Cubs: Sammy Sosa falls laughably short in mock Hall of Fame vote

The official BBWAA voting results for the 2022 Hall of Fame class will be announced on Tuesday night, but we site experts across FanSided MLB just couldn’t wait. So the 35 of us got together (some sites have more than one expert – we’re aware there’s only 30 teams in the league) and compiled the 2022 FanSided Mock Baseball Hall of Fame vote. If you’re thinking I’m writing about this on a Cubs site because it bode well for Sammy Sosa – well, you’re mistaken.

Sosa received just eight of 35 votes (23 percent) – the same number as Jeff Kent and just one fewer than Andy Pettitte. But we’ll get back to Slammin’ Sammy’s misfortune in a second. First, it’s important to note that three players – all of whom have ties to PED usage in their career, to varying degrees, surpassed the 75 percent threshold and gained enshrinement in this mock exercise:

• Barry Bonds (29/35) – 83%
• David Ortiz (28/35) – 80%
• Roger Clemens (27/35) – 77%

Now, I’m not sure how two voters decided Bonds and his longstanding connections to steroids and performance-enhancing substances were worthy of baseball immortality but Clemens wasn’t, but I guess everyone’s entitled to his/her opinion. Ortiz, who is projected to punch his ticket into Cooperstown in his first year on the ballot, cruised past the 75 percent mark rather easily – but there were a handful of tough luck losers, too.

Andruw Jones, the five-time All-Star and 10-time Gold Glover, arguably the best defensive center fielder in the history of the game, clocked in with 24 of 35 votes – falling short with 69 percent of the vote. Scott Rolen, who is criminally underrated, checked in at 66 percent and Alex Rodriguez rounds out the list of players to hit the 60 percent mark with 21 of 25 tallies (60 percent).

This week marks the end of the line for Cubs legend Sammy Sosa

In 2021, FanSided experts felt no one was worthy of the Hall – and in 2020, Derek Jeter got the nod in our first-ever Mock Baseball Hall of Fame vote. But let’s bring it full circle and talk a bit more about Sosa, who has already been mathematically eliminated from sneaking in on his final year on the ballot by Ryan Thibodaux’s highly-regarded tracker.

It’s only rubbing salt into the wound at this point. Not only will Sosa likely never see the inside of the Hall of Fame, he’s been scrubbed from the annals of baseball lore by his own organization – and that saga isn’t going to resolve itself anytime soon. The Ricketts family has been crystal clear: come clean and apologize or you’re not setting foot inside the Confines again.

It’s a tough ending for a guy who invigorated the game and sparked interest in a new generation of baseball fans in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Ninth all-time in home runs, the only player in MLB history with three 60-homer seasons and a face of one of the most exciting summers ever back in 1998 – now relegated to our fading memories and little else.