Sammy Sosa

Sammy Sosa is probably one of the most well known players that the Chicago Cubs have ever had in their long and storied history. He played with the club for 13 seasons, ranging from 1992 all the way to 2004, and he put up some fantastic numbers along the way, and won fans hearts over too. However, the end of his tenure with the team ended with dark rumors and controversy, and much of the good will that he had built up seemed to vanish.

First, it's important to think about all of the great and positive things that Sammy Sosa meant to the Chicago Cubs as he played the vast majority of his career with the team. He hit a total of 609 home runs in his career, and he hit 545 of those with the Chicago Cubs. This makes him as the team's all-time home run leader, even more than Ernie Banks, which fans don't always realize.

Sammy Sosa is the only player in baseball history to have three seasons of hitting 60 or more homeruns. In 1998, Sosa belted out 66 homeruns, what would have been enough to be the new single season record, besides the fact that Mark McGwire hit 70 in the same season. Barry Bonds broke that mark a few seasons later, but the McGwire and Sosa home run chase was one of the really magical moments in the last few decades of baseball, and it helped to revive the sport after so many fans were jaded and disappointed following the strike and the cancellation of a World Series.

Sammy Sosa was the MVP of the National League in 1998 as a member of the Chicago Cubs, the year he hit the 65 homeruns. He lead the league in home runs in 2000 and 2002, in which he hit 50 and 49 home runs respectively. He never led the league in home runs in his season of 60+, which included 1998, 1999 and 2001.

He was an All Star player 7 times in the course of his career, and he had a career high 160 RBIs in 2001, leading the league. He also led the league in RBIs in his 1998 campaign, with 158 runs batted in. He was also awarded the Silver Slugger award 6 times in his career, which is the best offensive player at a position in the league.

Some of the career numbers for Sammy Sosa are really out there in terms of how great they are. In addition to his 609 career home runs, he has 1,667 career RBIs, 379 doubles and 234 stolen bases. He had a career batting average of .273 and an OBP of .344. His career slugging is .534 and his OPS is .878. With all of this, especially the home runs, it would be likely that the former face of the Chicago Cubs would make it into the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown.

However, Sammy Sosa was famously and prominently involved in what has become known as the Steroids Era in baseball. His name was reported as having tested positive in 2003, and even without that, much was made about his potential usage during the years when he hit so many homeruns. From 1995 to 1997 he hit 36, 40 and then 36 home runs. Over the next five years, starting at the age of 29, he hit 66, 63, 50, 64 and 49, a huge increase in power numbers.

Sammy Sosa was also one of the players that was called to testify before Congress. He did not help out his cause, as he basically was acting as if he could not understand or speak English, which is course not true as anyone who has seen his great interviews and big smile can attest to.

He was also suspended for an 8-game stretch in 2003 for using a corked bat. He claimed that was the only time he had ever used a corked bat, but it's hard to believe that the only time a player ever used something like that was the time he got caught. While fans of the Chicago Cubs always loved Slammin' Sammy, the final straw in the relationship was when he left the last game he played as Cub early, heading out of the clubhouse and not staying to ride it out with his teammates and for the organization and the fans.

As a result of all of this controversy and the dark cloud he left under, Sosa has not been honored by the Chicago Cubs as many of their other past greats have been. There have been no retired flags, no special days and really no other mentions of Sammy Sosa, despite all he did for all of those years.

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