Sammy Sosa doesn’t do himself any favors, towards helping his legacy, in the new 30 for 30 “Long Gone Summer” which debuts June 14 on ESPN. The same impasse between player and former club will still be there, as Sosa was given an opportunity to come clean about performance enhancing drugs, but choose not to.
It’s a wound that time can still easily heal, even despite the horrid manner in which the Cubs’ all-time home run leader left the club. The 51-year-old native of the Dominican Republic says he’s happy and content with where he is in life right now, and he reiterates that message in director AJ Schnack’s film.
Sosa has not been invited back to Wrigley Field, the place he once called his house, in more than a decade. Towards the end of the film the hard questions are posed to Sosa, as he is told by the voice off camera that the Cubs ownership seems to want him to address steroids.
They want him to make a statement and finally own up to it. His answer is “why me, when everyone else was doing it.” The man who is ninth all time in career home runs adds “I’m a very happy person; I’m good.”
Sosa has never admitted to using steroids, although the physical evidence of his doing so was hiding in plain sight all along. A source within MLB told the New York Times then that Sammy Sosa was among a group of 106 players who tested positive.
Sosa, in the film, claims that four or five of the names on that list are in the Hall of Fame. Sosa is not, and likely never will be. The same goes for McGwire, but the two men at least have a few artifacts in one case inside Cooperstown.
While he maintains to this day that he was never on the juice, he was caught cheating while still more or less in his prime. The corked bat incident on June 3, 2003 soured many on Sosa, and his goofy, far-fetched excuse didn’t help. He’s also been proven to be a liar, getting exposed on the day he deserted his team, the 2004 season finale.
His final day as a member of the Cubs saw him pack up and leave in the first inning, of an off day for him, while claming he left in the seventh.
He obviously didn’t think the security cameras would catch him.
After the game someone, still unidentified to this day, smashed his boom box, and that incident tells you everything you need to know about how his teammates felt about him.
Unfortunately, “Long Gone Summer” only mentions Sosa’s strained relationship with the Cubs in passing, and they really gloss over both the corked bat incident and the ugly episode that was his final day in a Cubs uniform.
The film really isn’t about telling you an accurate, big picture story at all. Literally, more than 90% is about just that summer of ’98. It doesn’t actually show you the cantankerousness of McGwire or the egregious diva behavior of Sosa. It’s a project that comes off as more marketing than journalism.
Still, despite how polarizing a figure Sammy Sosa is within Cubs nation, the time is right for him to come back and throw out the first ball/sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame.
The once self-ascribed “gladiator” says he’s happy with where he’s at in life right now and he doesn’t need that. He says he doesn’t the hall call either.
If that’s the case, then more power to him; good for him. But if all it takes to mend the fence with his former club is coming clean about his steroid usage (which club leadership are right to demand), then why not just do it? Why continue to hold out?
He’ll be forgiven, and we’ll move on, as the example of McGwire has already shown.
Yes, he cheated, but we all understand why he did it. He grew up poverty stricken and baseball was his way out. To get to and then stay on top, he did what he had to do.
“I was hungry,” Sammy Sosa says in the film’s trailer, “to be somebody.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly contributes to WGN TV, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Now and SB Nation.
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