The rise and fall of Chicago Cubs great Sammy Sosa

If there was a Mount Rushmore for the Steroid Era, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and former Chicago Cubs outfielder Sammy Sosa would be prominently featured upon it.

The Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) inducted four players on Tuesday afternoon – Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz and Craig Biggio – while the aforementioned Bonds, McGwire, Clemens and Sosa fell very short of the needed 75 percent of the vote. Despite the outcome, let’s go back in time and look at a historic run by a man who was once considered the greatest Cub of all-time, “Slammin’ Sammy.”

Sammy Sosa made his big league debut June 16, 1989 with the Texas Rangers in center field. Ironically enough, his first Major League home run came off Roger Clemens, whose career was eventually mired by allegations of PED usage, as well. Later in the season, the Rangers traded Sosa to the Chicago White Sox. In 1990, Sosa batted .233 with 15 home runs, 70 RBI and 10 triples, with 32 stolen bases in 153 games. He slumped big time in 1991, slashing .203/.240/.335 and was traded prior to the start of the 1992 season to the crosstown Chicago Cubs for outfielder George Bell.

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Sosa played 67 games with only 262 at-bats in his first year with the Cubs, batting .260 with eight home runs, 25 RBIs and 15 stolen bases in limited time. Although not outstanding numbers, it showed that he had improved and he was still only 23 years old. The following year was the young Dominican’s breakout season. He belted 33 homers with 93 runs batted in, crossing the plate 92 times, stealing 38 bases and, in the process, became the Cubs’ first 30-30 player in franchise history. The next four seasons (1994 to 1997) were incredibly consistent for Slammin’ Sammy as he averaged 133 games played, 80 runs, 102 RBI, 144 hits and 34 home runs per season, but those numbers paled in comparison of what was still to come.

Many (including our own co-editor Jacob Misener) say that baseball was saved in 1998 by Sosa and St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire, as they were both involved in the chase for Roger Maris‘ 1961 single-season home run record of 61. Sosa and McGwire ended up breaking the 37-year-old record, and shared the cover of Sports Illustrated as Sportsmen of the Year.

Sosa ended the year with 66 homers (a club record), 158 RBI, with 134 runs and his 416 total bases were the most in a single season since Stan Musial‘s 429 in 1948, he also led the Cubs to their first postseason since 1989. That same year, Sammy Sosa went on to win the Roberto Clemente Award and the National League MVP. Sosa was honored with a ticker-tape parade in New York City, and he was invited to be a guest at U.S. President Bill Clinton’s 1999 State of the Union Address.

In the 1999 season, Sosa hit 63 home runs, and in 2001, he hit 64 home runs, becoming the first player to hit 60 or more home runs three times in his respective career. If his 1998 statistics weren’t already absurd, here’s his slash line for 2001:.328/.437/.737.

From 1993 to 2003, Sammy Sosa had the greatest 10 year span of any Cubs’ player in history. His trophy case is packed, on top of the Roberto Clemente and NL MVP Award I had previously mentioned, he finished with seven NL All-Star selections, six Silver Slugger Awards, a Hank Aaron Award, a Babe Ruth Home Run Award and an MLB Players Choice NL Outstanding Player Award.

Sosa: “I have never injected myself or had anyone inject me with anything.”

But as quickly as he rose to national fame, it all came to a screeching halt. A low point came on June 3, 2003, when Sosa was ejected from a Chicago Cubs – Tampa Bay Devil Rays game in the first inning when umpires discovered he had been using a corked bat. Major League Baseball confiscated and tested 76 of Sosa’s other bats after his ejection; and all were found to be clean without any trace of cork.

He was the latest in a string of baseball stars implicated in the sport’s steroids scandal of the past decade. The New York Times said Sosa was one of 104 players who tested positive in baseball’s anonymous 2003 survey, which has been the subject of a protracted court fight. Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were also among those included. The paper did not identify the drugs used.

Over a decade-long span from 1993 to 2003, Sosa averaged 45 home runs, 119 runs batted in, 103 runs and a .287 batting average. From that point on, he declined rapidly, averaging 23 home runs, 72 RBI, 53 runs and a .243 average from 2004 to 2007. Is it all in the numbers?

The final straw for the Cubs organization came an incident in late 2004. Sosa requested to sit out the last game of the season, which was at home against the Atlanta Braves and he left Wrigley Field early in the contest. It would ultimately prove to be the final time Sosa would don a Chicago Cubs uniform.

“I have not broken the laws of the United States or the laws of the Dominican Republic. I have been tested as recently as 2004, and I am clean.”

Sosa was once a no-doubt first ballot Hall of Famer at one point in his career, so was McGwire, Clemens, and Bonds. Performance enhancing drug use is frowned upon when it comes to enshrinement, for obvious reasons. To be enshrined, a player must be named on at least 75 percent of the voters’ ballots.

2013 was Sosa’s first year on the ballot and he garnered 71 votes, or 12.5 percent. Last season, he backtracked to 41 votes (7.2 percent) and on Tuesday, he received just 6.6 percent of the vote – narrowly avoiding being dropped by failing to meet the 5 percent minimum needed to remain on the ballot in the coming year.

Who really knows what kind of substances Sammy Sosa took, how much it really affected his game or if he will ever return to the Friendly Confines to face the loyal Cubs’ fans that once packed the stadium and cheered for him. One thing is for sure, steroids can make an average player good, a good player great, and a great player a Hall of Famer.

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