EXTRA: History amidst mediocrity

The Chicago White Sox gave us evidence this week that one can find moments of excellence even in the pile of mediocrity that, in all honesty, describes this year's ball club.

If it turns out that the White Sox do manage to rebuild themselves in coming seasons into a championship quality club, Wednesday's 9-4 victory against the Houston Astros may be remembered as an early moment of what was yet to come.

POTENTIAL FUTURE STAR Eloy Jimenez hit two home runs, while Charlie Tilson hit his first home run ever -- and it was a 'Grand Slam' (and no, I don't mean breakfast at Denny's).

But there also was the triple play that got the White Sox out of a jam -- and also made the game only the fourth in Major League history since 1969 where a team pulled off a Triple Play AND a Grand Slam in one evening!

It seems the old axiom is true that even the worst ballclubs are capable of giving out beatings, and even the best ballclubs are capable of getting their butts whomped on any given night!

Which only makes me wonder, just how bad will this weekend's play be to compensate for the great moments we saw Wednesday? This is, after all, a team playing just under .500 (22 wins, 26 losses as of Wednesday) baseball.

  -30-

Is Sammy Sosa THAT unforgivable?

The Baseball Hall of Fame will officially announce on Tuesday which former ballplayers will join the ranks of those whose athletic achievements will be immortalized in bronze plaques – and there are many sporting arguments that will be provoked by the results.

Is Sosa really any less of a '90s star … 

For me, a key point I’ll be watching for will be to see exactly how many votes one-time Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa gets.

SOSA, OF COURSE, is the guy who some two decades ago had all those seasons of 60-plus home runs (more than any other ballplayer ever). But now has given many people reason to suspect he used anabolic steroids or other substances that artificially gave him strength.

Which is the reason that Sosa wasn’t an automatic shoo-in for Hall of Fame induction. He only got 12.5 percent support – far short of the 75 percent required for induction.

Since then, Sosa has managed to get about 6 to 8 percent voter support each year; enough for him to remain in consideration for the following year’s Hall of Fame vote, but also close enough to the 5 percent vote standard that he could fall out of the running altogether.

Personally, if that were to happen, I’d not be upset. But I do have to admit there’s an aspect to all this that bothers me. It’s the fact that two other star players of that era whose names have been tainted by allegations of steroid use seem to be getting the exact opposite treatment.

… and worthy of Hall of Fame induction … 

I’M REFERRING TO one-time slugger Barry Bonds and pitcher Roger Clemens. They came onto the Hall of Fame ballot consideration at the same time as Sosa – and there actually once was the possibility that the 2013 Hall of Fame induction would have gone into the books as the year Bonds, Clemens and Sosa would have their day of Cooperstown glory.

But while Sosa threatens to fall below the 5 percent minimal standard, Bonds and Clemens are creeping their way upward to the 75 percent standard that means induction.

There have been some surveys indicating that the two theoretically could be inducted this year. Or, more likely, will come ever so close that it would seem Bonds and Clemens are likely to get Hall of Fame induction in 2020 or 2021.

… than either Bonds (above) or Clemens?

So just how is it that Bonds and Clemens are forgivable, while Sosa has become the baseball “untouchable” (and I don’t mean the old television show with the Eliot Ness character)? When their so-called "sin" is identical?

I KNOW I’VE heard some offer the theory that they believe Bonds and Clemens were legitimate stars already when they started using illicit substances to enhance their strength and endurance. While Sosa’s 609 home runs are a complete fraud – citing the fact that he became a major leaguer in 1989, but didn’t start his string of star-like seasons until 1998.

That was a long period of mediocrity – one helped by the fact he played for Chicago Cubs teams most of those seasons, and they were awful enough to put up with Sosa’s ability (or lack thereof).

But I can’t help get around the fact that from 1998 (the year he had his nationally-renowned chase with Mark McGwire to set a single-season home run record) to 2002, he had a burst of power that was unheard of.

This may seem sacrilegious to some, but one literally has to go back to Babe Ruth at his 1920s peak to find someone who could match Sammy.

LIKE IT OR not, it happened. All those home runs were hit. Trying to ignore that almost seems like the old Soviet-style of rewriting history to represent what one wishes had happened.

What would Harold have to say (if anything)?

