Sammy's Back!

Not very exciting, huh?
Can you believe that Sammy Sosa signing a new contract isn't exciting? Hard for me to imagine. If you've been under the sea for the last ten years, Sammy is the former Cubs' right fielder who has exceeded 60 home runs more than any other player in MLB history. He was the fan favorite who ran hard to rightfield every day. The guy who carried an American flag with him after 9-11. Who helped Mark McGwire through his grumpy days in 1998, and carried him to the most fun and most dramatic baseball duel in my lifetime.
But he's also the guy who used a corked bat. And is roundly suspected, if not presumed, to have used steroids to get to those heights. And, like McGwire, he wasn't helped by that day on Capitol Hill when Sammy forgot how to speak English. And that happened after he fell out with the Cubs and left the last game of 2004 while the game was just starting. Then there was the pitiful 2005 season in Baltimore.
Sammy is 38 now. He disappeared for a year. He has just signed a minor league deal with the Rangers. He's going home. The Rangers were his original organization. You may recall that a bone-headed owner in Texas once traded Sammy to the White Sox for a worn out, over the hill Harold Baines. That guy moved on to make bad decisions for the whole state of Texas, and is now responsible for the needless deaths of over 3,000 American men and women in a totally unjustifiable war in Iraq. It's a real, genuine shame that the people of our nation couldn't recognize that that buffoon couldn't run a baseball team, or any of several oil companies that he rode into the ground; why did anyone ever think this idiot could run a country? But I digress.
Sammy's gone home.
I hope he makes it.
I sat in the stands in Wrigley and watched Sammy charge out to right field. You can't fake that kind of hustle. I watched his reaction from the stands in Busch when Big Mac tied Maris, and then had the TV on the next night when Mac hit #62. You can't fake that kind of decency. I treasure that smile, bright enough to light a small city. You can't fake that kind of enthusiasm. Sammy was everything that's good about baseball.
I hope he can be again.
We Americans like to build people up. And then tear them down. But, perhaps most of all, we like to see them rise again. If people like Paris Hilton, who have never done anything but take up space in this world, can be forgiven to rise to great heights (she still ain't done nothing worth the air she uses up), then surely we can root for Sammy Sosa, the shoe polishing kid from the streets of the Dominican, who brought so much joy to so many people during his brilliant run with the Cubs. After all, Harry Caray defended Sammy relentlessly. And Harry's word was always good enough for me.
Good luck, Sammy. Here's one fan who's rooting for you, big time!