Baseball still got it badly wrong, never mind Bud Selig, in semi-pressed suit, presenting to Sammy Sosa something called the Commissioner’s Historic Achievement Award without indicating just which bit of history Sosa had achieved.
It could not be 0 for 17, Sosa’s running subtotal at the moment. It cannot be a coincidence that public failure has come for Sosa just at the very moment the public is trying to make up to Sosa.
“I been 0 for 50 before,” Sosa said, “so it don’t make no difference to me.”
Now, 0 for 50 would be a historic achievement on any other team, but on the Cubs it is usually called September.
Selig did say that Sosa was “forever linked to Ruth, Aaron, Ernie Banks and Billy Williams,” and the comma between Ruth and Aaron is mine, assuming that Selig was not talking about a favorite aunt.
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Selig was doubtlessly prompted to mention Banks and Williams because they were on hand, but the linkage from Sosa is to Roger Maris and Mark McGwire. Whoever passed Selig his notes must be the same guy who forgot to tell Bob Dole the Dodgers were no longer in Brooklyn.
Even the trophy looked like something you would give a beer league bowling runner-up.
Almost no sooner had Selig handed Sosa the shiny historic souvenir when, back in Selig’s own park, Mark McGwire was historying the cheese out of the baseball all over America’s Dairyland.
Whomp. There’s No. 65. Catch that on your day, Sammy Sosa.
“I hope he continues until he hits 70,” said Sosa, sounding just as sincere as ever.
McGwire did send congratulations, formal recognition a week late of Sosa’s breaking Roger Maris’ home run record as well as McGwire, and all around it was a day of making up to Sammy. The Maris family was at Wrigley, as was, more importantly, the Sosa family, the Cub family and all of Sosa’s friends in the right-field bleachers.
Sosa thanked the bleachers last and first, in order, God and Selig, inadvertently elevating Selig to the same place in the cosmos that Taylor occupies with Lord.
This had the odd feel of getting paid in advance with still five games to go in the season, and it was all just too desperately apologetic. This does not make up for the spontaneous appreciation ungiven last week.
The contrast between Sammy Sosa day and the Mark McGwire celebration was that McGwire’s came immediately with his achievement. This came after lots of blushing and back filling and with Sosa not being able to get the ball out of the infield.
This thing was scheduled as a simple club function and only turned into a commemoration with the addition of Selig and his historical trinket, along with state and city proclamations in response to the grander treatment of McGwire.
And it came in the middle of Sosa’s extended and embarrassing failure. For the second day in a row, Sosa made the last out of the game, though this time he did not take a teammate with him.
“It’s only three days without hits,” said Sosa, forgetting the last day in San Diego makes it four. “I ain’t done yet.”
No one is suggesting Sosa is done yet. What is being suggested is that in the middle of a race to the playoffs, maybe such summing-up celebrations are just a bit premature. Some might blame umpire Harry Wendelstedt for blowing a home run call should the Cubs not make the playoffs.
Filling Sosa’s home up with his relatives and the anxiousness of anticipation for a day of appreciation might have done more harm.
Sosa conceded that with so many wishing him so well on his day, maybe he was trying just a little too hard to hit a home run, and the end effect is that even on the day he is supposed to remember forever he says: “It was a bad weekend for me. I just have to take it like a man.”
That defines Sosa. He knows he did nothing to prevent the Cubs from being swept by the Cincinnati Reds, to fall a game behind the playoffs with five to play. This is all filligree for someone else, kind of like a funeral being for the survivors and not for the guest of honor.
“He has handled all of this so well,” said manager Jim Riggleman, “but I suppose at some point, it has to be a distraction for Sammy.”
It was a day “for the greatest season in the history of Chicago Cubs baseball,” in the words of GM Ed Lynch, and there is no argument with that.
But there had to be a better way. How best else to do this, to let Sosa know how his season is appreciated? I say how about Opening Day next year, after this is all added up?
In the words of that great American philosopher Kenny Rogers, you never count your money while you’re sitting at the table. Or standing in the on-deck circle either.