shortly after we moved in and hearing a loud roar.  My roommate and I looked at each other wondering what that sound could possibly be.  Then it dawned on me, the Cubs were playing.  It seemed so cool to know that I could hear the crowd from my apartment.  I quickly realized, though, that there were two different levels of the sound.  If most Cubs made a good play, I had to have the TV turned down and the windows open to hear the sound.  When Sammy hit another one of his homers, though, the sound made its way through the windows.  He just got the crowd so jacked up.

Like most of the country, my life was disrupted on 9/11.  I had a personal connection.  My uncle Mike was on the 101st floor of the first tower.  I didn't see a lot of Mike when I was growing up, but I always had a connection to him that I never had with any of my other aunts or uncles.  He was the cool uncle who was always joking about going out with me to find a nice set of triplets, two for him and one for me.  He had lived a tumultuous life, but by the time I got to know him, nothing seemed to bother him.  He loved life and he made everyone around him smile.

Over the next couple weeks, the country tried to heal its wounds and return to some sense of normalcy.  I went back to Iowa for a memorial service for Mike and tried to do the same when I got back to Chicago.  One way I tried to do that was to attend the first post 9/11 game at Wrigley.  I am not a very open person emotionally, so I had bottled things up to the point that I shed some tears during the National Anthem.  In the bottom of the first, Sammy came out to a roaring crowd and crushed the ball.  He did his hop and stopped at first base to take a small American flag from the first base coach.  I had heard that crowd roar for Sammy so many times on TV, from my apartment, and in person at games.  This was too much for me.  I watched Sammy circle the bases and collapsed in my seat and sobbed.  I stayed for the rest of the game, watched the Cubs come up short in a ninth inning rally against Billy Wagner and had a foul ball graze across my outstretched fingertips.  Some of the details may be mistaken, but that's my memory and I don't want to look up the game to change what is special to me.  Anyways, that may not be a great memory of Sammy, but whenever I think of him, that always comes to my mind.

Sammy Sosa, ahh where to begin? I've made no secret through my years in the Cub blogosphere that Sammy Sosa is my favorite Cubs player. That has not changed, and truthfully it would take an awfully great player to make that change. I don't feel in anyway that Sammy was any sort of perfect ballplayer. He had plenty of flaws, and you can find many who will list those flaws. For my memory, his strengths as a ballplayer outshine his flaws. One of the things that probably sounds stupid, is I always liked that he was a ballplayer that enjoyed playing the game. He flashed that smile on the field and genuinely seemed to enjoy playing the game. It was refreshing to see a guy enjoy himself in the fishbowl that MLB is.

I have too many memories of Sammy to list just one, so below I have listed several of my favorite Sosa memories:

I actually started rooting for Sammy when he was on the White Sox:

April 9, 1990"” Sitting in the last row of the Upper Dack of Old Sox park to watch the last Opening Day at old Comiskey a couple friends of mine went on and on about Oklahoma State product and Sox rookie Robin Ventura. Just talking shit, I turned to them and said the best rookie on the White Sox team is Sammy Sosa. (truthfully I knew nothing about Sosa). But from that moment on I was a fan of Sammy.

May 5, 1996"”against the Mets on Cinco de Mayo Sammy hits a 2 run homer in the first. Sammy wins it in the bottom of the ninth with a tape measure job of Pete Harnisch that breaks a window in a garden apartment across Waveland Ave. The tecate tasted real good that afternoon and evening.

June 15, 1998 "”in June 1998 Sammy was as hot as any player ever. He hit twenty homeruns in the month.. On a very comfortable Monday night against the Milwaukee Brewers Sammy hit 3 homeruns in a 6-5 Cubs win. Sammy and the Cubs were heading for a very special season.

July 27 & 28, 1998"”Sammy was now on the map as a major league slugger. But he was yet to hit a grand slam. He hit's his first career grandslam in the 8th inning of the game on July 27th against Alan Embree. For good measure he does it in the fifth inning of the game on the 28th. It was incredible.

September 13, 1998"”The Cubs and Brewers completed a crazy three game series with Sammy Sosa hitting 2 homeruns (totaling 4 in the series). Sammt's two run job in the bottom of the ninth tied the ballgame and gave him 62 in the homerun race with Big Mac.

September 27, 2001"”2001 was actually Sammy's best season. On September 27, 2009 the Cubs returned home for the first time since September 11th. Sammy hit his 59th homerun of the season and waved a small American flag as he rounded the bases. It was a fantastic moment in a time when we were all shaken. snley & Pmayo did great writeups on this game earlier.

