SAMMY SOSA COULD HAVE SPOKEN ABOUT STEROIDS AND UTTERED A PHONY “NO”
So much for hopes he was acknowledging his use of performance-enhancing drugs, but instead of apologizing directly Friday, he chose the route of Barry Bonds and choked on his 545 home runs as a Cub
The temperature is one degree below zero, reports the app, which cannot fib when asked about Chicago’s weather this weekend. It’s precisely why Cubs fans don’t care that Sammy Sosa is lying again. They were exhilarated Friday night at the Sheraton Grand Riverwalk, allowing him to barnstorm with a miniature American flag in a remake of his post-Sept. 11 rush to right field.
When conditions are approaching polar-vortex levels, why would any of us ruin Sosa’s return to Cubdom by highlighting his steroids involvement? Because, it seems, we want him to finally tell the truth when he so often has not. The media asked what should have been asked. When he mentioned his “mistakes” last month in a Wrigley Field career that included 545 home runs, wasn’t Sosa acknowledging his use of performance-enhancing drugs? Wasn’t he nodding yes to a 2009 New York Times story that he was among many players who tested positive?
Say it.
Please.
“No,” Sosa said.
No? Once again, he was denying what so obviously was apparent, even when he once hugged me at spring training and left the general appearance of a sumo wrestler. “I’m referring, for example, look, 21 years out (of the game),” Sosa said. “I had the fans that loved me very much. I had to apologize to them because I mean normally they see me play so many years.”
At that point, Tom Ricketts should have turned off the rowdy, hello-Sammy music at the Cubs Convention and sent him home. The owner was the one who demanded Sosa make a statement about steroids in the 20 years since he fled the team. “Players of that era owe us a little bit of honesty, too,” Ricketts said in 2018. “I feel like the only way to turn this page is just to put everything on the table.”
Here we thought he was coming through at long last.
No.
“The statement is the statement,” Sosa said. “I don’t want to go back and … I did it. Everyone supported it 90 percent. That’s why I’m looking forward. People are going to have different ways to approach it. But it doesn’t matter to me. The good thing is that I did it. I’ve got the support. I’m here tonight. I made everybody happy, and I’m going to go home Sunday.”
Having covered the Cubs and seen many of his dramatic homers — including his totals of 66, 63, 50 and 64 between 1998 and 2001 — I was encouraged to hear about Sosa’s “mistakes.” We have seen Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco and Alex Rodriguez apologize. Sosa, sadly, has chosen the route of Barry Bonds, who continued to blow off the question when he was inducted into the Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Fame last August.
“I don’t have to answer that question anymore,” said Bonds, who is 60.
Everyone who participated in the steroids era should answer the question. Sammy Sosa extended himself to the truthful side of life and earned redemption from Ricketts, before bouncing back to the other side at the convention. Speaking from two sides of his mouth doesn’t matter to him. His former teammate, Derrek Lee, said what Sosa should have said: “He admitted mistakes, apologized for them, moved on. We’ve all made mistakes, and we all want forgiveness. So, time to move on. It’s been a long time.”
Instead, we saw Sammy dancing with a flag with a monstrous “No” in the books. “I thought I was running to right field,” Sosa said. “It’s 21 years, I mean, you grow up, and that’s what happened to me. I believe that me making the first step to get that statement out, I think it was the right time for me, and the response right away was incredible. So pretty much that’s what I needed, and now the door is open.
“I’ve got to continue to contribute.”
He is contributing nothing but b.s.
But enjoy those phony memories. The temperature Tuesday is six below zero.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.