Sammy Sosa has some things to say about the Cubs

[Sammy Sofa]

 

Fitting that Lou shows up in that clip.

[UMFan83]

The entire article is up now. It's a long but good read:

 

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/September-2010/Sammy-Sosa-Cubs-Threw-Me-into-the-FIre/index.php?cparticle=1&siarticle=0#artanc

[ConstableRabbit]

Very sad article.

[SouthSideRyan]

“He grew up in abject poverty and dreamed of being Roberto Clemente. And I think he had the ability to be Roberto Clemente. But that wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted to be the biggest name in the game, and to do that, he stopped caring about everything except hitting home runs. The bigger he got, the worse he became. And he never became that great baseball player.”

 

Barry Rozner is a [expletive] moron

[UMFan83]

I have to agree. His .328/.437/.737/1.174 line in 2001 screams "I only care about HRs"

[Jon]

He was doing it for himself, so again it doesn't count.

 

Honestly, I went to his BR page expecting to see an OPS lower than .849 for 2004. Heck, it really came down to the last month and a half. He had a .900+ OPS as late as August 11th. Had he not hit .237/.305/.444 the rest of the way while the Cubs were in hunt for the playoffs, the front office may not have had the ability to bury Sosa the way they did.

[Butterscup1679666578]

 

Fitting that Lou shows up in that clip.

 

Nice shirt/mullet combo by Roan there.

[ConstableRabbit]

One thing I hate about articles like this is the fact that most superstars are huge d-bags who think they're larger than life. However, exposés are only written about a few and they're branded as prima donnas.

[SouthSideRyan]

Looking at stuff from the 2004 season is depressing.

 

You look at when the batting order move was made, why was there all this clamoring for it? Sosa was OPSing about 875 at the time along with pretty much everyone else on the team.

[apete6]

Looking at stuff from the 2004 season is depressing.

 

You look at when the batting order move was made, why was there all this clamoring for it? Sosa was OPSing about 875 at the time along with pretty much everyone else on the team.

 

Agreed. I just spend 20 minutes on Baseball Reference trying to figure out how we did not win the WC that year. It came down to 2 things: LaTroy Hawkins and bad luck. We played 5 games below our pythag and Houston played 3 above theirs.

 

Prior had 16 freaking Ks against the Reds and lost and the obvious Victor Diaz game. Those 2 games just took the wind out of their sails and lost a ton.

[ConstableRabbit]

Let's also not forget Sammy's ridiculous diving catch in Cincy. The dude completely laid-out and made the catch of his career at a huge moment in the pennant race.

[SouthSideRyan]

And for the meatheads,

 

With the Cubs tied for the wild card lead and 5 games to go, Sosa put this line up 429/556/929 when it MEANSDAMOST

 

Probably just to pad his stats though.

[UMFan83]

Let's also not forget Sammy's ridiculous diving catch in Cincy. The dude completely laid-out and made the catch of his career at a huge moment in the pennant race.

 

Pittsburgh but yeah. The final score of that game was 1-0

 

The Cubs were an incredibly streaky offensive team that had a crapload of power but not enough patience. If they had more patience, there's no doubt they would have hit more consistently and probably made the playoffs. Heck if the season went 170 games instead of 162 they probably make the playoffs seeing as the Cubs were due to go on an offensive surge, and Houston as a whole had to start cooling off eventually.

 

The 2004 Cubs had so many quality hitters but their batting line was .268/.328/.458. A .328 OBP for a near 90 win team is pathetic. To compare the 2008 Cubs had a line of .278/.354/.443. Lower SLG but much much better OBP. They scored 100 more runs than 2004 roughly. And the offense was much more consistent than 2004, even though the finally memory of the 08 team will be the offense no showing in the playoffs.

[champaignchris]

Looking at stuff from the 2004 season is depressing.

 

You look at when the batting order move was made, why was there all this clamoring for it? Sosa was OPSing about 875 at the time along with pretty much everyone else on the team.

 

Agreed. I just spend 20 minutes on Baseball Reference trying to figure out how we did not win the WC that year. It came down to 2 things: LaTroy Hawkins and bad luck. We played 5 games below our pythag and Houston played 3 above theirs.

 

Prior had 16 freaking Ks against the Reds and lost and the obvious Victor Diaz game. Those 2 games just took the wind out of their sails and lost a ton.

 

On September 24th, the Cubs were 87-66 and the Astros were 85-69. The Cubs went 2-7 to finish the season and the Astros went 7-1. The Cubs lost games 3-4, 2-3, 3-4, 1-2, and 4-5 - that's five of the seven losses by one run, where they never scored more than 4.

[ConstableRabbit]

Let's also not forget Sammy's ridiculous diving catch in Cincy. The dude completely laid-out and made the catch of his career at a huge moment in the pennant race.

 

Pittsburgh but yeah. The final score of that game was 1-0

 

The Cubs were an incredibly streaky offensive team that had a crapload of power but not enough patience. If they had more patience, there's no doubt they would have hit more consistently and probably made the playoffs. Heck if the season went 170 games instead of 162 they probably make the playoffs seeing as the Cubs were due to go on an offensive surge, and Houston as a whole had to start cooling off eventually.

