Sammy Sosa is long gone from the Chicago Cubs, having left town in a trade to the Baltimore Orioles 15 years ago after a stormy exit on the final day of the 2004 season.
But like Michael Jordan, Sammy never really left.
Every winter Sosa’s name comes up at the Cubs Convention, at which fans ask the Rickettses when he’ll be invited back to Wrigley Field. Flashbacks from Sosa’s days on the North Side appear sporadically on ESPN and NBC Sports Chicago, and he pops up every now and then in interviews, in which he usually denies having used performance-enhancing drugs.
“The Last Dance” is now in the rearview mirror, but another Chicago sports legend gets the “30 for 30” treatment Sunday on ESPN. Sosa’s legacy will be examined in “Long Gone Summer,” a documentary on his memorable 1998 home run duel with Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire.
Tribune reporters Paul Sullivan and Teddy Greenstein extensively covered Sosa’s career in Chicago, dating to his days on the White Sox in the early 1990s. Sullivan was a baseball writer on both sides of town during those years and served as Cubs beat writer in ’98. Greenstein took over the beat from 2000-02 before Sullivan returned in 2003 for the final two years of Sosa’s Cubs career.
While we await the airing of “Long Gone Summer,” Sullivan and Greenstein discuss Sosa’s career and what it was like to cover it.
Sullivan: As you know, Teddy, Sammy is the gift that keeps on giving.
According to a Tribune data search, I’ve written 2,091 articles mentioning him since he was a young White Sox outfielder in 1990, which qualifies me as somewhat of a Sammy expert, for better or worse. He was a skinny, quiet kid with the Sox when I first met him in ’90 and still was relatively unknown outside Chicago in 1998 until hitting a major-league record 20 home runs that June.
Everyone in the hemisphere suddenly knew Sosa’s name after that unprecedented power display, and the Sosa-McGwire chase for Roger Maris’ single-season home run record quickly became the biggest story in sports.
I’m eager to see the documentary, though I don’t expect Sammy to drop any bombshells, corked or otherwise. I think most Cubs fans would forgive him now if he admitted to using PEDs, but that ship might have sailed.
We’ve been debating whether he should be welcomed back to Wrigley Field for more than a decade, but he remains in exile with no hope on the horizon. He did make the franchise a ton of money as the Cubs’ biggest gate attraction but left on a sour note.
As long as Chairman Tom Ricketts is in charge, the homecoming appears to be a non-starter.
I had my ups and downs with Sosa, and we haven’t conversed in years, but for the most part I did enjoy covering him. The beat writers used to say in 1998 we had two beats: the Cubs beat and the Sammy beat.
I know you had a different relationship with him. Looking back, though, wasn’t it a lot of fun writing about Sammy’s exploits?
Greenstein: Sammy was a gift, no question. He entertained even before the first pitch by sprinting to his post in right field and offering love taps to the adoring masses in the bleachers. He hit 64 home runs in 2001. No one else on the Cubs topped 17. I once told him I truly appreciated being able to watch him every day, and he seemed genuinely touched. That was probably the high point of our relationship.
There were several lows resulting from some of my 949 stories mentioning him. Would you like me to detail those, Sully?
By the way, I was not interviewed for “Long Gone Summer.” I guess the producers hit a snag in negotiations with my “people.”
Did you sit down for it?
Sullivan: Well, they probably couldn’t track you down while you were on the golf course last summer. I was surprised the documentary’s producers interviewed me, but who knows if I’ll make the final cut between Sammy, McGwire, all their teammates, Jim Riggleman, Tony La Russa, Joe Buck and many other eyewitnesses.
Unlike the 10-episode Michael Jordan doc, it’s only a one-parter, which really isn’t enough time to get into the corked bat, the sneeze, the 2004 exit, the boombox smashing, the testimony before Congress, the years of exile and all the other flashbacks you would expect from a Sammy Sosa documentary.
I think your Sammy-Joe Girardi boombox anecdote would fit in quite nicely, but oh well.
Maybe the difference between our relationships with Sammy stems from the fact I also covered him before he was a star. He was relatively humble at the time. Even during the home run race he always referred to McGwire as “the Man,” which I thought was a brilliant strategy that put the pressure on Mark.
When I handed off the Cubs beat to you after the 1999 season, Sosa already was a superstar and was sensitive to any criticism. Also, he didn’t seem to be Don Baylor’s kind of guy, right? That was part of the story you had to cover, not me.
