Sammy's still slammin'

In a season where nearly everything has gone horribly wrong for a Texas team that finds itself with an American League-worst 32-46 record and is a major-league-worst 16 games out in the AL West, designated hitter Sammy Sosa has been one of the few bright spots for the Rangers.

“There aren’t many players who could return after sitting out an entire season and have the kind of season that he’s having,” Rangers shortstop Michael Young told reporters. “That’s incredible. You have to be a great player to do something like that. I don’t think there’s any debate that he’s going down as one of the greats.”

Not only has the 38-year-old Sosa bounced back just two seasons after flaming out in Baltimore and one season after being relegated to baseball limbo by sitting out of professional ball last summer, but he’s jacked 13 home runs and a team-leading 61 RBIs for the Rangers.

Sosa has pieced together the only thing resembling an All-Star performance in the first half for Texas, and he also brought a little history to Chuck Norris’ favorite baseball team earlier this month when he smacked his 600th career home run against his old Cubs.

“It would be nice, and it’s something I’d be very excited about,” Sosa told reporters about the pro-spect of being invited to the All-Star Game in San Francisco next month. “Not everybody can go to an All-Star game. That I qualify to even be talked about is very nice.
“But whatever happens, happens. I don’t want to be out there begging for that. I’d love to do it.”

The 6-foot, 228-pound slugger, playing in his 18th   season, became just the fifth big leaguer to reach the 600-home run mark — joining Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays.

“I’m going to go beyond that. I’m not going to stop there,” said Sosa, who enters Fenway sitting at 601 career home runs.

It’s been a season of redemption for the 1998 National League MVP amid whispers of steroid and HGH usage and a wide-spread belief within baseball that the Dominican outfielder’s career was done when he hit .221 with minimal power in 102 games for the Orioles in 2005.

“I’m quite sure a lot of people were skeptical about him for many reasons,” Rangers manager Ron Washington said to reporters. “But he showed us he was serious about coming back.”

Serious about putting the steroid chatter aside; serious about repairing a career tarnished by a year in Baltimore he would like to forget about; serious about piling up numbers and exclamation points in his career to quiet the naysayers looking to keep him out of the Hall of Fame.

“Numbers don’t lie,” Sosa told reporters recently. “I don’t care what people say. I don’t care how many comments people make. The numbers are there. Nobody can scratch that.”