 

The 2004 Cubs had so many quality hitters but their batting line was .268/.328/.458. A .328 OBP for a near 90 win team is pathetic. To compare the 2008 Cubs had a line of .278/.354/.443. Lower SLG but much much better OBP. They scored 100 more runs than 2004 roughly. And the offense was much more consistent than 2004, even though the finally memory of the 08 team will be the offense no showing in the playoffs.

Whoops. I remember us losing to a lot of bad NL Central teams that year down the stretch...

[SouthSideRyan]

To be fair, the Giants finished 2 games ahead of us too.

[UMFan83]

And for the meatheads,

 

With the Cubs tied for the wild card lead and 5 games to go, Sosa put this line up 429/556/929 when it MEANSDAMOST

 

Probably just to pad his stats though.

 

I remember Sammy coming within inches of hitting a grand slam in one of those losses to the Reds at Wrigley the last game of the season. Instead of a 4-1 lead, I believe we lost 4-3 in extras.

[UMFan83]

Looking at stuff from the 2004 season is depressing.

 

You look at when the batting order move was made, why was there all this clamoring for it? Sosa was OPSing about 875 at the time along with pretty much everyone else on the team.

 

Agreed. I just spend 20 minutes on Baseball Reference trying to figure out how we did not win the WC that year. It came down to 2 things: LaTroy Hawkins and bad luck. We played 5 games below our pythag and Houston played 3 above theirs.

 

Prior had 16 freaking Ks against the Reds and lost and the obvious Victor Diaz game. Those 2 games just took the wind out of their sails and lost a ton.

 

On September 24th, the Cubs were 87-66 and the Astros were 85-69. The Cubs went 2-7 to finish the season and the Astros went 7-1. The Cubs lost games 3-4, 2-3, 3-4, 1-2, and 4-5 - that's five of the seven losses by one run, where they never scored more than 4.

 

You could also see it coming though. Immediately before that 2-7 stretch, we had a 13-3 stretch...the type of consistent winning where everyone thought "see this is a Dusty team, just like last year this team is catching fire in September". The thing was...at the start of that stretch our offense was booming....scored 11,5,7,3,13,5,12,5. And then at the end of that streak our offense started tp struggle mightly. That series against the Pirates we scored 12 runs and swept them. The first game of the Mets series was really a struggle...it took us 10 innings to score our 2nd run of the night against the hapless Mets pitching staff. But still we won and were 21 games over .500 for the first time since like 1989 or something. At that point I thought I understood the cycle of our feast and famine offense and thought 'this is great, we are in our famine cycle and still winning, now our offense will break out and lead us into the playoffs'. But the famine cycle did not let up and Victor Diaz happened. I don't want to review what happened after that because we all know.

[jersey cubs fan]

..the type of consistent winning where everyone thought "see this is a Dusty team, just like last year this team is catching fire in September".

 

No

[UMFan83]

..the type of consistent winning where everyone thought "see this is a Dusty team, just like last year this team is catching fire in September".

 

No

 

You'd be surprised. I know there was always at least a small anti-Dusty group on this board, but most of the meh-Dusty or pro-Dusty people (and this board was littered with them..myself included in the meh-Dusty category) had that sentiment.

 

Then again a lot of us were not as jaded as we are now.

[jersey cubs fan]

..the type of consistent winning where everyone thought "see this is a Dusty team, just like last year this team is catching fire in September".

 

No

 

You'd be surprised. I know there was always at least a small anti-Dusty group on this board, but most of the meh-Dusty or pro-Dusty people (and this board was littered with them..myself included in the meh-Dusty category) had that sentiment.

 

Then again a lot of us were not as jaded as we are now.

 

Sure, there were people blind to the truth. But I know I was not the only one who was against him from the start.

[kujay]

..the type of consistent winning where everyone thought "see this is a Dusty team, just like last year this team is catching fire in September".

 

No

 

You'd be surprised. I know there was always at least a small anti-Dusty group on this board, but most of the meh-Dusty or pro-Dusty people (and this board was littered with them..myself included in the meh-Dusty category) had that sentiment.

 

Then again a lot of us were not as jaded as we are now.

 

Sure, there were people blind to the truth. But I know I was not the only one who was against him from the start.

 

I wasn't hanging around NSBB back then, but I was never a Dusty fan and thought the team did well in '03 in spite of him.

[SouthSideRyan]

..the type of consistent winning where everyone thought "see this is a Dusty team, just like last year this team is catching fire in September".

 

No

 

You'd be surprised. I know there was always at least a small anti-Dusty group on this board, but most of the meh-Dusty or pro-Dusty people (and this board was littered with them..myself included in the meh-Dusty category) had that sentiment.

 

Then again a lot of us were not as jaded as we are now.

 

Sure, there were people blind to the truth. But I know I was not the only one who was against him from the start.

 

You're talking about 2 different things. People could think the '04 team was getting hot down the stretch while still thinking Dusty was a terrible manager. That team wasn't healthy until September, and there was reason to believe they'd finish strong.

[jersey cubs fan]

You're talking about 2 different things. People could think the '04 team was getting hot down the stretch while still thinking Dusty was a terrible manager. That team wasn't healthy until September, and there was reason to believe they'd finish strong.

 

The quote was something like "everybody thought this was a Dusty team getting hot in September like they always do." People may have thought they were getting hot at the right time, but the "this is a Dusty team doing what Dusty teams do" thought process does not ring true.

[Guest]

Thank goodness we got that cleared up.