| | ...and I am not for one second buying what he's selling in Rangers camp. Check out this article on espn.com. The only part of this I buy is where he admits that the cynic in him believes Sosa is only coming back for the 600 HR and the chance for the Hall of Fame.
All that other stuff about his changed attitude, how everybody at Rangers camp loves him?
All that crap was going on at Orioles camp back in '05. I went to Spring Training that year (hoping secretly that the Orioles would decide they needed a slow, vaguely switch-hitting 1B with no plate discipline and little power, but they already had all the slow, undisciplined hitters they could use) and it was nonstop Sammy this and Sammy that, and how wonderful and personable he'd been. And we lapped it up. And when the season started and Sammy was playing defense like he cared (which meant misjudging most flyball angles and then running like hell to make great-looking catches) and saying all the right things, we all believed it was going to be great.
And we all know how it ended. Scroll back to October 2005 for my money-based dissection of Sammy's '05 season, but the salient points were these: he made $1.276 MILLION per HR, $212,798 per hit, and $139,648.5 per productive plate appearance. Granted, he's only making $500,000 in base salary this year, but the point remains: the last time Sammy Sosa was in a major league uniform, he stunk worse than a limburger&tuna sub left behind a leaky radiator for three weeks.
I hope Sammy gets 11 HR, starts pissing people off in the clubhouse, smashes his boombox over Ron Washington's head and ignites a clubhouse melee that leaves the majority of the team too injured to complete the season. I hope the resulting inquiry prompts Sosa to flee to the Dominican Republic and never return to the United States, and that it gets the Rangers GM fired. I hope all of this because I wish nothing but unmitigated failure for Sammy Sosa and any team that happens to be around him.
And those of you who remember Sammy fondly, well, I ask you two questions.
1. Did he ever play for your team? (If he did, you don't remember him fondly).
2. Do you remember him fondly because of what he was or what he we can safely assume he pretended to be?
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| | Posted 3/10/2007 2:17 PM - 48 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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