Sammy Sosa is long gone from the Chicago Cubs, having left town in a trade to the Baltimore Orioles 15 years ago after a stormy exit on the final day of the 2004 season.
But like Michael Jordan, Sammy never really left.
Every winter Sosa's name comes up at the Cubs Convention, at which fans ask the Rickettses when he'll be invited back to Wrigley Field. Flashbacks from Sosa's days on the North Side appear sporadically on ESPN and NBC Sports Chicago, and he pops up every now and then in interviews, in which he usually denies having used performance-enhancing drugs.
"The Last Dance" is now in the rearview mirror, but another Chicago sports legend gets the "30 for 30" treatment Sunday on ESPN. Sosa's legacy will be examined in "Long Gone Summer," a documentary on his memorable 1998 home run duel with Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire.
Tribune reporters Paul Sullivan and Teddy Greenstein extensively covered Sosa's career in Chicago, dating to his days on the White Sox in the early 1990s. Sullivan was a baseball writer on both sides of town during those years and served as Cubs beat writer in '98. Greenstein took over the beat from 2000-02 before Sullivan returned in 2003 for the final two years of Sosa's Cubs career.
While we await the airing of "Long Gone Summer," Sullivan and Greenstein discuss Sosa's career and what it was like to cover it.
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