Sosa’s Main Mission Is the Playoff

This was back, way back in May; way back, almost 50 home runs and more than 120 tomorrows ago in this most remarkable baseball season, when six weeks into the season Sammy Sosa was muddling along with seven homers in 39 games. Colorado Rockies outfielder Dante Bichette intended to gently kid Sosa, not give him a lasting message about hitting home runs.

“What?” Bichette chided Sosa on a mid-May day at Coors Field. “You’re not going to hit any more home runs; just going the other way now?”

Bichette recalled the moment recently for the Rocky Mountain News. He remembered kidding Sosa; he remembered thinking Sosa wasn’t listening because he didn’t smile; and Bichette remembered the punch line to his joking: “I said, ‘Don’t worry about it. . . . They come in bunches.’ ”

Some telling advice that seems particularly prescient as we enter the final weeks of this epic home run chase, as Sosa tries to keep up with--or is it push?--the man, Mark McGwire, who has done most of the heavy lifting in this race for immortality.

The focus tightens.

The at-bats dwindle.

The pressure ratchets.

And while McGwire has accomplished this season feats no other power hitter in the game has accomplished, Sosa finds himself on a twin-headed mission: Swinging for 62 and carrying the Chicago Cubs to a playoff berth.

Truth is, immortality is in the eyes of the beholder. If Sosa, home run record or no, gets the Cubs into the playoffs for the first time since 1989 and only the third time since 1945, then he is the hands-down winner of this year’s National League Most Valuable Player Award, beating out not only McGwire, whose team isn’t within 545 feet of contention, but also imminently worthy MVP candidates Andres Galarraga of the Atlanta Braves, Greg Vaughn of the San Diego Padres and Moises Alou of the Houston Astros.

“I don’t know if MVP is enough to describe it,” teammate Mark Grace says. “His homers make it special for all of us, and I’ve had the best seat in the house for all of them, in the on-deck circle. I don’t think his intentions are to catch Maris, but for the Cubs to win.”

He has done it all the while blowing kisses from the heart to his mother back in the Dominican Republic after each home run and mixing in a V for dear-departed Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray. When Sosa sprints to his position in right field at Wrigley Field and dashes back and forth in front of the bleachers, working the crowd, he’s not hotdogging.

“I’m having fun,” he says. “This is the best year of my life, and I’m enjoying it. I come to the ballpark every day like a baby. ... Maybe next year, if it happens again, I won’t enjoy it as much, but I’m enjoying it. Oh, what a country. I’m having a good time.”

Says former teammate Brian McRae, now with the Mets: “He has a little boyish enthusiasm that maybe a lot more guys should have.”

So while McGwire’s colossal home runs have taken the hit-’em-where-they-ain’t concept one step further--hit-’em-where-they-ain’t-never-been--Big Mac has approached history with a dignified reserve that at times has spilled into edginess.

Sosa? He has banged line drive after line drive over the fence while mixing a sheer joy for the game with a wry sense of humor. Try this: On the night he hits his 55th home run--in a victory, by the way--to tie McGwire on the brink of Hack Wilson’s National League record, Sosa takes a moment to poke fun at the tempest in a teapot over McGwire’s use of the over-the-counter diet supplement androstenedione. “This is what I use,” he says, holding up a box of Flintstones vitamins. Actually, his supplement of choice is the herb ginseng, but the point isn’t missed. Sammy is having fun, on the field and off.

Moments later, Sosa grows more introspective when considering the tasks ahead. “I’m going to go home tonight and have a glass of wine with my wife and keep going,” he says quietly. “Maybe after the year is over, and we get to the playoffs, I’ll say, ‘Wow! I did something unbelievable.’ ”

As this home run chase wound to its conclusion, the hypotheses were legion. How far out did it get? One favorite “what-if” scenario: What if Sosa reached season’s end and in his last at-bat was forced to choose between swinging for the home run record, knowing that he may never get the opportunity to do it again, and getting on base any way possible to help the Cubs’ playoff push?

Sosa’s answer? A qualified “both”: ‘If you go out trying just to make good contact, if you have that in your mind, you can hit home runs. I won’t overswing.”

