Sammy So Long

It's finally happened. This Tuesday or Wednesday, the Cubs will officially announce that they have traded former city icon and future Hall of Famer Sammy Sosa to Baltimore for Jerry Hairston, Jr., Mike Fontenot and Dave Crouthers. Could the Cubs have gotten more? I think that's beside the point given that the Cubs and Sosa burned their bridges once the club decided to call Sosa out by releasing video of him leaving Wrigley 13 minutes after the Cubs' final game started. While Cubs GM Jim Hendry insisted publicly that he was approaching the upcoming season as though Sosa would be a Cub, it was clearly a smokescreen given the fact that neither Hendry, Dusty Baker or Sosa had picked up the phone to even attempt to hash things out, and Sosa's "apology" was issued through an agent.

While Sosa may put up good numbers in Baltimore, it's clear the Cubs organization (particularly his teammates) as well as Cubs fans, were through putting up with his selfish play and incessant promotion of himself. Cubs fans, myself included, have been hypocrites here; Cubdom was much more willing to put up with Sosa's antics when he was playing well. But Sosa ultimately has only himself to blame. As Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN puts it, "You want to know why Sosa is no longer a Cub? Because he forgot how to take the temperature of a city that can stomach losing but despises frauds. He underestimated the long-term effects of his annual late arrivals to spring training, his no-shows at the yearly Cubs Convention, the 2003 corked-bat incident, the 2004 hissy fits when Baker had no choice but to drop him in the batting order, the ditch-and-lie incident of Oct. 3. Had Sosa made any effort to repair the public relations damage, he'd still be a Cub today." What Wojciechowski only touches on is the fact that in addition to his public relations problems, Sosa was a former 5 tool player who became one dimensional in the end -- he couldn't run, he couldn't throw, he was a brutal fielder, and he wouldn't or was incapable of playing team baseball -- if he didn't hit the ball over the fence more likely than not any runners on base weren't advancing.

In the end, I think Sosa is a sure fire Hall of Famer, and I think he'll go in with a Cubs cap. But he's definitely tarnished his former image of a fun-loving, hard hitting Chicago icon; how much is for history to decide.