Greenstein: Yeah, he and Baylor represented a clash of new versus old school, flash versus low key.
Baylor’s first season was 2000. Pitchers and catchers reported for spring training in mid-February. The mandatory reporting deadline was Feb. 25. Sosa missed that by two days, using the flu as an excuse.
“I got sick and my mother took care of me,” he said.
Sammy made a power play. Baylor was the manager, but Sammy was the man. It put Baylor in an awkward spot with his new players. Who’s in charge? Baylor at one point called Sammy’s lateness “a big deal” but then claimed he had given him permission.
Upon Sosa’s arrival, Baylor joked that he confused him with backup infielder Willie Greene. Sammy walked in the clubhouse and shouted: “Hi, everybody! Did you miss me?”
It was not exactly an atmosphere conducive to winning.
Sullivan: That was his favorite catchphrase. Well, after “God bless America,” of course. But you did have one winning year with him in 2001 before the 9/11 attacks halted the season. Sosa waving the little American flag rounding the bases after homering in the return to Wrigley Field was a marketing masterstroke.
I recall Sammy was considered a Sun-Times guy starting in 1999, and we operated under different access rules because we worked at the big, bad Trib. That was when the newspaper wars were heated.
When Nomar Garciaparra arrived from the Red Sox in July 2004 and ingratiated himself with all the beat writers, you could sense Sosa was a bit jealous of all the attention he received.
Should the Cubs welcome Sammy back for a day or just leave him in exile?
Greenstein: I always enjoyed “Welcome to my house!” Sammy shouted that in the clubhouse in spring training when he arrived 12 days after pitchers and catcher reported. I’m sure his teammates loved it too.
I’ll get into my confrontations with him in a separate story, but the funniest came when he pointed to me and said: “My friend here, he say I say something I no say.”
It was in reference to my report that before a 2001 spring training game, Sosa told some A’s players he was on the verge of signing his monster extension: “Any day now.”
Sammy denied it. The deal was announced a few days later.
I’m actually going to pass on your question, Sully. I’m keeping the bat on my shoulders. If Sosa comes back, it’s for the fans. I’m not a Cubs fan. I’m a writer. Yeah, it would be great theater to have him return, but I also respect the stance of the Rickettses.
Why can’t Sammy just come clean and acknowledge the obvious? He played in the steroid era, and like some or most of the players at that time, he partook.
His halfhearted denials, like when he told ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap that “he never missed any tests,” are so sad.
For all of Sammy’s marketing savvy — the mini-U.S. flag was pure genius — he never understood we’re a nation that forgives almost anyone for almost anything. Swallow your pride, say sorry, fire up the jet and come home. Based on this poll conducted by The Athletic, almost 80% of fans want to see you.
What’s your take, Sully?
Sullivan: I go back and forth, honestly. I’ve spoken to enough of his former teammates who’ve convinced me it’s time to bring Sammy back, apology or not.
Derrek Lee pointed out: “He carried this franchise a long time.”
But then Sammy says something like how he is being persecuted “like Jesus Christ when he came to Jerusalem,” and I’m back in the Rickettses’ corner.
Bottom line: Sosa needs the Cubs more than the Cubs need him. He’s his own worst enemy, and you’d think his friends and advisers would tell him to try to be a little more contrite if he really wants an invitation back to Wrigley. Maybe he doesn’t care.
Here’s my idea: If baseball returns to empty ballparks, the Cubs should compromise and have him back this summer with no one in the stands to cheer or boo him. Wouldn’t that be the perfect ending to the Sammy saga?
Greenstein: You did not get your marketing degree from McDonough University, my friend. If Sammy were to return, he should parachute in on the first day the Cubs are allowed to invite 40,000 to Wrigley. By that time, though, he might be unrecognizable, given his penchant for using bleaching cream.
In every other way, he will always be Sammy — Chicago baseball’s all-time greatest producer of both joy and controversy. No ballplayer in this town drew louder cheers. No one hit more homers. No one took as much pleasure in his own accomplishments, like when he strutted around with a “30-30” gold chain to mark his home run-steals total.
Is he the only Cubs or White Sox player to get busted for using a corked bat?
No one was vilified like Sammy when he walked out on the team in ’04. No one had a greater fall. And no one had more self-belief.
“Nobody’s better than me,” he told the Tribune’s Jerome Holtzman in spring training 1994 — after he hit .261.
One of a kind.