Particularly if we’re going to acknowledge the potentially-tainted accomplishments of Bonds (73 home runs in a season, 762 in a career – both all-time records) and Clemens (354 victories and 4,672 strikeouts – third-best ever). I don’t see how the “steroids” argument can be applied to one, but not the other two.

Of course, this year’s Hall of Fame induction July 20 could be intriguing because of one of the “old-timey” ballplayers already chosen – one-time White Sox outfielder Harold Baines, whom the team traded away in 1989 for the then-youthful Sosa.

Will Harold have anything to say about Sammy, and the fact that he’s now the Hall of Famer while Sosa remains on the outside looking in?

  -30-

EXTRA: The Good, the Sad & the Ugly

For a moment, he had best stats

Baseball is back! The 2018 regular season began Thursday, and what was notable about this date?

THE GOOD: The very first game of the whole season was the Chicago Cubs in Miami taking on the Marlins. And as it turns out, Cubs outfielder Ian Happ was the first batter who managed to hit the first pitch of the season for a home run.

Which got a lot of people all worked up. Not even the sight of that ridiculous light show with swimming dolphin-like creatures that takes place at Marlins Park could bring people down.

15th Sox player ever to hit 3 HRs in game

Even better was the Chicago White Sox' 14-7 victory in Kansas City. Six Sox home runs, including three by infielder Matt Davidson. Only three other ballplayers ever have hit that many in an Opening Day game, including Tuffy Rhodes of the Cubs back in 1994.

THE SAD: Rusty Staub, the one-time player known as Le Grande Orange (he was a red-head who played for the Montreal Expos for a time) died Thursday morning.

R.I.P.

Which means he got a baseball-wide moment of silence prior to every opening game, and fans of the Houston Astros, New York Mets and Detroit Tigers fought it out with Expos fans over which ball club was most significant to his career (he’s the guy who managed 500 or more base hits with each team). While Chicago fans could reminisce about all the big hits he got against our city's ball clubs.

THE UGLY: The Cubs started out their season with that home run and managed to add on two more runs before the Marlins even got to bat.

Yet it only took two more innings before Miami tied the ballgame, meaning the Cubs couldn’t even hold the lead. The Cubs may think they’re of championship quality these days, but it seems certain aspects of Chicago Cubishness will never change.

And yes, I know the old Sergio Leone film was The Good, the BAD and the Ugly. But when it comes to baseball, there is no Bad. Unless you count people who slather ketchup on their ballpark hot dogs – even Clint Eastwood’s later character "Dirty" Harry Callahan (who at least had a name) would agree with that.

  -30-

612 or 609 – are 3 home runs really the difference for baseball’s Hall of Fame?

Chicago ballplayer likely to get into Hall

In just over a week, the Baseball Hall of Fame will announce which ballplayers of the 1990s will be the newest inductees for immortalization with a bronze plaque at their museum in upstate New York.

Based on some of the information that has come out thus far, one-time Chicago White Sox slugger Jim Thome will be among the inductees. It seems the 612 home runs he hit during a nearly two-decade career are enough for him to be considered one of the game’s all-time greats.

The one who likely won't

YET AMONGST THE other ballplayers up for Hall of Fame consideration is one-time Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa – the man with 609 career home runs and the only ballplayer ever with three seasons of 60 or more home runs.

If you look solely at the statistics and take nothing else into account, the two of them ought to be comparable. In fact, one could make an argument that Sosa was far more significant to the Cubs than Thome was to the White Sox.

Thome may well have have hit his 500^th home run while wearing the White Sox uniform, but Sosa had 545 of his home runs in the baby blue of the Cubbies.

The way Cubs fans will spin Thome

Sosa was also a major player in that 1998 season where he and St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire gave baseball fans a show many will forevermore remember as they pursued the single-season record for home runs. Then, they followed it up with an encore in 1999.

YET AS FAR as the Hall of Fame is concerned, the question will be by how far Thome exceeds the 75 percent of sportswriters with a ballot who support his candidacy.

A bigger question will be whether this is the year that Sosa finally falls below 5 percent support (he was just over 8 percent last year), which is the level at which he gets knocked off the ballot.

Or are there just enough people with pleasant memories of Sosa’s clownish on-field behavior that he’ll live on for another year’s consideration?

Sosa, of course, is the ballplayer who is tainted by the perception that he was among the ballplayers of the 1990s who used anabolic steroids to bolster himself.

