Whither Sammy Sosa?

It's biased because of where I grew up, and it wasn't the biggest oversight in the Hall of Fame debate. Sammy Sosa has fallen off the ballot as well. No one seems to care.

Sosa should have been locked up. A career.534 slugging-percentage is comprised of 609 homers, 1,667RBI, and a career. 609 homers. Speed didn't factor into his game anymore after two 30/30 seasons and an additional 20-20 season. No one else has done that before in the history of the game. He is on the Mt. in a vacuum. There is a statue of baseball. It is in upstate New York.

Sosa's name isn't there, or if it is it, it's in a much smaller point size.

I suppose the answer is that Bonds and Clemens were considered to be the best of the best before their heads became their own weather stations. Before he left Pittsburgh, Bonds won a pair of awards, one in his first season in San Francisco. There were three Cy Young awards in Boston. Bonds and Clemens are seen as bending the aging curve, prolonging their mythic careers longer than we should. But not completely changing the course of their careers.

Sosa is seen as a cartoon. A mediocre player became a titan of the game because he was juicing. That is a touch unfair. During the 90s, Sosa was the only reason to watch the Cubs, even though MLB would tell you everything was wrong with the game. He had three 5.0-fWAR seasons, but would have added a fourth if not for injury. He hit at least 30 homers in four of the five seasons. You could watch Sosa do things that would make you sit up if you didn't watch the Cubs.

It's not like Sosa was an All-Star before things went goofy, but he was still seen as an All-Star. The media has a prickly relationship with Sosa, which hasn't done Bonds or Clemens any favors. You would be hard-pressed to find a local media person who didn't hate his guts while he projected the American dream onto fans and sponsors. You would be hard-pressed to find a teammate that had much use for him. Sosa was very possessive of anyone who didn't play along with the narrative he wanted out there, and his teammates were tired of him. The stereo that Sosa fucked off early on the last day of the 2005 season was lying in several pieces somewhere and it was a testament to what his teammates thought of him.

We spent a decade watching Sosa do interviews and commercials in English, but he only spoke through an interpreter at Congress. It didn't get a lot of sympathy.

If I was aware, I didn't care about that at all. I can still see the young Sosa, who was threatening to catch up to the runner ahead of him, around the bases. Even if it was to the right base or within the same zip code, he could throw the ball from right field. Or swinging to the point where you thought his spine would snap, and bounce off the concrete on the street outside when the ball landed there. The only thing that marked the Cubs out from the ether was his fury. Until Kerry Wood arrived, he was a different kind of barely controlled fury.

The family that owns Wrigley has never welcomed Sosa back to Wrigley, even though they think the fans want him back. Whatever Sosa did or didn't do, he was a joy to watch and just about the only thing to watch on the Northside. The plaque on Sosa's might be bigger than anyone else's if the Hall lowers the wall. I'm pretty sure I won't care, and neither will any other Cubs fan.