It really wasn’t supposed to end this way.
We were supposed to cheer him on into the twilight of his career, marveling at his growing list of accomplishments. We were supposed to smile with him as he pounded the ball at the plate, mashing homer after homer, and leaving a graveyard of ravaged pitchers in his wake.
And we were supposed to revel in the moment, when the most beloved athlete on the most beloved team in baseball led his forever snake-bitten Cubbies to a World Series victory. That’s what was supposed to happen.
And instead, we get this.
Sammy Sosa’s recent behavior has portrayed him as a spoiled, petulant child. I’m not sure anyone has ever inflicted such a complete self character assassination this quickly and unexpectedly. Now he may be traded, all of his own doing.
He first said he was sick and tired of manager Dusty Baker “blaming him” for all the Cubs failures this year, a comment brought on by Baker’s suggestion that Sosa get into better shape for 2005.
After being told he would not play in the club’s season finale, Sosa let his manager, his teammates and his fans down by leaving Wrigley Field during the game’s early innings. Need a pinch hitter, Dusty? Sorry, your boy Sammy’s on his way home to catch the game on WGN.
Sosa was fined for the incident. He is appealing the fine.
Way to atone.
It gets worse. During the season, Sosa came under fire for not running full speed out of the box, after what he thought to be a home run stayed in the park. Sosa’s reason?
He had to do his “hop,” his patented jump once hitting a home run. He said he’d never stop doing it, as it’s his trademark.
Is this really you, Sammy?
After all of this controversy, weeks after the end of the year, instead of publicly patching things up with his team, he comes out and blasts Baker again, saying that the manager humiliated him by dropping him to sixth in the Cubs batting order.
It’s hard for me to fathom that being displaced in your batting order is the most humiliating thing to happen to a guy all year in a season where he threw out his back sneezing in the dugout. Well, I’m sure it was a vicious sneeze.
It is fitting that someone who can injure his body so easily can just as well injure his reputation.
“I’m not a sixth place batter,” Sosa said. “I’m a cleanup hitter, or third, because I’ve earned that right with almost 600 career home runs.”
“Ah-choo!”
“I also need to say that I felt poorly treated. So many things happened, I was in shock. I needed to rest that day because I wasn’t going to be able to give it my best.”
“Ah-choo!”
“I’m always the guy they are going to blame. They blame me for not going to the World Series last year. They blame me for not going to the playoffs this year. I’m tired of it.”
“Ahh … ahh … ah-choo!”
It is truly a shame because for a long time, nobody epitomized what was and is good about baseball more than Sosa. He and Mark McGwire may well have saved baseball during their 1998 home run race. His infectious smile made him the toast not only of Chicago, but of America. He was a team player, and we loved him for it.
Even after his 2003 corked bat incident, we gave him a free pass. Sure, it was a hot button topic for a few weeks, but it became a non-issue fairly quickly.
Had Barry Bonds done it -well, I shudder to think how long he’d be chastised.
With every passing day, with every embarrassing quote from Sosa digging his Chi-town grave deeper, a Cubs-Sosa mending seems unlikely.
Sadly, recent comments from Sosa suggest he has more interest in sticking around baseball for his own personal records, rather than for team accolades.
Maybe he finishes his career in New York, maybe in Los Angeles. But whoever acquires him might want a box of Kleenex.
After all, not only might the tissues be necessary to dry Sosa’s tears, but you just never know when an unexpected, monster sneeze will punch a gaping hole in your lineup.
Hopefully, things will change back to the way they were. Historically, that’s not the case.
Sammy Sosa once represented the way we want our athletes to be.
Now he just represents the way they are.
