Returning Sosa will find love harder to come by, By: Greg Couch

February 16, 2007

This is not going to end well for Sammy Sosa. It can't. He can't clear his name. He isn't going to be loved. What does he get out of this?

Why come back? Sosa will report to the Texas Rangers' spring-training camp Thursday. He's 38 and washed up. And now he's going to try out.

If he fails to make the team, then people will point out how his demise correlated perfectly with Major League Baseball's steroid testing program, proving that he was a dirty cheater. If he succeeds?

Then he'll hit those last 12 home runs to reach the 600 milestone.

And I hope he doesn't think he'll hear the cheers again for that. People will credit steroids for the big number and look at him as a dirty cheater.

''A lot of speculation,'' he said a few weeks ago when he signed a minor-league deal with the Rangers. ''No evidence.''

This is going to be another big year for steroids in baseball. We all seem to ignore it when football players use the stuff, pretend it doesn't happen. But wake up and look at these guys. That's not natural.

In football, though, milestone numbers don't mean anything. If someone were to break the career sacks record, you wouldn't know. In baseball, numbers are everything, and cheating to get them is an outrage.

This baseball season is going to be defined by a milestone number: Barry Bonds likely will become the all-time home-run king. He finalized a one-year, $15.8 million contract Thursday and is ready to show up at spring training next week. He has 734 homers. Hank Aaron's record is 755.

So it's going to happen, and Aaron said he won't be there when it does. And commissioner Bud Selig? His PR people haven't told him yet how he feels about it.

Back into the steroid mess

Asked the other day at a luncheon in San Francisco whether he would be there to see Bonds, Selig said: ''That's a matter I'll determine at some point in the future. Let me say it, and I'm not going to say it again.''

If I heard that right, Selig is frustrated with having to say nothing about this and vows not to do it again.

Well, that's fine. He can close his eyes. But when Bonds is king, the talk and the screams will be about steroids.

Meanwhile, Selig's steroid investigation, run by former Sen. George Mitchell, is going to have to show results one of these days. And the players union already is fighting to keep the results from steroid testing in 2003 secret. Those results show 100 players failed.

That's the atmosphere Sosa is walking back into, and there's no escaping his part in it. He, Bonds and Mark McGwire are the poster hulks for baseball and steroids.

No one has the goods on any of them, but McGwire was fingered in Jose Canseco's book. And because of the way MLB tried to hide from the scandal, Canseco gained instant credibility as the first person telling the truth. Meanwhile, Bonds is connected to BALCO.

But Sosa was actually free of it all. He had pulled the miracle escape from the steroid mess. Sure, he was called in to testify to Congress, then mysteriously forgot how to speak English. But no one ever actually accused him of anything.

On top of that, his career didn't seem to be unnaturally prolonged by anything. He fizzled in his mid- to late 30s, just like people did before the steroid era.

So why come back now with nothing to gain?

Wants a new ending

''I wanted to come back in 2006, but I was beaten mentally,'' he said. ''I'm fresh. I'm relaxed. I've got my game face again, and I feel great. My body's in shape. I'm ready to go.''

If he's muscular, people will assume it's steroids. If he's not, they'll assume it's because he stopped for the testing.

When Bjorn Borg came out of retirement to rejoin the tennis tour, he said it was simply because he missed hitting the ball. Mostly, people thought it was because he had lost the bulk of his fortu needed the money -- and the structure -- in his life.

If Sosa is back because he just likes the feel of hitting the ball, the purity of the sport, then this season can quench that for him. But it seems awfully unlikely that's what this is about.

I think Sosa is back because he couldn't accept the way things ended before -- in disgrace with the Cubs and in failure with the Baltimore Orioles.

Sosa loves being loved, but it's not going to happen again.

He wants that 600th homer to improve his chances for the Hall of Fame. I doubt he'll reach it and wouldn't be surprised if he failed to make the team entirely.

But if he does reach the milestone, what's that going to prove? McGwire was left out of the Hall. Bonds will be left out, too. And for Sosa, 588 or 600 really won't matter.

At one point, every little kid loved him. I think that's what he misses. But he's never going to be the human Beanie Baby again.