When the Chicago Cubs held their celebration to mark the 100th anniversary of Wrigley Field, fans, announcers and media noticed one significant absence from the Cubs legends brought back to share in the festivities: Sammy Sosa.
Sosa played thirteen seasons with Chicago where he won the National League MVP in 1998 and had three seasons of 60 or more Home Runs. His totals as a Cub are impressive with 1,985 Hits, 545 Home Runs, 1,414 Runs Batted In, a .928 OPS and a bWAR of 58.5 and for years he was one of the most popular players in the game and owned the Windy City.
As much as Sosa was revered, the sentiment in Chicago (and Baseball in general) changed. As his stats declined and the injuries piled up, Sosa became surly and many of the media who once praised him, painted him as a fraud, but did so in two ways.
The first was Performance Enhancing Drugs. As the public became aware of PEDs, Sosa was one of the players who that alleged to have taken them. In a 2002 Sports Illustrated piece with sportswriter, Rick Reilly, Sosa said he was never on them and that he would be the first in line should Baseball mandate drug testing:
(From Rick Reilly’s 2002 SI Piece)
"You've said if baseball tests for steroids, you want to be first in line, right?" I asked him last Thursday at his Wrigley Field locker.
"Yes," Sosa replied.
"Well, why wait?" I said.
"What?"
"Why wait to see what the players' association will do?" I continued. "Why not step up right now and be tested? You show everybody you're clean. It'll lift a cloud off you and a cloud off the game. It'll show the fans that all these great numbers you're putting up are real."
Sosa's neck veins started to bulge.
I tried to tell him how important I thought this was. How attendance is headed for the cesspool. A former MVP told SI that 50% of the players are on steroids. The fans are starting to look at every home run record the way people look at Ted Koppel's hair. And there's the threat of a strike. Something good has to happen. What could be more positive than the game's leading home run hitter's proving himself cleaner than Drew Carey's fork?
Sosa looked at me as if I were covered in leeches.
"Why are you telling me to do this?" he said. "You don't tell me what to do."
I tried to explain that I wasn't telling him to do it, I was just wondering if he didn't think it would be a good move for him and the game.
"You're not my father!" he said, starting to yell. "Why do you tell me what to do? Are you trying to get me in trouble?"
I asked how he could get in trouble if he wasn't doing anything wrong.
"I don't need to go nowhere," he growled. "I'll wait for the players' association to decide what to do. If they make that decision [to test], I will be first in line."
But didn't he think a star stepping forward now, without being told to be tested....
"This interview is over!" He started looking around for security. "Over, motherf-----!!"
Damn, we loved rereading that!
Incidentally, Reilly would go on to say in the piece that he doubted Sosa was on steroids, though in his defense he would later write pieces that he was naïve to the situation, most famously when he wrote about being duped by Lance Armstrong who he strongly defended in many articles.
Reilly wrote that piece in 2002. Two years later, Sosa played his last game for the Cubs. In the last game of the 2004 Regular Season, he asked not to play, and left the stadium before the game ended. He famously denied that accusation, though security footage showed he lied. Allegedly, one of his Sosa’s teammates destroyed his boombox with his baseball bat to a rousing applause from the rest of the Cubs. Sosa never played another game in Chicago again.
This is the biggest reason why Sosa was not invited back to the Cubs and this celebration. A spokesman from the team stated that “There are things that Sammy needs to look at and consider prior to having an engagement with the team.”
Sosa wanted to be a part of it, and has expressed in the past that he wants to see his number retired by the Cubs and in regards to yesterday’s events he had the following to say:
“I should have been there. I would have liked to have been there. The Cubs know where to find me and I hope to have the chance to clear up any misunderstanding.”
Players have come back to organizations after severe fallouts, and suspected PED users have even returned to the game in various capacities. Most recently, Barry Bonds was part of the opening day ceremonies for the Pittsburgh Pirates and worked as an Instructional Coach for the San Francisco Giants in Spring Training. Sosa’s impact on the Cubs cannot be downsized, and we are very curious to see how this story unfolds.
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