When I was in grade school, I had this thing about drawing. I did it all the time. Classes were generally boring, and a couple of the teachers were borderline incompetent, so I would draw a lot during certain subjects. Without fail, every day, I would draw at least one picture of Sammy Sosa. He was what I knew. He was the face of the Cubs, and the one thing that always made them worth watching. Around the time I was in 5th grade (spring of ‘97, I think, was when we did this project), my school had some lame project wherein we would all contribute a square for a big quilt. the squares would then be sewn together to form the face of said quilt, and there were about 6 of them (one for each pair of grades, pre-K through 8th). Pretty much everyone drew a picture about the school or friends or one of the teachers. Me? I drew Sammy fucking Sosa.
I once won a contest wherein I got to go onto Wrigley Field and run the bases, and then meet a bunch of players and get their signatures on a ball. I wish I had a sweet Sammy Sosa story there, but alas, I don’t. His name’s on the ball, though (as are Fergie Jenkins and Billy Williams’s names). The only player I really remember meeting then was Randy Myers, and that’s because I told him he did an awesome job tackling a fan who had run onto the field to attack him.
That digression aside, I remember the home run chase of 1998, and feeling, for the first time I could remember, that the Cubs actually had a pretty good team. I came home from school one day to catch the last ten or eleven Astros that some kid named Kerry Wood was striking out, and Sammy Sosa was hitting home runs like Brett Myers hits his wife. I had to go to the library to get a book for a school project the night McGwire hit number 62, but I made sure my mother floored it so I wouldn’t miss too much of the game. That was one of the best moments I have ever witnessed in professional sports. They both looked genuinely happy (well, I’m sure McGwire was), but I felt like Sosa was also really glad just to be a part of something that ridiculously special. Whatever else it means, whatever else may be, those two men saved baseball right then and there.
I started to be less enthralled with Sosa as he went into decline in 2003 and 2004. I was still a bit young/immature to realize that, even at less than his best, he was still really good. I had come to expect that otherworldly kind of awesome he had been for the last several years. I felt bad for him when he got nailed in the head and went on the DL because of a sneeze. I was a bit bewildered that so many seemed to be turning on him; I think the corked bat incident was the major catalyst there. It wasn’t the same Sammy Sosa. He still had his moments, like in game 1 of the 2003 NLCS, and there were still many more, but he started to be less and less the star of the show. And because for so long, he had been carrying on a solo performance, he seemed to have trouble with that.
By the end of the 2004 season, I had started to buy into the media bullshit about how he was selfish for not wanting to move down in the batting order, and sundry other things. I was angry that he left the last game of 2004 early, though I had not yet realized what it would mean. For quite awhile after, I was part of the crowd of sheep that lambasted his name. I patted myself on the back for “knowing†that Sosa was a prima donna whose hype had outpaced his talents. I thought it was awesome that my favorite ballplayer was rumored to have smashed his boombox. And I was damn sure that he had done steroids, and that made him a lying and detestable cheater. In short, I had become a complete twat relative to the issue of Sammy Sosa.
Reset.
I have since been able to put it all in better perspective. Sammy Sosa was, without a doubt, one of the best ballplayers I have ever seen. Only Albert Pujols and Barry Bonds come to mind as having been better. Maybe Griffey, but I don’t think so. Sammy Sosa was what made me a Cubs fan. Not family or tradition or any of that. Motherfucking Sammy Sosa. Sammy Sosa and the smile that took up half of his face, the daily sprint out to RF, the monster home runs that came in bunches, and the knowledge that he would bust his ass every day for a team that did not see fit to surround him with talent capable of making it to October. Sammy Sosa was the Cubs. By 2004, he had become one of the Cubs. I’m not sure many people were ready to deal with that, and perhaps Sammy least of all. I thought it was sublimely just that he hit his 600th HR against the team that had discarded him so lightly after all he had given that, and that with that HR, he had finally hit one against every team in MLB. Sammy Sosa was the best position player I have ever seen in a Cubs uniform, and it’s not even close. He belongs in the Hall of Fame, though the Cubs aren’t really deserving of having their cap on his plaque.
Had I Crane Kenney’s job, Sammy Sosa is one of the two people I would first invite back to Wrigley Field (the other being Steve Bartman, because come the fuck on). I’d ask him to throw out the first pitch, sing the seventh inning stretch, and make one last sprint to RF, so he could help raise the flag with his name and number on it, because the only Cub as deserving of one of those flags as Sammy is Ernie Banks.
1. berselius (view all comments) — Jun 06, 2009 @ 12:18 PM
Right on, Perkins. Great story. I agree about Bartman too,