but my heart is breaking.
my whole life all ive wanted was for the owners of the cubs to spend a little money to get some decent players for my favorite baseball team.
this week they’ve decided to spend $17 million to get rid of the greatest cub ever.
$17 million. thats like 4 presidential inaugural balls.
sammy sosa hit 35 home runs last year in his worst season in over a dozen years. many who want him out say that he had such a miserable season because his body was deteriorating from not doing steroids any more.
(sosa has been subject to accusations for steroid use, but has always tested clean.)
many of the naysayers point to yankee firstbasemen jason giambi who became a burden to new york since he didn’t play last year for the bronx bombers due to his admitted withdrawl from steroid use.
sammy played 75% of the season last year and hit 35 home runs.
jason played 50% of the season last year and hit 12 home runs.
only fools compare giambi to sosa.
the financial benefit for the cubs “unloading” his salary? a mere $1 to $7 mil depending on how you do the math. either way it’s not much when you consider that we’re talking about a guy who hit over 550 homers with the cubs, and can easily change a game in an instant.
but don’t try to make sense of any of this, this is the chicago cubs we’re talking about here.
sosa is being run out of chicago like he caught some sexually transmitted disease while cheating on his wife.
which is interesting because when magic johnson admitted to catching the worst sexually transmitted disease while cheating on his wife, the city of los angeles comforted him with open arms and gave him a tv talk show and the keys to any starbucks, tgifs, and fatburgers that he wanted to buy.
so what does it tell you when sports fans of tinsel town are more generous to their fallen sports heroes than the once-lovable patrons of the friendly confines.
sammy sosa came to the cubs as an excuse-me superstar from the crosstown rival chicago white sox.
although gm larry hines believed in the dominican outfielder so much that this was the second time that he had traded for him, cub fans held little or no hope for the skinny scorpio who spent half of his first season with the cubs on the injured list.
doubt him all you want, the next year, 1993, sosa slammed 33 homers and swiped 36 bases to become the first cub to ever make the 30-30 club.
his reward? he was allowed to be signed by the Boston Red Sox during the strike sea
son of 1994, but it was overruled by the commissioners office because it happened in the forrest as a tree fell and no one heard it.
he re-signed with the cubs after the strike and hit 36 homers and stole 34 bases.
in 96 he hit 40 homers in 124 games and some griped that he was hurt too much.
in 97 played every single game and people griped that he only hit 36 homers. only?
so in 1998 he broke roger maris’s long-standing single year home run record. sammy slammed 66 home runs and drove in a ridiculous 158 rbis. sadly, an admitted steroid abuser, mark mcguire, hit 5 more home runs than our hero and reaped some acclaim.
but the national league named sammy the mvp of the league that season, and the cubs got into the playoffs.
the next year sammy hit 63 homers. the first time anyone has ever had back to back 60+ homer seasons. unfortunately mcguire hit 65 that year and tied him for that record.
in 2000 he hit 50, and in 2001 he became the first and only player to ever hit over 60 home runs in three different seasons, he hit 64, brought home 160 ribbies.
no cub had ever done anything like that before. not just the numbers, but the hope.
in any game that the cubs were behind, if sammy was due up anytime before the cubs had run out of outs, they still had a chance.
by trading sammy sosa to the baltimore orioles for a banjo player and two magic beans, and by giving baltimore millions and millions of dollars, the cubs are acting just like every team we’ve always hated. we’re making it about tiny amounts of money and bullshit soap opera whine fest revolving around who hurt whose feelings and who wants to wah wah wah the loudest.
poor cub fans, sammy disrespected us by not wanting to be at the last game, not wanting to deal with the misery of losing in the first season where the chicago fucking cubs were “supposed” to win the world series ever in their history.
poor cub fans, shocked that the latin superstar might be a little emotional about the meaningless game, and the team that he was the captain of, and how a large part of their failure was due to his low batting average, and declining skills.
poor cubs, forced to make due with 35 homers and the most deadly #6 batter in baseball. forced to consider the “distraction” that sammy sosa would be to the clubhouse this year or spring training vibe next month. how would they ever cope with their newly-dubbed cancer?
watching the cubs drop sosa like a hot potato for the measliest little scraps from the baltimore oriole system because of the possible turmoil that he would allegedly bring to the locker room makes you wonder if the cubs learned one fucking thing from the boston redsox who had a little cancer named nomah in spring training and on the team for most of the season, along with two choirboys named pedro and manny.
the red sox won their first world championship in 86 years with two-and-a-half cancerous distractions.
maybe they bring good luck.
cub fans celebrating the unceremonious dismissal of their greatest baseball player are being looked at by the sports world as completely insane ungrateful pouters who deserve another 98 years of drought.
sammy didn’t make $10 mil a year until his 8th year with the cubs, the tenth year in the majors. his production and contribution has been a bargain to chicago, and he brought pride and a new way to describe baseball on the northside: exciting.
and im sorry but people weren’t paying $20 to sit on a bleacher in left field before sammy sosa came to town.
this is not the way chicago has ever treated one of its great sports heroes.
they treat their gangsters better than this.
hell, they treat jerry springer better than this.
sammy sosa hall of fame superstar plus $17 million for a bagfull of shit and a mistake to be named later.
they’ve done it year after year, but this is incredibly creative, yes, virginia, the cubs have found a new way to lose.
mo + brett lamb + super jux + franklin ave
saturday april 30
i hope people dress up like me and hold up signs supporting my innocence. i will hope that there will be both the young tonys with the fro and the olde tonys with the bald heads.
making fan signs for her. 