September 27, 2003 (game 2)"”After winning game one of a twin bill with the Bucs the Cubs magic number stood at 1. In the bottom of the first innning Sammy, who had struggled at times in 2003, hit a bomb onto Waveland Avenue giving the Cubs a 1-0 lead. Wrigley Field was up for grabs. The Cubs would never give up that lead and went on to win 7-2 and clinch their first division title since 1989.

October 7, 2003"”Game 1 of the NLCS. Two outs in the bottom of the ninth of Game 1 of the NLCS. Cubs down by two. Sammy Sosa hits a two run homer to tie the ballgame. Sadly, the Cubs would lose the game, but the disbelief that I had when he hit it, still remains. Sosa on baseball's second biggest stage had delived in the clutch.

My final favorite Sammy Sosa moment came against the Chicago Cubs, just two summers ago. June 20, 2007"”Sammy always had the flare for the dramatic. With the Cubs playing two interleague games in Arlington, TX, Sammy was sitting on 599 career dingers. With Jason Marquis wearing Sammy's #21 on his back, Sosa hit a fifth inning homerun for number 600 in his great career. He was just the fifth player to hit 600 homeruns at that time.

When I think back on his career, I would say there has never been a Cubs player that brought me as many exciting memorable moments as Sammy Sosa. In the end I think that is probably why I remember Sammy so fondly. He was a player that you always made sure you didn't miss his next AB. If I was going to the concession stand I made sure he wasn't coming up. I never wanted to miss his AB's, because something great could always happen.

I was 12 years old in the summer of 1998. Sammy was my favorite player as a kid. Everything about him seemed perfect. His physique. His charisma. His attitude. I remember as a kid watching Sammy and thinking no other player in baseball seemed more upset after a strikeout than him. The way he would slowly walk back to the dugout with his head down looking depressed reminded me of Charlie Brown, which made me like him even more.

I loved the Cubs as much as any kid who grew up on Chicago's north side would, but 1998 drove me even deeper. I was sad that McGwire got to 62 before Sammy did, but I remember watching that game and thinking how incredible it was that both men could celebrate the accomplishments of the other on the same field. After that season I started stocking up on Cubs paraphernalia. Books. Baseball cards. VHS tapes chronicling the home run chase. I also bought a cheap Sosa jersey, which I wore with pride to just about every game I went to.

My fading opinions of Sosa coincided with his fading skills at the plate. By the time of the corked bat incident, reports of his refusal to hit lower in the lineup, accusations of steroids, and skipping out early on the final day of the season, I had kicked Sosa to the curb like an old piece of furniture. I ate up all anti-Sosa garbage that was being spewed because I was too young, stupid, and lazy to form opinions of my own.

After the Cubs traded Sosa I took a sharpie to his jersey, put a big X through his name, and scribbled "Burnitz" on it. I wore it to Wrigley and always got laughs and high fives.

I recently moved out of my parents house, and while boxing up books and miscellaneous items I stumbled across a lot of my old Cubs gear from 1998. Its only been 11 years but I've forgotten so much of that season, and honestly, I don't know why. I can easily say it was the most fun I've ever had watching baseball before or since.

I saw the announcement of his retirement today and it made me genuinely sad. I can't even bring myself to take a glance at the threads at BCB. Not only because I don't want to read what those lemmings have to say about him, but because I know that not long ago I WAS one of those lemmings when it came to Sammy, and I'd rather not remind myself.

I've really enjoyed seeing everyone's thoughts and memories of Sammy posted here. It's really brought me back to those times. I've read every word.

I still have the "Burnitz" jersey. It hangs in my new closet, and as much as I'd like to I don't plan on throwing it away. It serves as a symbolic reminder to never again allow fabricated anger to erase incredible memories, not only in something as trivial as sports but throughout life.

I am the last person who should be posting memories of Sammy Sosa. Although there was a Sammy poster on a bedroom wall in my house for many years, I myself had abdicated my Cub fandom for much of his reign, only coming back toward the end of 2002 when I heard the team just promoted some amazing young college pitcher called Prior who was going to change the direction of the team. I was living far away but became an early adopter of Gameday Audio in 2003 and MLB.TV 2004 in order to rekindle my dormant relationship with the team.

