It's been a while since I had cause to write about Sammy Sosa. Long time readers may recall that Sosa had worn out his welcome among many Cubs fans, myself included. If you glance that old entry, you'll get to see me engaging in a little sabermetrics.
What I said then was that you could see a strong downward trend in all of Sosa's stats that were quietly helpful to the team, even though certain of his stats (most notably, HRs) had remained relatively stable. Back in the halcyon days of the early 00s, the Cubs went from being a superstar (Sosa) with a team to a team with a superstar (and several budding stars in the mix), and unfortunately, that wasn't much to Sosa's liking. The word on the street is that, once he was no longer the only player who mattered, he was bound and determined to matter even less--or to matter only to himself.
This week, Sosa cemented his bid for the Baseball Hall of Shame, as it was revealed that, like Alex Rodriguez, he failed a drug test back in 2003. It's not a good thing--the constant leakage of grand jury testimony and anonymous test results is going to make catching violators even more difficult in years to come. But in this case, the leak of Sosa's name drives a final, sad, anticlimactic nail in the coffin of Sosa's career. What saddens me most is that he brought a lot of joy to Cubs fans, myself included, but he never quite understood that we were rooting for the whole uniform, not just the name on the back. Over the years, it became clearer and clearer that Sosa cared more about the latter than the former, and now, we have independent confirmation that it was that way from the start.
There's not a lot of folk, I suspect, who believed Sosa was innocent of juicing, and the announcement is small potatoes compared to many others, but still. I'd made my peace with Sosa's departure, but as a Cubs fan, I have to admit to some disappointment.
That's all.
