Over the last year or two, the following professional athletes have changed teams for a variety of reasons:
Shaquille O’Neal, Alex Rodriguez, Jerry Rice, Roger Clemens, Karl Malone, Emmitt Smith, Greg Maddux, Jaromir Jagr, Warren Sapp, Tracy McGrady, Vladimir Guerrero, Terrell Owens, Pedro Martinez, Vince Carter and Randy Johnson.
Maybe we are shockproof. It could be we have built up such an immunity to the sight of a star athlete in a new team’s jersey, nothing jolts us anymore.
After all, in the not-so-distant past we have seen Michael Jordan change basketball teams, Wayne Gretzky change hockey teams and Bob Knight change colleges. We have seen Joe Montana quarterback the Kansas City Chiefs. We can remember when Barry Bonds hit home runs for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
What’s left to surprise us?
I got to thinking about this–is there anyone in sport who would be a shock to see play for a different team?–when something finally struck me.
Sammy Sosa.
The Chicago Cubs could trade Sammy Sosa.
I know, I know. We have been batting this idea around for more than three months. We play it like a parlor game, moving Sosa here and there like a Monopoly piece, sending him to this team or that team, making make-believe deals that transform him into a New York Met or a Baltimore Oriole or even–something truly impossible to picture–a Washington National.
It has become such an academic exercise, such a strictly theoretical proposition, that it has reached a point where I no longer even can fathom what we are addressing here, this idea of Sosa being something other than a Cub.
By all rights, it should be as unimaginable as Ernie Banks dressed up as a St. Louis Cardinal or Dick Butkus suiting up as a Green Bay Packer. The idea of Sosa stepping to the plate in somebody else’s uniform should be anathema. You would think picket lines would be forming outside Wrigley Field, hundreds of pro-Sosa placards bearing the words, “Say It Ain’t So.”
Could you picture Magic Johnson as a Boston Celtic? Or how about Brett Favre as a Detroit Lion?
You can’t. It’s unthinkable.
Ah, but on the other hand, yes, you can. If you saw Bobby Orr with the Blackhawks, if you saw Vince Lombardi coach the Redskins, if you saw Willie Mays with the Mets, if you saw Johnny Unitas with the Chargers, you can get your mind around just about anything.
“It hasn’t sunk in yet” is a favorite expression of two sects, athletes and lottery winners, and I came to a recognition last week that the notion of Sammy Sosa playing for another team was one of those very things that, for me at least, had not sunk in yet.
After all, we could be talking here about the greatest Cub of all time. You would think a slim chance of his ever leaving would be enough to cause a few tremors or two in Chicago, create a crack in the concrete.
This being an organization founded in 1876, the possibility that Sosa is the best Cub ever is a mind-boggling one unto itself, much less the idea that his club might be doing everything in its power to dump him.
Babe Ruth ended up a Boston Brave, you know, and Ty Cobb a Philadelphia Athletic, so it is hardly unprecedented for a civic hero to hang up his spikes in another city. If he had not retired rather than accede to a trade, Jackie Robinson would have ended up as a Giant.
Sosa has not publicly expressed a desire to move on. And he is not a free agent. The Cubs control his contract for two more years.
It does not appear the Cubs think it’s time to part company with Sosa because his talent is eroding. Yes, his numbers are down, but not so drastically that they pale in comparison to 1997, a season in which Sosa hit .251 with 36 home runs.
You might recall what he did a year later: .308 with 66 home runs. Under ordinary circumstances, the Cubs could be expected to speculate Sosa very well might pull off that kind of magnificent turnabout again in 2005. Do not cross him off too soon, you can almost hear them advise.
Instead, it is almost a given the Cubs would like to see him gone.
Who is responsible for this? A testy manager who can’t get along with the superstar? No. A tight-fisted owner who can’t afford to pay him? No. A turned-off public that has had its fill of an overpaid stud turned dud? Not really, because amid the boos, Sosa still elicits thousands of cheers.
No, this whole mess is Sosa’s fault, no one else’s.
Cheating (a corked bat), betraying (refusing to play a last game; leaving the park early), lying (claiming he didn’t leave early), these are cardinal sins, and they have piled up. Telling the world you are too good to bat lower in the order is a selfish act; telling your manager that it’s OK and then complaining about it is a dirty double-cross.
You know things are bad for a superstar when a teammate takes a bat to his radio. So in many a mind it is understood Sosa might go, maybe wants to go, maybe must go.
I am merely astonished at what a delayed reaction I have had to all this. Ryne Sandberg’s No. 23 possibly retired by the club while Sammy Sosa’s No. 21 goes to some minor leaguer in spring camp? You know what? It could happen.
It finally sunk in.