I finally got back to Wrigley Field for a pair of games between divisional contenders in July "04. After sitting through a competitive loss to the Astros during which I muffed a Michael Barrett home run ball hit directly at me in the left field bleachers, I returned the next day with my son and my dad to complete the multigenerational cub fan trifecta, and to see that awesome college pitcher up close and personal. In two days, I saw baseball legend Roger Clemens pitch, suffered Hall of Famer Craig Biggio and young stud Carlos Beltran combining to hit five home runs, and got a nice picture of Greg Maddux, Kerry Wood and Mark Prior chatting casually during BP. But it was the fading yet still vital spectacle of Samuel Peralta Sosa who made the prodigal visit truly something special. After Kent Mercker and Kyle Farnsworth combined to blow a 5-3 lead in the 8th inning, the Cubs failed to score in the ninth, prompting hordes of fans to head for the exits, figuring the bullpen would lose the game for a dominant starting Cub pitcher the second day running. But after the Astros went down quickly in the top of the 10th, Sammy strode into the box to lead off the bottom half of the inning. I don't know if it was on the first pitch but it might as well have been, because Sosa's extra inning dramatics were instantaneous. I totally understand the comment in one of the earlier threads about the unique ability to predict a home run with Sammy in the on deck circle. Sosa hadn't done anything that day, but even in July 2004 you never ruled him out with the game on the line: he was a singular player in that millions of fans rightly placed all their hopes on him for so long, and for so long, he didn't let them down. That day must have been one of his last, if not his very last, walk-off home runs as a Chicago Cub. I cannot do any justice in describing the resulting scene, including the loudest and most sustained roar from that previously jittery crowd that I have ever heard; I was lucky to be able to share that fleeting but intense feeling of victory with two of the only Cub fans I care about.

I felt bad for Sammy as that year wore on, seeing his faithful legion of fans turn on him so. It didn't make sense to me, knowing all those years--even if I wasn't watching--how immense of a figure he was for well over a decade. I felt bad for me, too, that I missed so much of his career. And when the hatchet job inevitably went down in October, I felt bad for every poster on every bedroom wall, hoping their young owners would leave them up in defiance of bitter grown up fans and their fickle, nonsensical example.

When I was in grade school, I had this thing about drawing. I did it all the time. Classes were generally boring, and a couple of the teachers were borderline incompetent, so I would draw a lot during certain subjects. Without fail, every day, I would draw at least one picture of Sammy Sosa. He was what I knew. He was the face of the Cubs, and the one thing that always made them worth watching. Around the time I was in 5th grade (spring of ‘97, I think, was when we did this project), my school had some lame project wherein we would all contribute a square for a big quilt. the squares would then be sewn together to form the face of said quilt, and there were about 6 of them (one for each pair of grades, pre-K through 8th). Pretty much everyone drew a picture about the school or friends or one of the teachers. Me? I drew Sammy fucking Sosa.

I once won a contest wherein I got to go onto Wrigley Field and run the bases, and then meet a bunch of players and get their signatures on a ball. I wish I had a sweet Sammy Sosa story there, but alas, I don’t. His name’s on the ball, though (as are Fergie Jenkins and Billy Williams’s names). The only player I really remember meeting then was Randy Myers, and that’s because I told him he did an awesome job tackling a fan who had run onto the field to attack him.

That digression aside, I remember the home run chase of 1998, and feeling, for the first time I could remember, that the Cubs actually had a pretty good team. I came home from school one day to catch the last ten or eleven Astros that some kid named Kerry Wood was striking out, and Sammy Sosa was hitting home runs like Brett Myers hits his wife. I had to go to the library to get a book for a school project the night McGwire hit number 62, but I made sure my mother floored it so I wouldn’t miss too much of the game. That was one of the best moments I have ever witnessed in professional sports. They both looked genuinely happy (well, I’m sure McGwire was), but I felt like Sosa was also really glad just to be a part of something that ridiculously special. Whatever else it means, whatever else may be, those two men saved baseball right then and there.

I started to be less enthralled with Sosa as he went into decline in 2003 and 2004. I was still a bit young/immature to realize that, even at less than his best, he was still really good. I had come to expect that otherworldly kind of awesome he had been for the last several years. I felt bad for him when he got nailed in the head and went on the DL because of a sneeze. I was a bit bewildered that so many seemed to be turning on him; I think the corked bat incident was the major catalyst there. It wasn’t the same Sammy Sosa. He still had his moments, like in game 1 of the 2003 NLCS, and there were still many more, but he started to be less and less the star of the show. And because for so long, he had been carrying on a solo performance, he seemed to have trouble with that.

By the end of the 2004 season, I had started to buy into the media bullshit about how he was selfish for not wanting to move down in the batting order, and sundry other things. I was angry that he left the last game of 2004 early, though I had not yet realized what it would mean. For quite awhile after, I was part of the crowd of sheep that lambasted his name. I patted myself on the back for “knowing” that Sosa was a prima donna whose hype had outpaced his talents. I thought it was awesome that my favorite ballplayer was rumored to have smashed his boombox. And I was damn sure that he had done steroids, and that made him a lying and detestable cheater. In short, I had become a complete twat relative to the issue of Sammy Sosa.

Reset.

