‘Slammin’ Sammy Sosa is Back!

Writing by admin on Thursday, 3 of May , 2007 at 4:16 pm

Now batting clean-up for the Texas Rangers: No. 21, Sammy Sosa.

It took a while for the Rangers to find a place for Sammy Sosa – 18 years, in fact. Slammin’ Sammy was a skinny prospect out of the Dominican Republic when he made his major-league debut for Texas back in 1989. He was dealt to the Chicago White Sox after 25 unimpressive games. The White Sox didn’t see much in Sosa, either. He was shipped crosstown to the Cubs in a package for the fading George Bell. That worked out pretty well for the Northsiders.

Sosa, however, would eventually have a Bell-like collapse of his own. After 13 seasons with the Cubs, he was a bust as a Baltimore Oriole, lasting just one year before becoming a free agent at the end of the 2005 campaign. And when the Washington Nationals only offered a minor-league deal for 2006, Sosa declined, apparently content to ride off into the sunset.

Or not. Sosa did ink a minor-league contract with the Rangers, one laden with incentives. Good choice; playing in the bandbox known as the Ballpark in Arlington (1.013 park factor) is much more appealing than Washington’s RFK Stadium (0.881 park factor). Sosa also has plenty of protection in the batting order with the Rangers, and the year off appears to have done him some good at age 38.

But let’s not get carried away. As nostalgic as it is to see Sosa hitting home runs again (who else could have gotten away with corked bats and the taint of steroid allegations?), he’s nowhere near the Sammy of old. The 2007 model has a .856 OPS with seven dingers after 23 games. That’s pretty close to what we saw in his last Cubs season back in 2004 – still productive, though, and that’s what counts for Rangers fans right now.

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