Once one of the most feared sluggers in MLB, former Chicago Cubs star Sammy Sosa is an outsider these days.
He was on the outside looking in when the Cubbies finally won the World Series last year, and his relationship with the franchise remains toxic. No jersey retirement for the man who hit 545 of his 609 career home runs while driving in 1,414 runs during his tenure with Chicago. No invitations to throw out a first pitch or sing “Take me out to the ballgame.”
In addition to his sour relationship with Chicago, Sosa is one of the players suspected of taking steroids during the course of his career and reportedly tested positive in 2003.
Speaking about this recently Sosa vehemently denied he ever failed a test.
“First of all, I’m clean. They don’t have a case on me. I never failed a drug test. Never in my life,” Sosa said, speaking with Chuck Wasserstrom. “But you know what – this is not my field anymore. I’d rather not be in the Hall of Fame and have a lot of money in my pocket than to be in the Hall of Fame and try to find money to pay my bills (laughing) … You saw me grow up, you saw how hard I was working. A lot of people say so many things, but I’m telling you – they have nothing on me. I’m not going to go out there begging, because they have no case. They had the Mitchell Report trying to find something, but they had nothing on Mr. Sosa.”
He also made a rather odd reference to compare what he’s gone through since the PED accusations became the prominent storyline regarding his career.
“Chuck, it’s like Jesus Christ when he came to Jerusalem. Everybody thought Jesus Christ was a witch (laughing) – and he was our savior. So if they talk (poop) about Jesus Christ, what about me? Are you kidding me?”
We’ll just leave that there for you to digest.
It’s quite the loaded statement from Sosa, who started his career as a guy with decent power, then catapulted into MLB lore with three 60-plus home run seasons. Even during that era, a time in which seemingly everyone was doping but nobody cared, his surge in production was suspicious.
But who knows? Maybe he never did test positive for steroids. Maybe he was clean his entire career. We’ll likely never know.