cago Cubs and the image of the prevalence of the Latino ballplayer in the U.S. major leagues.He was the home run hitting slugger with a childlike sense of humor, although there were times when Sosa’s schtick came across as being too much like a real-life Chico Escuela.
IN FACT, ABOUT the only people who didn’t think of Sluggin’ Sammy as a baseball golden boy were written off as hopeless cranks whose real reason for not appreciating all that was good about Sosa was the fact that they spent their spare time rooting for the Chicago White Sox.
Petty jealousy, Cubs fans would claim.
But now that the suspicions of some baseball fans have been confirmed with circumstantial evidence published by the New York Times that Sosa failed a drug test for steroids back in 2003, does this mean that White Sox fans are the only people on Planet Earth with their minds grounded in reality?
And what does it say that the only person wanting to be seen in public with Sosa these days is Jose Canseco, the former baseball slugger who admits his steroid use and claims baseball officials are harming his income by refusing to employ him. He wants Sosa to support a lawsuit he is considering filing against Major League Baseball.
ACTUALLY, LET’S GET one thing straight. Sosa passed the test. Failing would mean that no traces of banned substances were found in his system.
So now that people who are quick to dismiss Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Rafael Palmiero will eagerly add Sosa’s name to the list, what should we really think?
For the fact is that back in a certain era of just under a decade ago, Sosa was the face of Chicago athletics. And he also was the modern-age Latino ballplayer personified.
To drop from such exalted status to that of a non-person in a matter of six years is truly unique.
WHAT MAKES SOSA unique is that his rise to sports stardom was so shocking – he had been a journeyman ballplayer for nine years in the major leagues before doing anything that even came close to hinting at stardom.
Both the Texas Rangers and White Sox had given up on him, with the White Sox deciding that his stubbornness to work the kinks out of his swing at bat would prevent him from ever becoming a truly great hitter.
I know many Cubs fans want to believe that White Sox fans somehow wish their team had never given up on Sammy, and somehow were jealous. It just isn’t so.
It’s because we remember how awful a ballplayer he was during his early 1990s stint with the White Sox, and because we always suspected that the only reason he hung on with the Cubs for so long before finally hitting all those home runs was because the Cubs had such awful teams.
THEY COULD AFFORD to keep a baseball-playing hack like the pre-home run hitting Sosa on their roster for so long.
My point is that my years of nitpicking Sosa (who hit for such awful batting average and struck out so often when he wasn’t hitting home runs, and also was a mediocre-to-terrible defensive player) came years ago.
To me, I don’t see what is to be gained by ganging up on Sosa these days.
My initial reaction to hearing from my brother, Chris, about the reports that Sosa how had something resembling a positive steroids test was to shrug my shoulders and say, “meh.”
DO I THINK this amounts to some evidence that the whole concept of the Chicago Cubs as a superior baseball franchise back in the late 1990s (the days when the Cubs would draw about 2.9 million per year and the White Sox bottomed out at about 1.2 million) is a fraud? Probably.
But the Chicago baseball fan in me doesn’t really care about coming up with more evidence of the Cubs’ natural inferiority. Perhaps that is the after effect of rooting for a team that actually wins a World Series in my lifetime.
If anything, it is the part of me that takes an interest in Latin American ballplayers that wonders what will become of the Sosa legacy.
For the fact is that from 1998 to 2003, Sosa the ballplayer was, for lack of a better word, Ruthian. It was in that era that he became the only ballplayer to hit 60 or more home runs in a single season three times, and hit nearly half of the home runs that he accumulated during a 17-season career.
IT WAS THAT inhuman era that made Sosa a shoo-in for the Baseball Hall of Fame, where currently there are only 11 members who were born in Latin American countries.
Now that we have to look skeptically (and the fact that some Hall of Fame voters are refusing to back Sosa rival Mark McGwire makes it very likely they will dump on Sosa as well), does this mean a little less recognition for the Latino ballplayer?
Perhaps we should have suspected something was wrong just by looking at Sosa’s achievements. Despite being the only player to hit 60 or more home runs three times, it should be noted that in none of those three seasons did he ever lead the National League in home runs.
Nor has he ever been the Major League home run leader for a single season or a career.
SLAMMIN’ SAMMY WAS an inhuman home run machine (when he wasn’t striking out) who always had someone else (McGwire or Bonds) hitting just a little bit better.
So the part of me that follows the White Sox can smirk a bit at Sosa’s predicament (who now is seriously going to argue against Frank Thomas as the best Chicago baseball player of the 1990s?), while the baseball fan in me is already spent with Sosa criticism.
And the Latino in me wonders how many Latino kids were inspired by Sosa’s image, only to have it crushed these days with these latest reports?
Perhaps as much as seeing my favorite ballplayer as a kid, New York Yankees outfielder Lou Piniella, now wearing that ridiculous Cubby blue on a daily basis.
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