Sammy Sosa Wants to Reconnect with the Cubs and Other Bullets

sammy sosa kissThe Red Sox beat the Rays yesterday, and, in so doing, claimed their ALDS series. They’ll face the winner of the Tigers and A’s Game Five, which was forced by a Tigers win yesterday.

  • The Arizona Fall League got underway yesterday, and five Cubs saw action: Jorge Soler went 1-6 with a double and a couple strikeouts (Byron Buxton also went 1-6), while Kris Bryant had a huge day, going 3-6 with a double. Matt Loosen saw some action in the middle innings, giving up a couple hits and a walk in his two innings of work. He struck out one and gave up two unearned runs. Lendy Castillo threw an inning in which he gave up three hits and allowed three runs to score, though they were all unearned. And then Armando Rivero came in, pitching a scoreless inning and striking out the side (all swinging, and one of ’em was Buxton).
  • Speaking of Soler, and also Albert Almora, Carrie Muskat has a great piece on the duo and their efforts to get back on track post-injury.
  • And speaking of Bryant, Jonathan Mayo says that, with the benefit of hindsight, he now thinks Bryant was the best player in the 2013 draft.
  • Dave Kaplan interviewed Sammy Sosa recently, and aired the interview last night on his radio show. It was the first time Sosa had spoken at length with a member of the Chicago media in five years (according to Kaplan’s intro), and it was a pretty wide-ranging talk. You can listen to it here. Sosa mentioned wanting to reconnect with the Cubs, and acknowledged that some things happened in the latter days of his Cubs career that led to the bad relationship the two sides have now. He added, as Sosa often does, that his numbers are so good that the Cubs can’t not bring him back some day. “The numbers don’t lie.” Although I support getting Sosa back in the fold, even if just in an ambassador role for the young, Latin American players, he’s got to stop pointing to the numbers as the reason. Don’t trade on the numbers, Sammy, which everyone believes are tainted. Trade on the memories. On the emotions. On the fun that fans had when you were playing.
  • I tend to think we’re going to see Sammy Sosa show up at the Cubs Convention one of these years. It could even be a surprise. That would be pretty cool.
  • Former Cubs great Andy Pafko died yesterday at 92.
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    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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