Chicago Cubs outfielder Sammy Sosa is now gone after an off-season of discontent, dispatched to the American League’s Baltimore Orioles. He received his dismissal in a trade that was dictated by personality clashes with his teammates and manager and the harsh economics of sports, where addition is often subtraction, especially when aggravation is coupled with a high-priced contract.
Sports are filled with tales of athletes switching uniforms, cities and allegiances, some leaving hard feelings in their wake. Like divorce, trades can be messy, filled with ill will as love turns to anger. But long after the initial hurt fades, a sweetness can remain.
We’ll always have the summer of 1998 when Sosa took the city and a country for an epic sporting journey, chasing the ghosts of Babe Ruth and Roger Maris and joining Mark McGwire in a quest for a home-run record and baseball greatness. Sosa finished second then, but put his team back on the sporting map, making the Cubs known for things other than late summer futility and a quaint old ballpark.
We’ll have the exuberant dashes to right field and the hop out of the batter’s box. And we’ll have those homers, shots heard ’round Wrigleyville and the major leagues.
With Sosa, there was baggage too. Disputes over his contract. The shattered bat that revealed cork and a hitter’s cheating heart. The inability to gracefully take one for the team and slide down in the batting order. And the last weeks of another early autumn for the Cubs, when he tried to pull everything thrown at him and left in a huff before the final game of his final Chicago season.
Sosa was really all about living large and making noise. There was plenty of noise at Wrigley Field when Sosa arrived at the plate. He was entertaining and confounding, sometimes larger than life, sometimes seemingly small and petty, and yes, even magical when baseball magic was called for.
He was something we see all too rarely now in sports, a superstar who revealed himself as a real human being, warts and all.
Remember him, not at the end of his Cubs’ career. Instead, remember him at his best, hitting home runs, chasing ghosts and bringing joy to America’s beautiful game with a big swing and a smile.
