The Chris Moeller Archives

Say It Ain't S--- , ah, screw it

The Chicago Cubs have a huge mess on their hands, but they will succeed in trading Sammy Sosa before Opening Day.
The Cubs were ready to trade their all-time home run leader last October after he left Wrigley Field in the second inning of the last regular season game. The club knew he was still popular with the fans, so they called him out publicly on his statement that he didn't leave the park until the seventh. In the plot to embarrass him, they admitted to a hidden surveillance camera in the locker room that they said could prove his deceit. Oh, what tangled webs...
What they didn't count on was just how difficult it would be to pawn off their washed-up slugger. Surprisingly, no one was interested in a 36-year-old malcontent with rapidly slowing batspeed, who can't catch the ball, hit the cut-off man, or run the bases, divides the clubhouse, refuses to accept coaching advice, publicly criticizes his manager, quits on his teammates, corked his bat for who knows how long, and is owed $18 million this season.
The best offer the Cubs received for Sosa this winter was from Washington's first-year GM Jim Bowden, who offered to take Sosa if the Cubs paid his entire salary. The secret is out, apparently.
Sosa has still not surfaced from his Florida mansion this winter, but he knows the Cubs might be stuck with him, and he fears returning to a clubhouse full of teammates who think he's a quitter, and took a Louisville Slugger to his infamous boom box to drive home their point. This is why he sent his agent to the press on Wednesday to grease the wheels of transaction. "I think he will be traded," said Tom Reich, in a statement that was as much wishful thinking as it was prognostication, "And I think Sammy will be one of the best pickups of the entire off-season."
Your move, Cubbies. That's Sammy telling the team he does not want to come back and suck up. He would sooner return the contributions of his phony hurricane-relief fund than be forced to apologize to the likes of Dusty Baker, Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, and Todd Walker. You know he's just sweating it out down in Florida, fearing that he'll have to recreate that phony smile and make nice with his colleagues. This is a warning to the Cubs that he could make this thing really ugly. He knows that they know that the window of opportunity for winning a championship is rapidly closing.
That's why the trade will have to happen. It won't be a good one for the Cubs. Sosa is owed a minimum of $25 million over the remainder of this contract- that's one year, plus the buyout of the option for 2006. As the free agent market for sluggers dwindles, his stock may rise, but the Cubs are going to be looking at about $10 million in cash to go along in the deal. I would say "Buyer Beware" to the Tigers, Angels, or Nationals, but if they haven't figured that out by now, they never will.
As a Cardinals fan, I drop down to my knees every night and pray to God that Sosa will stay in Chicago. It would be fun to watch him squirm in Spring Training, then get booed at Wrigley. I would get a kick out of Dusty Baker claiming that he has been misquoted all winter, and it would be interesting to see if Kerry Wood could possibly look more miserable in his life than he already does.

posted by CM @ 10:31 PM