Sox fans have tried to forget this happened

WHICH HAS MANY fans thinking of him as being the equivalent of one-time pitcher Roger Clemens and slugger Barry Bonds – two other stars whose statistics would have one think they’re shoo-ins for Cooperstown admittance.

I’m sure Cubs fans are going to go through their own squirming routines when the final Hall of Fame results are announced Jan. 24. They’re going to hate the notion that a White Sox player will get top honors, whereas the man whom they once thought of as becoming the new “Mr. Cub” (replacing Ernie Banks in that niche) remains a baseball “nothing.”

White Sox fans, of course, will snicker at that notion, particularly since White Sox fans were on to the notion that there was something phony about Sosa back when Cubs fans were proclaiming him as the ultimate evidence of their ball club’s superiority.

Of course, Thome isn’t really a part of the White Sox story, even if he played a few seasons in Chicago (and is a Peoria native who grew up rooting for the Cubs and the home run antics of Dave Kingman). I’m sure that when he gets Hall of Fame induction, he’ll be remembered primarily for his contributions to those Cleveland Indians teams that won league championships in 1995 and 1997 and were generally among the American League’s better teams of the ‘90’s.

Thome surpassed his childhood idol

I’M WONDERING HOW much the Cubbie types will want to insist Thome is only an Indian, and that Chicago has no claim to them. Of course, White Sox fans will forevermore have Sosa to sling at Cubs fans when they get cocky about the fact they actually managed to pull off one lone championship a couple of years ago.

Sosa is a millstone to the Cubs, which is why he hasn’t already had his moment of immortalization a few years ago – even though he is without a doubt one of the best ballplayers from the Dominican Republic to play professional ball in this country.

Even Cubs management say they can’t fully embrace his place in their legacy until he comes forth with the “truth” about whether he used steroids to bolster his strength artificially.

Something that Thome has never had to address. Which goes a long way to explain how two one-dimensional sluggers who are only 3 home runs apart will be remembered so differently.

  -30-

Thome helps keep Legislature busy

So just what DO our state legislators do with their time when they’re not addressing the lack of a state budget for the current fiscal year?

There was a bit of a stink a few weeks ago when the General Assembly managed to pass the measure that declared corn to be the official state vegetable for Illinois. Some from people who argue corn isn’t a vegetable (it’s a grain), while others just think it is a totally pointless thing to do.

WILL THESE SAME people come crawling out of the woodwork in coming weeks when the state Senate will be asked to consider a measure designating a portion of U.S. Route 24 in Peoria as the Jim Thome Highway?

As in the same Thome who included a few seasons of his professional baseball career with the Chicago White Sox and hit his 500^th Home Run of his career in the White Sox pinstripes – although the 600-home run milestone was achieved while he wore the dingy and dumpy uniform of the Minnesota Twins.

The measure already has come before the Illinois House of Representatives – where it was approved without opposition earlier this week. Hey, the legislators had to do something to justify their per diem payment to cover their living expenses to be in the Illinois capital city to NOT approve a state government budget.

Unless Chicago Cubs fans who serve in the Illinois Senate decide to get more ornery and cranky than usual (that’s what a century of losing does to you) and refuse to vote for anything that honors a White Sox player?

WHO’S TO SAY!?! Although it should be noted that the general concept of the Thome Highway was already in a separate measure the Senate considered – one sponsored by state Sen. Darin LaHood, R-Dunlap. He being the Republican nominee to replace Aaron Schock in Congress.

Does anyone think Chief Wahoo looks better in bronze than Old English "Sox"

I doubt he wants to have his final Springfield act be a dissing of Thome’s reputation. That could cost him big-time in the Sept. 10 Election Day.

Not that this measure was meant to honor Chicago in any way. Thome is a Peoria-area native who graduated from a Bartonville high school and played baseball briefly for Illinois Central College before signing with the Cleveland Indians organization where he played a significant portion of his career.

600 home runs not enough for Hall?

Which means, sadly enough, that if Thome’s 600-plus home runs is good enough to get him into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., someday, his bronze plaque likely will depict him in a cap bearing that ridiculous-looking “Chief Wahoo” head instead of the Old English “Sox” logo.

