For a lifelong Cubs fan, there was hardly a more thrilling player than Sammy Sosa. Let's set aside, for a moment, the fact that he played during the scandal-plagued steroid era. At the time, I was a giddy baseball fan, tuning into WGN to hear every thrilling at bat in 1998, when Sosa and Mark McGuire competed for the home run title. Sammy's home runs were the stuff of legend and made tuning into a baseball game on a Saturday afternoon a community event. I still hear the dulcet tones of Pat Hughes in my head, "There's a drive, deep right field … " and the corresponding "Yes!" from the late Ron Santo.

Sammy's "at bats" were epic. To watch him swing was to watch a man with one purpose in mind: hit the baseball as far as humanly (and apparently chemically) possible. Sosa either whacked the ball into another zip code or struck out. But even his strikeouts were fun, watching him twist with such indomitable force.

Sammy was great those ...