Cut the bluffing. End the charade. Bleep blame.
No more saving face or money. For once, move forward instead of backward. Make the two letters your franchise values most–PR–stand for Pitching Rules. Quit worrying about how he and his agents play the media as if it’s the Tijuana Brass.
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Be honest. Tell your fans that Sammy Sosa is a great power hitter, a potential final piece to the puzzle for five or six other teams, but that you’re remaking your club in the mold of the Yankees dynasty. Vow to spend major-market money on pitching, defense and clutch hitting. Stress unselfish chemistry and winning.
You have Sosa right where you want him, doubting his agents and open-market worth after next season. Plunge. Tell him what’s best for you both is a heavily hyped auction, building toward next month’s spring training.
Hope the Yankees want to keep Sosa from going to the Mets, or the Mets want to keep him from the Braves, or the Braves from the Rockies or the Rockies from the Mariners or the Mariners from the Tigers. Who knows what hysteria you might create if you convince Sosa to waive his trade-veto rights and work with you?
This is what the Cubs should be doing. Instead they took their usual called strike two at Friday’s negotiating session in South Florida. They’re still playing a tired blame game with Sosa, still humoring him, still trying to win the irrelevant right to say, “Sammy made it impossible for us to keep him.”
This is getting older faster than Sosa, who’s 32. Sosa’s primal drive is his Latin American pride. He wants to be able to return to his Dominican homeland boasting he’s treated and paid as royally in America as any Caribbean-born star.
Because Dennis FitzSimons, the Tribune Co. executive in charge of the Cubs, accompanied General Manager Andy MacPhail to make an unprecedented Cubs offer for a free agent, $105 million for pitcher Mike Hampton, Sosa wanted Manny Ramirez and Juan Gonzalez to hear FitzSimons traveled to sweet-talk him.
Never mind this weakened his agents’ leverage. This signaled Sosa wasn’t pleased with their progress, feared a personality conflict had developed or didn’t trust their version of negotiations. So in swept Sosa to speak and hear for himself, face to face with FitzSimons, presidente a presidente.
Advantage, Cubs, who reportedly didn’t budge. Now Sosa looks desperate.
Yet what if he accepts an offer they pray he refuses? They’ve carefully chosen a figure just above public approval and just beneath Sosa’s “I Am Baseball” pride. Beyond next year’s $12 million, they have offered four more at $17 million. That’s an $80 million bluff. Sounds impressive–unless he takes it.
Even that is too much for too long to guarantee Sosa. As he said upon arrival at last year’s spring training, “I am a slugger now.” He has transformed his body from sinewy stallion into a McGwire-battling Clydesdale, all brawn and puffed cheeks. He has increased his injury and aging risk. He could have another monster season, maybe two, but your bang for your buck could drop dangerously thereafter.
Sosa at least belongs in the American League. As a DH his outfield adventures and wild arm won’t be an immediate liability.
But as a Cub, he has become a sideshow symbol of the criticism management fears most. Such frustrating irony: Too many fans who say the Cubs are “too cheap to put a winner on the field” are the same who pack the park and head home happy if Sammy hits a homer in a losing cause. He has become a clubhouse cancer because he is lost in his box-office, box-score idolatry. He became Chicago’s Next Jordan, minus the rings.
He has come to believe he’s bigger than manager Don Baylor, bigger than the team, bigger than winning. Extending his contract would be extending the emphasis that has made this baseball’s worst team since mid-1999.
Ramirez’s eight-year, $160 million deal in Boston was Sosa’s death knell in Chicago. The Cubs obviously have been stockpiling softball-team depth–Todd Hundley, Matt Stairs, Ron Coomer, Julio Zuleta, maybe even Henry Rodriguez–to offset the loss of Sosa’s power next season. So why continue the charade?
Because a team owned by a media company is too sensitive to media criticism. If the Cubs truly care about winning, they’ll quit worrying about public perception and start spending more money.
But not on Sosa.