10/28/2003 10:27:00 AM by Rob

Best seat in the house

Since I am a mere fledgling portal o' venom, I have no reason to deny a young man's request to link to his View From the Bleachers. He does the first thing right, namely, openly wish that the Steingrabber would take the Slightly Slimmer Sammy away from us.

Here's the thing about Sammy. He's not really the anti-Christ. Hell, if you've paid attention to the whole Shaq/Kobe beef, Sammy looks like a boy scout in comparison. The fact is, for someone who has watched baseball, specifically Cubs baseball, for many years, he is a productive player who has ridden a wave from 1997-2002 of bad pitching, smaller parks, and rampant supplement use to post monstrous statistics. See, 60 homers would be a great achievement if everyone else was hitting 30. Then, you would be at a great advantage against your competition. But when your competitors have their own people who are also hitting 40, 45, 50+, then your 60 doesn't really buy that much.

He's more like a lightning rod for the Johnny-come-lately's, or the Bleacher Dude set who don't know good baseball from good beer.

Let's compare it to soccer. Now, I know there are better players than David Beckham, but let's put that aside for a second. But he played for the most famous team, and he married a Spice Girl. So if I were trying to pose as a "football fan", I might say that my favorite player was Beckham, and I can go around proclaiming his greatness, and it would be hard to argue with me. He certainly CAN play. But if you were a True Fan, you could find 10 guys better than he. BUT I've never heard of them (which is true). I've heard of Beckham, so he MUST be the best. It's another example of the media making up our minds for us, as is the Sosa phenomenon.

Sammy Sosa is the patron saint of the casual fan. When someone goes after me for "bashing" Sammy, that shows me that they do NOT understand the importance of hitting behind a runner, making contact, hitting a cutoff man, holding runners to one base, running to force the action, and of greatest importance to me, Putting the Team First Before One's Self.

So, the quickest way to MY heart is to advocate the removal of His Supplementness. Since the self-described Bleacher Bum got that straight, at least, welcome to the club, my friend. There's plenty of territory in Cub Nation, and the more and the more vocal, the better.

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