The Key to Understanding Sammy Sosa's Career Lies in Remembering His 1996 Season

[Matthew Trueblood]

The most important year to properly understand the career of the Cubs' greatest slugger is one many Cubs fans have forgotten. It's understandable, but it's a shame, because once you remember it, everything about his career looks different.

Image courtesy of © RVR Photos-Imagn Images

The 1996 Cubs season began with a lot of hope. They had established stars Mark Grace and Sammy Sosa, and there was a certain measure of excitement and perceived momentum attached to the return of team legend Ryne Sandberg. After retiring once and missing all of the 1995 season, Sandberg came back for 1996, and although no one was expecting him to return to the extraordinary heights he attained in his peak seasons, the club had missed him dearly, and getting him back created a buzz around the team.

Early on, it looked like they might pay off those expectations, too. Their cleanup hitter and most dangerous slugger was Sosa, and if there had ever been anything to the specious charges that he was an accumulator of empty stats in meaningless games and moments, he bashed them over the head that spring. There was a walk-off home run in the 10th inning against the Reds on Apr. 17, his second of the game.

Then there was another one on May 3 against the Mets.

Two days later came the trifecta: another walk-off bomb to beat the Mets, this time in the 10th.

 

That blast, too, was his second of the game. It was a remarkable string of huge homers, and that wasn't even the whole story. Sosa had a game-winning 10th-inning single in Los Angeles at the end of April, and a game-winning ninth-inning double in Atlanta in the third week of May. The team wasn't actually deep enough to be all that good, absent a true level jump from Sosa, and that showed up in between Sosa's heroics. After that third walkoff homer, they fell into a 5-16 May Malaise, even with Sosa delivering another win in that game in Atlanta.

They then treaded water until July, with Sosa going through his then-customary streaks and slumps and no one else providing much of a spark when he struggled. Heading into the All-Star break, though, they found some momentum again, with a couple of wins heading into it to pull to 41-46. Sosa delivered the game-tying hit in a two-run ninth-inning comeback in the final contest of the first half, leading to a 13-inning victory.

It was after the break, though, that Sosa really took over. That level jump I alluded to above happened. From the season's resumption on Jul. 11 through Aug. 20, Sosa batted .310/.371/.648, and swatted 13 home runs in 159 plate appearances. The Cubs went 21-16, fueled in large part by that breakout. This was the more balanced, lethal Sosa so many had waited for over the previous few years. He'd already been an All-Star, but this version of him was a very real MVP contender. He would probably have eclipsed 50 home runs that year, given the way he was hitting and the fact that he'd reached 40 by the third week in August. If he had, we would certainly remember his 1998 outburst less as a product of chemical enhancement and more as the natural outcome of a ferocious, highly accomplished home-run hitter getting to face expansion-emaciated pitching staffs.

We'd also probably remember the 1996 Cubs as a lesser version of the 1998 team, because the way things were going, they had a real chance to win the weak NL Central. They were five games behind the leaders in a tight cluster on Aug. 20. That day, though, Tommy Hutton broke Sosa's wrist with a high and tight pitch, and the budding superstar was out for the year. The Cubs went 14-24 the rest of the way, including a heinous 3-15 within the Central. They finished 12 games out of first place, and while (from a wins above replacement lens) it's foolish to suggest that having Sosa could have made up that kind of gap, things didn't have to go anywhere near as badly as they did. Sosa was such a dynamic presence that his became an equally unsurvivable absence. 

The idea that Sosa was un-clutch was always silly. It's not as though there's a dearth of examples of him coming up with huge hits later in his career, either. When trying to really grasp what kind of player he was and the extent of his importance to the teams of which he was a part, though, it's that 1996 season—the way he carried them and kept them vaguely relevant early, and the way he exploded after the break and gave them a chance to compete until being taken off the field by a bad-luck injury—that best elucidates things. Sosa was a flawed player and teammate, but he was no creation of the juice, and he was no cancer in the clubhouse. He was an elite power hitter even before 1998, and but for an errant fastball amid the hottest streak of his career to that point, we might have comprehended that better.

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[We Got The Whole 9]

I don't remember much about this season at all. We moved from IL to FL in the summer of 95 and I didn't get WGN down there. Basically became more of a Braves fan until Wood and Sosa in 98, when we moved to CA and got WGN again. That is amazing clutch shown by Sosa, holy horsefeathers. 

[Development DL]

I was coaching a future 1-1 in the NFL draft in HS at this time . I reference that because the coaching consumed time , that kept me more cursory in my Cub following , 
 

Great context and I had forgotten this sequence .  Your ability to widen the view , helps enhance my appreciation of pre - nuclear Sammy . 
 

Your desire to put best light on most people . Also allows for a more honest view of a person and their inevitable ups and downs . 
 

We all need forgiveness and only the most self righteous , feel above granting it . 
 

A lot here in this piece . Thanks for the diligent work . 

[Thusly Boned]

I remember a couple of those those pretty clearly, as I was in AIT in the Army and we had just gotten TV privileges and I coerced my way into watching bits of that Mets series, including the walkoffs. First live TV I'd seen in months, and pretty much every cable carrier had WGN. As I recall the second broke a window across waveland.