Grand Slam

By Joel Stein

Until this year, Sammy Sosa was widely considered to be a Big Creep. The rap was that he was a selfish player, a braggart who couldn't deliver when it counted. Last year, up for a new contract and trying to impress his owners with gaudy numbers, he hit 36 homers but made a mess of it on the way, leading the league in strikeouts, having a worse on-base percentage than some pitchers and being so reckless on the bases that his normally mellow manager had to scream at him in the dugout on live television. His obsession with individual accomplishment led him to commission a giant "30-30" pendant necklace to celebrate his 30 homers and 30 stolen bases. His license plate read ss 30-30. He named his shopping mall in the Dominican Republic 30-30. If he could have, he would have named each of his four children 30-30. Cubs fans, who called him "Sammy So-So," were disgusted when the team re-signed him for $42.5 million for four years.

It's weird how success affects people. Most of them turn into jerks. But Sosa, 29, got his paycheck and relaxed. He let us see the generous, fun and classy person he is. And he performed. With a league-leading 154 RBIs, a .309 average and the most home runs of any other major leaguer, except Mark McGwire (he had 63 to McGwire's 64 at week's end), has ever hit, Sosa has had one of the best offensive years of any other player, any other time. Most sportswriters think that he'll swipe the MVP award from McGwire and that he is starting to cut into his fan base. Give credit to the barrage of four homers in three days that broke Roger Maris' 37-year-old single-season home-run record, just five days after McGwire. And he has made it all such fun to watch.

"The reason I struck out so much is because I wanted to do everything myself," Sosa told TIME. "Now I am willing to take a walk or a base hit. I'm having a lot of fun in '98 because I'm disciplined, and I learned a lot to be patient." He says he's cut out the late nightclubbing he used to do when he first moved to Chicago. "I used to be kind of wild," he says, until he got married, "six or eight years ago." When you're a baseball player, you've got a lot of numbers to memorize.

You've also got a lot to remember when you're responsible for a whole country. Sosa shined shoes as a kid to help pay for the two-room apartment he lived in with his widowed mom and six siblings in the Dominican Republic. When a major league representative saw him play, he thought Sosa was amazingly talented and a little malnourished. But since he became a professional ballplayer nine years ago, he has funneled money south. He has lavished three houses on his mother, bought businesses for his sisters, sent computers to schools, donated ambulances to hospitals, handed out so many Christmas gifts he's known as "Sammy Claus," built the mall in his hometown and erected a fountain where all the change that is thrown into it goes to the local shoeshine boys. In front of the mall, of course, is a statue of himself.

So part of the reason he can relax is that he can safely put his entire family's financial nightmares behind him. He can play for those nobler causes--team and honor--that we Americans are rich enough to have invented. Sure, Sosa was looking out for himself--trying to impress his boss--but was that really so bad? And is he really different now, or are we just more tolerant because he's delivering? Isn't humility just the moment when accomplishment outweighs cockiness?

No, Sosa is different now. When asked about his 30-30 medallion, he laughs with embarrassment, saying it has been retired to a drawer in the Dominican Republic. "Oh, it was big," he says, using his large hands to illustrate an ostentatious circle. "Sometimes you do some things, and it's just a situation. And after a while you think, 'Wow, I shouldn't have done that.'" Now, he deflects compliments by calling McGwire--and just about everybody else--"the Man."

"He's learning more and more about how to play the game the right way," says Mark Grace, who hits cleanup after Sosa. "I think he realizes, 'I've done enough individual stuff, let's go out there and win as a team.'" Unlike McGwire's Cardinals, Sosa and the Cubs are vying for a play-off spot, and every home run could mean that the Cubs get a chance to win their first World Series since 1908 and make up for what the fans like to call "a bad century." And while Sosa's 62nd homer didn't technically break Maris' 37-year-old record but rather tied McGwire's five-day-old mark, it still seemed undercelebrated: no commissioner at the game, no Marises in the stands, no infrared marked balls, no vintage Corvette. In a letter to commissioner Bud Selig, which Jesse Jackson shared with TIME, he wrote, "Sammy deserves the same infrastructure support [as McGwire], but he has not received it. While he will receive many honors in the coming days, it is a little after the fact. There was time to anticipate and to be there for him." Baseball, for the moment, was very, very bad to him.

But Sosa smiled through it, pshawing any accusations of America's racism and enjoying the Chicago fans' McGwire-worthy celebration. Maybe that's because he knows that the celebration in the Dominican Republic when he returns after his season ends will make the scene in St. Louis look like an Amish wedding. Maybe it's because he knows a burst of fame isn't worth worrying about when immortality is on the line. Or maybe it's just because Sosa is such a nice guy. Either way, when he hit 61 and 62, Chicago fans threw him a little party, Dominicans in New York City have taken to writing Sosa's name and home-run count in soap on buses and car windows, and more than 100 reporters have credentials to the Cubs' clubhouse. Infielder Mickey Morandini, looking for a seat in the dugout before a game last Thursday, asked, "Is this the player bench or the media bench?"

Sosa and McGwire have turned the last week of the season into the most exciting battle that ever existed over the annual National League home-run title. It's going so fast, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED can't keep up with the changes, choosing to print two covers on its past issue. It's also the greatest Rorschach test sports has given us in years. Are you pulling for the giant guy who's whiter than a baseball, the one who has been closing in on the record for years, who hits 500-ft. parodies of gravity's rainbow and yet kisses his 10-year-old child and cries over the mere notion of abused children? Or are you rooting for the compact Dominican ex-shoeshine boy, the exuberant underdog, the one who runs in from the outfield to congratulate his home-run rival? These two, of course, are rooting for a tie. That's what nice guys do.

--Reported by Julie Grace with the Chicago Cubs

With reporting by Julie Grace with the Chicago Cubs