IF YOU THINK I’m kidding that 600 home runs isn’t enough for recognition, keep in mind that Sammy Sosa’s Chicago Cubbie glory days are no longer considered Hall of Fame-worthy, even though he also achieved that immortal standard.

But even if Thome doesn’t make it, he now will be able to say he has a highway named in his honor in his hometown. It may even be an excuse for White Sox fans to find an excuse to visit the city – if only to get their pictures taken with a Thome Highway sign in the background.

Thus far, Thome seems to have a reputation for being a ballplayer who didn’t use anabolic steroids to bolster his strength and baseball career.

Unlike people like Sosa and Mark McGwire, the one-time St. Louis Cardinals star who back after his 1998 stretch of 70 home runs that season had the interstate highway that leads from Illinois into downtown St. Louis named in his honor.

THAT IS INTERSTATE 70 (Get it!), and I remember when St. Louis officials were tickled pink (the same color that Cardinals uniforms turn once they fade due to age and/or poor laundering) to have the McGwire Highway.

No longer worthy of a highway in St. Louis

But the steroid stories connected to McGwire caused that highway to become the “Mark Twain Highway” back in 2010.

It would seem that the “Thome Highway” will be longer-lasting in Illinois.

  -30-

EXTRA: 6.6 for 'Mr. 66'

6.6. As in percent.


That's how much support one-time Chicago Cubs star slugger Sammy Sosa received from baseball writers who had a say in Tuesday's election for Baseball Hall of Fame membership.


IT WAS FAR from the 75 percent standard required for induction. But it was higher than the 5 percent minimum level a ball player much reach if he is to appear on the next year's ballot for future consideration.


Sosa, of course, is the guy who hit in excess of 600 home runs, is the only ballplayer who ever topped 60 home runs in a season three times and had a six-year span (1998 through 2003) that is downright Ruthian (as in Babe). Which usually would have made Sosa a shoo-in for induction back when he was first on the ballot in 2013.


But there are those who are convinced his home run-hitting was merely a product of steroid use, which erased all the good will he built up when he was the living parody of Garrett Morris' "Chico Escuela" character from Saturday Night Live of old. This is a debate that baseball fans will continue to have for many years.


Although what amuses me the most about the Tuesday vote tallies was that 6.6 percent support level -- which somehow seems appropriate for the man who captured the nation's attention by hitting 66 home runs in 1998.


  -30-

EXTRA: Will Sammy draw ‘Cinco’ (as in percent) of Hall of Fame votes?

The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., is expected to announce Tuesday whether any of the ballplayers under consideration were capable of reaching the ’75 percent’ level of support required for enshrinement.

We’re also going to learn how many of the nearly three dozen former ball players under consideration received so little voter support (under 5 percent) that they won’t even be eligible for future consideration.

PLAYERS LIKE FORMER White Sox outfielder Jermaine Dye and Chicago-area native Cliff Floyd likely will fall below, while former Cubs relief pitcher Lee Smith and White Sox outfielder Tim Raines will come up again in that perennial baseball time period known as ‘next year.’

Then, we have to consider the fate of Sammy Sosa, the one-time Cubs slugging outfielder who was once the very personification (at least for those nit-wits who couldn’t look beyond Wrigley Field) of what Chicago baseball was all about.

I’m not about to get into a debate about what should happen to Sosa’s legacy as a ballplayer. If you care, I’ve written about it before. But I find it intriguing to wonder whether Sosa’s stint as a Cub will continue to haunt baseball geeks with way too much time on their hands.

He is one of those 1990s-early 2000’s players where there is circumstantial evidence that he used performance-enhancing substances (a.k.a., steroids) to bulk up and improve his abilities.

THAT HAS MANY sportswriters/voters who used to praise Sammy’s persona to now refuse to acknowledge him. Will the opposition grow to the point where he falls off the ballot for future consideration?

The BaseballThinkFactory.org website has developed a running count of Hall of Fame ballots as various sportswriters indicate publicly who they cast votes for. Sammy is literally at the cut-off point (4.5 percent as of Monday afternoon). Could he get a sudden boost from voters who weren’t accounted for to keep this quarrel going on?

Could it turn out that 600-plus home runs just aren’t enough to overcome steroids speculation that, if in a court of law, wouldn’t rise to the level of ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ needed to convict?