Barring a June-like surge from Sosa in the final weeks, McGwire may have rendered moot the home run half of that scenario. But there are other ongoing considerations about Sosa’s home run pace as it relates to the Cubs’ push for a playoff spot, including Cal Eldred, the Padres’ and Astros’ staffs and the lingering effects of El Nino:

Sosa has six home runs this year off Milwaukee pitchers, including three off Eldred on June 15 at Wrigley. The Cubs have five games left against the Brewers, and perhaps one or two against Eldred.

Throughout his National League career, Sosa has hit well against the Padres (.353). The Cubs have a four-game series September 14-17 at San Diego. Sosa has averaged a home run for every 12.1 career at-bats against the Padres and has hit .474 in five games against San Diego this season.

The Cubs also have three games left against Houston, a team against which Sosa has struggled. He has a .188 career average against the Astros and 13 home runs, an average of one for every 21.7 at-bats. However, he is hitting .343 against the Astros this season.

Because, in part, of El Nino, the wind has blown out at Wrigley Field in less than a quarter of Cubs home games, which makes Sosa’s 31 homers at Wrigley even more impressive than at first glance. Will the trend continue? And if Sosa is as hot as he has been since June, does the wind or the stadium even matter?

Here is the potential benefit Sosa derives from being in the middle of one of baseball’s few remaining races, the N.L. wild-card race. In word and deed, he has spent most of the season carefully positioning himself in McGwire’s slipstream. Sosa has conserved energy that way, has been under less pressure and faced fewer questions, though he has been unfailingly accommodating to the media.

He says he watches Baseball Tonight (his favorite show) and worries about McGwire’s swing. But he could be taken two ways when he says: “I see sometimes he is trying too hard.”

Earlier in the chase, when the order of finish seemed preordained, both men said the same thing, that Sosa’s consolation prize is that he gets to play in games that still mean something; that Sosa probably will get more serious consideration for the MVP award. It was as if Sosa couldn’t expect to get those things and break the home run record. But there’s a trace of wistfulness and a good deal of respect in McGwire’s voice now when he talks about Sosa’s season. “He’s having a magical year, a way better year than I am having,” McGwire says. “His team is right there in the wild-card race, he’s driving in quite a few more runs than I have and hit for a higher average.”

High praise from the man Sosa consistently has referred to as “The Man.” That deference may at face value appear to a cynic as hollow, at the least puzzling. But don’t mistake it for a lack of drive to be No. 1 in this most individual chase or a desire to melt into a faceless team in a playoff race.

“Sammy wants the attention,” McRae says. “He wants to be the most popular athlete in Chicago. He wants to be ‘The Man’ and wants to play every day to prove that he is worth what he’s making.”

More at the heart of who and what Sammy Sosa is today is where he has come from, having grown up in a one-bedroom apartment in San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic, shared with three brothers, two sisters, his mother and stepfather. Sosa shined shoes and sold oranges for meal money. His first glove was a milk carton turned inside out, and he was signed at age 16 for $3,500 in 1985 by Rangers scout Omar Minaya.

“The story of Sammy Sosa,” says Minaya, now the Mets’ assistant general manager, “is not if he breaks that record, but how far he’s come to be put in that light in the summer of ’98.”

In fact, the Cubs were ridiculed in 1997 when, in the middle of a 68-94 season, they gave Sosa a four-year, $42.5 million contract extension. The deal seemed to make public-relations sense, lack baseball logic and be driven by the Cubs’ need to keep their only player with marquee value besides Grace, who while a fan favorite isn’t a home run hitter. Given the escalation in salaries and what Sosa, 29, has done this season, no one is accusing the Cubs of financial folly. They’re in the wild-card race, and Sosa finds himself paired with McGwire as part of the daily news.

Oh, Sosa had hit plenty of home runs in recent seasons, 36 last year and in 1995 sandwiched around 40 in 1996 in productive but flawed seasons. But while hanging with McGwire and chasing Maris, he has gone beyond merely providing more summer thunder than usual.

The knock on Sosa was he could break open a game but never win one. He would punish mediocre middle relief pitching but was much less of a threat when the game was on the line. That’s not the case anymore. Of Sosa’s 59 home runs, 42 would qualify as particularly meaningful--19 have given the Cubs the lead, six have tied the score, 10 were hit when the Cubs led by one run and seven pulled the Cubs to within one run. Additionally, 20 have produced the first runs scored; the Cubs have gone on to win 12 of those 20 games.