I have since been able to put it all in better perspective. Sammy Sosa was, without a doubt, one of the best ballplayers I have ever seen. Only Albert Pujols and Barry Bonds come to mind as having been better. Maybe Griffey, but I don’t think so. Sammy Sosa was what made me a Cubs fan. Not family or tradition or any of that. Motherfucking Sammy Sosa. Sammy Sosa and the smile that took up half of his face, the daily sprint out to RF, the monster home runs that came in bunches, and the knowledge that he would bust his ass every day for a team that did not see fit to surround him with talent capable of making it to October. Sammy Sosa was the Cubs. By 2004, he had become one of the Cubs. I’m not sure many people were ready to deal with that, and perhaps Sammy least of all. I thought it was sublimely just that he hit his 600th HR against the team that had discarded him so lightly after all he had given that, and that with that HR, he had finally hit one against every team in MLB. Sammy Sosa was the best position player I have ever seen in a Cubs uniform, and it’s not even close. He belongs in the Hall of Fame, though the Cubs aren’t really deserving of having their cap on his plaque.

Had I Crane Kenney’s job, Sammy Sosa is one of the two people I would first invite back to Wrigley Field (the other being Steve Bartman, because come the fuck on). I’d ask him to throw out the first pitch, sing the seventh inning stretch, and make one last sprint to RF, so he could help raise the flag with his name and number on it, because the only Cub as deserving of one of those flags as Sammy is Ernie Banks.

Remembering Sosa When it Meant Nothing

Since Mark McGwire's decision to talk about the past has prompted the Sosa haters to follow suit, I was happy to see mb21 resurrect the Sosa memories from last year's series. Prior to visiting this site on my own, I had heard about ACB's reputation for being a saber-minded blog. It didn't take long for me to discover that was indeed true, but one of the first things I read here was the series of Sosa posts, which I loved. Some people accuse statisticians of being void of emotion or lacking a love for the game, but that's crap. The memories posted here proved that to me right away, and I'm honored to be able to add one of mine to the list.

Like a few others, my standout Sosa memory comes from 2001, but it was before the tragedy in September. The year before, my wife and I had toured stadiums to the east, visiting Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Philly, New York, and Boston. In a week. We decided not to repeat the breakneck pace of that trip, which also included zero Cubs games, and headed out to some of the stadiums a little closer to home. In late June, the destination was Cincinnati, and the Cubs were in town. We saw the Reds five-hit the Cubs in a rain-delayed 5-2 snooze fest. Sosa didn't homer.

But Sosa did his thing. It was the 8th inning, two outs with a light rain growing heavier by the minute. The Cubs were down 0-3, and Sosa had two strikes on him, but he kept working the count, fouling off strikes, taking two balls out of the zone, and taking his sweet time between every pitch. Finally the umps called for the tarp, and we waited over an hour for the rain to stop and the grounds crew to prepare the field. If I hadn't been in Cincinnati, if I had anywhere better to go, I probably would have left. But it's Cincinnati, what are you gonna do?

What Sosa did was drive the first pitch after the rain delay to right field for a 2-out double. In the grand scheme of things, it was as mundane an extra-base hit as you'll ever find. He didn't score. He didn't drive anyone in. The Cubs still lost. But it was quintessential Sammy.

Countless times I've heard people whine about how a lot of Sammy's home runs came in garbage time, how he padded his stats when it didn't matter, how this proved he was a selfish player. To me, in that moment, it proved to me he was a professional, an entertainer par excellence. Sammy didn't take an at bat off. Not even a rain-soaked, split-apart, meaningless at bat in Cincinnati, where the fans that stayed could barely stay awake. The ones that did, though, saw Sammy. Not a diluted Sammy, a half-ass Sammy, or a let's-get-the-hell-outta-here Sammy. He was 100% Slammin' Sammy, and he aimed to please. More often than not he hit the mark.

Maybe Sammy wasn't the consummate team player. I don't care, because I'm not on the team. Sammy understood that he was a showman, and he always tried to put on a show. Love him or hate him, judge him or forgive him, no one can deny that Sammy did everything within his power to give the fans a great show. And holy cow, did he ever! When I heard the news leak that his name was on the list of positive steroid tests from 2003, I was disappointed. But that disappointment is, forgive the pun, a few drops in a cup compared to the oceans of excitement he showered on all of baseball. Did he cheat? Who cares! He was surrounded by cheaters in a game that celebrates cheating, but no other "cheater" came close to doing what he did. No one gave us the combination of power and charm and raw, unadulterated enthusiasm for the fans that Sammy did. He drew the attention of the world, and every standing ovation he ever got was well deserved.

If he never gets another one, I don't know that I can forgive the fans who rejected him.