The fall of Samuel Kelvin Peralta Sosa was just as fast as his rise. Sammy Sosa was a relative no one when the Chicago White Sox traded him to the Chicago Cubs for George Bell. After all, Sosa had 29 career home runs and a .228/.273/.376 slash line in his three professional seasons played with the Texas Rangers and White Sox before landing on the Northside. Bell, on the other hand, 26 bombs and 86 ribbies while putting in an All Star campaign for the 1991 Cubbies.
Sosa would go on to put up Hall of Fame worthy number over the next 13 years with the Cubs and Bell would play one year on the Southside and retire a year after that.
When I say Hall of Fame numbers, you have to understand… Sosa was putting up numbers that perhaps four other players have ever put up before. But, much to the detriment of three of the four, they were all fingered as users of performance enhancing drugs.
Of course fans weren’t really hip to the idea that they were cheating players at the time, but it was the potential cheating that brought fans back to baseball after the strike. Sosa was at the forefront, and while I don’t have to explain this to most Cubs fans, his popularity around the world was rather astonishing. He was approaching the recognizability level of guys like Michael Jordan worldwide (calm you teets, he was very recognizable is all I’m saying).
But his popularity took a dumb the day he broke a bat and a piece of cork came flying out.
Sosa had claimed this was a batting practice bat. A bat that he would use to put on a show for the fans pregame. But, it tarnished his reputation in Chicago and began the downward spiral. rumors of his inability to move in the lineup, the blasting of his music in the clubhouse (just ask Kerry Wood), and that final day of the 2004 season where he walked out of the stadium early.
There was a ton of controversy surrounding that day. The rumors, then the video, then the finger-pointing. It seemed everyone in Chicago was picking a side, and most of them were siding with the Cubs.
While being estranged from the Cubs since that day, Sosa attempted to make things right while speaking with Z101 Digital in the Dominican Republic. During the interview he mentioned that he was given permission to leave from the club’s manager, Dusty Baker.
Sammy Sosa regarding his relationship with the @Cubs: “There was a game when I left early and I did it with Dusty Baker’s permission. The problem is that it was on a bad stretch the team had so there was a lot of blame to go around."@z101digital @ZDeportes
— Héctor Gómez (@hgomez27) April 11, 2020
Sosa claimed leaving was because of the disappointment of losing, but there was no real excuse for it, even if he got permission from Baker.
Sammy Sosa regarding his relationship with the @Cubs: “But it was a mistake I made leaving early on my last game. We were finishing on a bad streak and I was used to winning so I felt bad about it."@z101digital @ZDeportes
— Héctor Gómez (@hgomez27) April 11, 2020
He would even try to clear the air with Dusty afterwards.
Sammy Sosa regarding his relationship with the @Cubs: "It was my mistake, still I talked to dusty afterwards and clear things up with him by saying: “You gave me permission to leave early, told me it was Ok I left.”@z101digital @ZDeportes
— Héctor Gómez (@hgomez27) April 11, 2020
The issue I have is, Dusty attempted to clear Steve Bartman’s name more than he did Sosa’s publicly. He was with the club for three more seasons afterwards, but didn’t clear the air with Sosa at all. Perhaps (I’m putting on my tinfoil conspiracy hat now) this was a high-level directive from executives or ownership. A way to really justify the team getting rid of their most popular player since Ryne Sandberg.
There are a ton of Cubs fans that want Sosa and the Cubs to get back together. Then, there are a ton that will just say he’s a cheater and deserves the estrangement from the Cubs. Here’s the only statement I’ll give on it… every Cubs fan has that guy that really brought them to the team. That one player that they connected with, and that player that caused them to bleed Cubbie blue blood for life. While Sandberg was that player for me, hundreds of thousands of Cubs fans became fans because of Sosa.
But that’s not all. Millions of baseball fans either came back to the sport or became baseball fans because of the home run chase in 1998. While that shouldn’t excuse what Sosa and many other players did (or may have done), it should lighten the noose that many have had on Sosa and other potential PED users.
