Chicago Cubs: Cooperstown will eventually welcome Sammy Sosa

Make no mistake -1998 changed the game forever

After the strike-shortened 1994 campaign, the game was far from stable. But by the end of 1998, the story – and baseball, as a whole – was changed in an irreversible manner.

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The year prior, Sammy Sosa put up numbers that any slugger today would love. He hit 36 home runs and drove in 119 runs. But what he did in ’98 was simply historic. Along with Big Mac and The Kid, Slammin’ Sammy pounded the ball out of the yard on a near-daily basis, ending the year with 66 home runs.

Five men – five – in the history of the game can claim 60-homer campaigns. Sosa, McGwire, Roger Maris, Babe Ruth and the all-time home run king Barry Bonds. Sosa, in essence, formed the Cubs’ offense all on his own. Chicago scored a total of 831 runs over the course of the season. Sosa alone drove in a staggering 158 of them himself – accounting for just under 20 percent of the team’s scoring.

And he was rewarded. Sosa won his first – and only – Most Valuable Player award at season’s end. The best part for Cubs fans? Their hero was just getting started.

Sosa was, simply, one of the best-ever

This wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan power performance. From 1998 to 2002, a five-year span, Sosa averaged 58 home runs and 141 runs batted in to go along with a .306/.397/.649 slash-line.

During that stretch, he finished in the top 10 in National League MVP voting each year – and with good reason. Just once (2002), his OPS fell under 1.000 in a single year. But what made Sosa even more remarkable is the fact he averaged 157 games per year over this stretch. It wasn’t just that he was dominating the game – but he did so on a daily basis.

But a lot of people don’t remember this stretch. Why? Barry Bonds. And, if you put these two side-by-side, it doesn’t make sense. I guess that’s why they say hindsight is 20-20.

• Sosa (98-02) – .306/.397.649 – 292 HR – 705 RBI – 461 BB – 807 K
• Bonds (98-02) – .314/.478/.714 – 239 HR – 558 RBI – 695 BB – 371 K

It’s not as if one of these men is leaps and bounds ahead of the other. Sosa has Bonds in both home runs and runs batted in. But, as we all know, Bonds drew more walks than any other player in baseball history. He controlled the zone – and ruthlessly punished mistakes left in the zone.

Sosa was a free-swinger. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. While he did, indeed, rack up the strikeouts, he still put up a near-.400 OBP. I’ll take that with 60 homers a year any day of the week.

Purgatory for the famed slugger

After he left the final game of the 2004 season early, Sosa’s time with the Cubs drew to an emotional close. Coupled with the PED allegations, his reputation with many fans – and the organization – suffered a great deal.

He played just two more seasons: 2005 with Baltimore and 2007 with the Texas Rangers, the team he debuted with back in 1989 as a skinny Dominican outfielder without the slightest sign of power. Since then, Sosa has all but guaranteed he remains in exile with a number of strange interviews and self-centered comments in the media. 

Next: Remembering the Cubs' top home run hitters

These mark, outside of his purported connections to performance-enhancing substances, perhaps his biggest hurdle to Cooperstown. Between these – and the dominance of more sabermetric-focused voters in the BBWAA that look way past home runs and RBI, he may be facing an uphill battle.

But given what he meant to the Cubs, the game and his prominent place in its history, someday, we’ll see him looking down from the walls of the Hall. Or, we should. Time will tell.