Then again, baseball always thinks it has its own standards. One-time White Sox outfielder Shoeless Joe Jackson and seven teammates were banned from baseball for life, even though a Cook County court jury acquitted them of any criminal responsibility for their actions in the 1919 World Series.

SO FOR SOSA, the relevant statistic is no longer 3 (as in the number of seasons in which he hit 60 or more home runs, which no other ballplayer has ever been able to do).

It’s 5 (as in percent of the sportswriter vote received), so we can continue to debate this issue for years to come. Because a good quarrel is just what any baseball fan wants to do during the winter months when our temperatures dip to below 10 degrees!

  -30-

EXTRA: What do we do with Sosa?

When I think back to the baseball playing career of Sammy Sosa, a pair of other ballplayers come to my mind – Babe Ruth and Sandy Koufax.

Now this isn’t one of those stat-guided similarity things (one such list says that Sosa’s comparable ballplayers are guys like 1970s-era stars like Mike Schmidt and Reggie Jackson). I’m talking about ballplayers whose careers bear some strong similarities to the Sosa phenomenon that was the ONLY reason the Chicago Cubs got national attention a decade ago.

IT’S JUST THAT when I think back to the six-season time period (1998-2003) that Sosa was hitting all those home runs (including three seasons when he managed to hit 60 or more, and one other season when he led the National League), you literally have to go back to Babe Ruth at his 1920s peak with the New York Yankees to find another ballplayer who could pop the ball out of the ballpark at a greater rate.

Slammin’ Sammy was downright Ruthian at his peak.

And yet, I fully appreciate the fact that it took Sosa a full decade of hanging around the major leagues (bouncing from the Texas Rangers to the Chicago White Sox to the Cubs) before he finally did anything notable.

You could argue the only reason he managed to last long enough to do anything special is because he was playing for mid-1990s Cubs teams that were so god-awful that they could afford to keep him on the roster.

OR PERHAPS THOSE teams were so god-awful because they had ballplayers like Sammy Sosa.

The very idea of a ballplayer in his 10^th season rising to superstardom (as he did back in June 1998 when he managed 25 home runs that month, and 66 for the season) is just so unheard of.

You literally have to look to the 12-year career of Sandy Koufax as a pitcher for the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers to find anything comparable.

Through his first six seasons, Koufax was a wild-throwing pitcher with a losing record. In seasons seven and eight, he settled down and became respectable.

IT WAS THE final four seasons that Sandy Koufax became SANDY KOUFAX!!! and did all the things that we now remember him for and wrongly assume he was doing for his entire career as a professional ballplayer.

These are the thoughts that popped into my head when I learned that former Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood said Sunday during ceremonies at Wrigley Field that he wishes the team would retain its former star ballplayers – including Sosa, whom Wood said did “special” things while wearing the Cubby bear blue.

Just like Sammy’s six-season Ruthian stint, which whipped this city into a frenzy that could match up with anything Michael Jordan accomplished in basketball with the Chicago Bulls.

I remember being at Wrigley Field for the next-to-last game of the 2001 season – one in which Sosa hit 64 home runs. In that game, Sosa hit number 62, and I still remember the man sitting in front of me turning to a group of kids and telling them, “That’s what makes it worth skipping school.”

I CAN REMEMBER when the only people who bashed Sosa were White Sox fans – whose comments were dismissed as being bitterness that Sosa never amounted to anything during the 2 ½ seasons he played on the South Side (and later complained that the ballpark was in part to blame because it was “too big”).

Now, everybody seems to want to join in the Sosa-bashing party. I don’t buy that it’s because of steroids. Heck, anybody back then could have seen what was happening. They chose to turn their heads.

I’ve even heard the line of logic that it was because he “walked out” on his ball club in the last game of 2004 (which also was his last with the Cubs, who traded him away shortly thereafter). Although the idea of a ballplayer on a losing ballclub having a hissy fit certainly isn’t unique to Sosa.

Which makes me think that the people who are now dumping on Wood for suggesting image rehabilitation for Sosa ought to lighten up.

BESIDES, I EXPECT they’ll get their chance to fully rejoice come next year when the Baseball Hall of Fame announces its vote tallies – and Sammy falls short of induction in what is his first year of eligibility for baseball’s take on immortality.

It’s going to take a lot more than Kerry Wood for anybody to seriously want to rehabilitate the name of Sammy Sosa.

  -30-