I remember recalling with an angle of sadness the day the Cubs traded a certain right fielder to the Orioles. Just over a year ago, Sammy Sosa's Cubs career had officially ended after the team decided it would not be able to reconcile with the superstar who once was the face of the franchise. A year later, one would realize the trade was probably good for the Cubs because they certainly didn't need another player folding under high expectations and intense scrutiny (Corey Patterson, who has also since been traded to the Orioles, was another). But above all, they didn't need another negative attitude player poisoining up the clubhouse.
The first time I heard of Sosa was in 1997, the year before he hit 66 HRs. I recall watching the recap of the game on the news, where the highlight was a HR from Sosa that went so far it broke a window of one of the apartments across the street from the ballpark. At the time, I didn't think too much of it. I went to school in NY during those years, so I had been more familiar with baseball players on the Yankees, such as Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, David Cone, Joe Girardi, and Chuck Knoblauch. Plus, there was no real reason for me to follow the Cubs anyway, as they weren't winning anything anyway. The following year, I started understanding who Sosa was just by listening to radio updates on the HR chase with Mark McGwire. And that same year I started somewhat following the Cubs, as they defeated the Giants in a season-ending playoff to win the Wild Card and go to the playoffs.
During the late 90s and the beginning of this decade, Sosa was the Cubs. Even though he acted like a diva and hogged the spotlight, it was a good thing that he was the show, because the Cubs teams of those years seriously lacked quality. They had a few good spare parts (Mark Grace, Jon Lieber, Henry Rodriguez), but the rest of the team (and the organization) was essentially total crap. But it didn't really matter too much to me. All I cared about was watching Sammy's batting routine (digging in the cleats, pulling up the pants, waving the bat around), his batting stance, the home run trot with the famous bunny hop coming out of the swing, and the kiss-to-the-camera scene after he returned to the dugout. In high school, I had the whole routine down, and I would imitate it on several occasions for all my classmates to see.
I think the 2003 playoff run was the crowning moment of my appreciation for Sosa. After all, he had never been on a championship team, and finally the Cubs were pulling their weight. Unfortunately, they ended up on the wrong side of the 2nd-worst collapse in playoff history, and Sosa's productivity and positive attitude virtually disappeared over the next season. When he ducked out early on the last day of the 2004 season, like every other Cub fan I was pissed. After all, the Cubs had just been eliminated from postseason contention the day before, and I wasn't ready for anything else to go wrong.
Since that day, I have sort of been following the last leg of Sammy's journey. I sort of tried to follow the Orioles to see how they were doing, but when he went down because of injury I gave up, and returned to following the Cubs and the same inconsistency that has kept them out of championship contention in ages. It helped that the Sox won the World Series back in October, but there's always that part of me that wanted the Cubs (with Sosa on the team) to go all the way as well.
Sosa's agent has pretty much declared that the slugger will retire. Even though I think it's stupid that he's retiring because he hasn't been offered a major-league deal, it's more of a shocking realization that the "bunny hop" won't be around in the big leagues anymore. There is still hope that he will agree to play for the Dominican Republic in the WBC and come off the bench, it would be really sad for a guy who once hit 50+ HRs in 5 straight seasons (and 60+ in 3 different seasons) to end his career on a downtrodden note.
Perhaps it is that I attached myself to Sosa as a result of finding a Chicago sports icon to "idolize" after Michael Jordan's retirement in 1998 (his Washington Wizards tenure doesn't count), but perhaps in spite of his selfishness and attitude, he did know how to get the fans to love him. What I will miss most is his sprint to right field at the beginning of games at Wrigley Field so to soak in the adulation of the bleacher bums, the HR trot, and his finger-mouth-heart routine in front of the camera.