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player ready...The hype for Sammy Sosa’s autobiography proclaims that Sosa made baseball fun again and captured America’s heart, news to anyone whose heart is a prisoner of, say, Ashley Judd or ‘N Sync.
Never mind that the American heart has been known to have legs of its own and will wander off to be detained by the next shiny speck in the road. Still, I am not here to dispute a perfectly good ad line.
Let us agree that Sosa is more than your typical baseball creature, which is the dilemma facing the Cubs, after all.
What could the Cubs possibly get for so enormous a figure–metaphorically speaking, not, as is the recent unkindness, pointing out that physically Sosa has assumed the dimensions of a winter coat–that would be an adequate return?
Mark McGwire? Straight up, is Sosa worth McGwire? Parallel with Sosa, McGwire didn’t do much heart capturing, the old grouch.
How about the newest home run hero, Barry Bonds? Or Junior Griffey? If the Cubs could get Alex Rodriguez now and for a period of time, would that be enough? It had better be one of those.
That’s what we’re talking about here. Tat for tat. Worth for worth. You don’t deal anything as rare as the savior of baseball for just any guy in clean sanitaries. You do not swap diamonds for coal, no matter that enough time will make the coal worth wearing around your neck.
Sosa for prospects, for future stars? Who knows who is a future star? Did anyone know Sosa would be saving baseball and capturing America’s heart when Texas shipped him off to the White Sox for, principally, Harold Baines?
I wrote at the time of that trade that the Sox had exchanged one of their treasures for pocket lint. Even when Sosa moved across town for George Bell, that looked like a push at best, giving away vague potential for solid proof.
While I am not a general manager, nor do I play one in the newspaper, I do know that any dealings for Sosa will be as indelible in the Cub heart as the Lou Brock deal remains, as the frittering away of Greg Maddux.
Sosa is now Baines and Bell combined, bigger than both. I haven’t seen Bell lately but I can guess that he could put Sosa’s pants on one leg at a time with room left over for Baines in the other leg.
Ed Lynch and/or Andy MacPhail have to be braver than they seem or more desperate than they should be to do anything with Sosa except to ask him if hewants seconds on their good opinion.
I have no doubt that what’s behind this is Sosa’s agent, Adam Katz, maximizing his cash cow [again, no reference to Sosa’s weight intended] for the largest payday he can get, and the truth is, the biggest bucks will not be coming from the Cubs.
Sosa wants what, $20 million a year? Sosa wants whatever Alex Rodriguez will bring? How do the Cubs get out of this now, when the money is still real and not drying on a string in somebody’s dark room?
The Cubs cannot feel too unhappy when Sosa seems ungrateful or when anyone points out that Sosa might just be a teensy bit, you know, chubby. Sammy, may I introduce you to Dr. Atkins?
This is a no-win situation for the Cubs, which is a familiar situation, after all. If the Cubs were smarter, they could build around Sosa, but they’ve got a minor league basket full of stale crusts and Corey Patterson.
If the Cubs were smarter, they wouldn’t be in this situation. They would have hired Robin Ventura when they had a chance, paid for Kevin Brown or Randy Johnson, and not wasted two years on other teams’ pensioners.
But the Cubs are dumb. The Cubs have always been dumb. The Cubs rely on dumbness and the ivy blooming on time. At times like these I am always reminded of Frank Lloyd Wright complaining that doctors get to bury their mistakes while an architect can only plant vines. Wright had to be a Cub fan.
Sosa deserves all that he can get. As the old trainer Johnny Nerud once observed about a Kentucky Derby winner, any horse is worth $50 and whatever the traffic will bear.
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Baseball’s traffic is full of stretch limos and Ferraris, not meaning that Sosa is as big as a horse or . . . wait, here comes Chipper Jones, and his clothes fit. America’s heart is out of jail.