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.