End of Sammy Sosa’s Cubs tenure defined by controversial personal success

Sammy Sosa was named the 1998 National League MVP behind a historic 66-homer, 158-RBI season in which he led the Cubs to their first playoff berth since 1989.

That level of personal success continued for Sosa the next few seasons, but the end of his Cubs career is also defined by a lack of team triumph on top of the several controversies, one which brought forth cheating accusations against him.

Sosa didn’t repeat as MVP in 1999 but nearly replicated his 1998 numbers, hitting 60+ homers for the second straight season. In 2001, he became the first player to ever eclipse the 60-mark three times, a record still standing today.

Sosa led Major League Baseball in homers from 1999-2004 (301) but his production declined in the latter three seasons. He was hit in the head with a pitch in April 2003 and some say he was never the same after. Further, his numbers were put into question on June 3, 2003, when his bat shattered against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and was found to be illegally corked.

There was reason to wonder how many homers Sosa had hit fairly in his career — he joined the 500 club earlier that season. MLB investigated his other bats and found none to be illegal, and Sosa said he only used the corked one for batting practice and picked it by accident that day.

Nonetheless, he was handed an eight-game suspension and doubt was cast on his reputation and legacy.

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"Unfortunately, it's a dirty mark, when you consider all he's accomplished,'' said then-Yankees manager Joe Torre of Sosa at the time. "It's really unfortunate for the game. Everybody's scratching their heads right now. ... It's embarrassing. He's too good of a player. It's too bad.''

On top of that incident, Sosa was found in 2009 to have tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003. This came after he denied taking PEDs in a statement read by his lawyer in a 2005 Congressional hearing.

The Cubs came a game shy of the 2003 World Series, blowing a 3-1 lead in the NLCS. Expectations were high entering 2004, though a September collapse ended their postseason hopes on the penultimate day of the regular season.

With the team eliminated from contention, Sosa arrived at the final game late and departed shortly after first pitch. He told the Chicago Sun-Times he left after the seventh inning; security footage showed him leaving in the first.

Sosa had turned off some of his Cubs teammates by the end of 2004. He left behind his notorious boombox that final game, and according to ESPN, some Cubs veterans “were tired of Sosa's salsa CDs, the way he cranked up the volume, the way he imposed himself on everyone.”

One Cub smashed the boombox, a symbolic ending to Sosa’s time on the North Side. The Cubs traded him to the Baltimore Orioles in January 2005, and he’s been estranged from the franchise ever since.