Sammy Sosa: 1968—: Professional Baseball Player Biography - From Poverty To Professional Athletics, Stardom Amid Frustrations, Glory Days With The Cubs, A Spectacular Season
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Sammy Sosa: 1968—: Professional baseball player.
Chicago Cubs outfielder Sammy Sosa slugged his way to fame and revived flagging attendance at American baseball games by challenging the 1961 hitting record of New York Yankees slugger Roger Maris. In 1998 fans and newcomers to the game sat on edge anticipating Sosa's next swat of the bat. In addition to breaking the 37-year-old National League home-run record and resetting the bar at 66, he became a Latino hero as the first immigrant and first non-white player to gain 60 or more runs in a season.
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Born on November 12, 1968, in San Pedro de Macoris on the southeastern shore of the Dominican Republic, Sosa is the son of farmer Juan Montero and housewife Lucrecia Sosa. After his father's sudden death from a brain aneurysm in 1975, Sammy, his two sisters and four brothers, and their mother lived in a two-bedroom apartment in an abandoned hospital. Sosa earned dimes by selling oranges on …
At age 19, while playing for a Class A team in Gastonia, North Carolina, Sosa was named South Atlantic League All-Star. The next year, he moved up to the Florida State League in Port Charlotte and advanced to the Rangers' Double A club in Tulsa, Oklahoma. More mature and less flighty at age 20, in 66 games, he averaged .297 at batting and racked up seven home runs and 31 runs batted in (RBI…
Sosa began his long romance with fans of the Chicago Cubs after a trade in 1992. A broken right hand and ankle reduced his participation to 67 games. By 1993, his health restored, he managed 93 runs, 36 stolen bases, and 33 home runs and reached stardom as the first player in team history to chalk up 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases in the same season. To commemorate a personal victory and team mi…
Sosa's name began to attach to controversy at the halfway point of 1997, when Cubs general manager Ed Lynch offered him $42.5 million for a four-year contract extension. An anti-Sosa rumble among fans and the press left doubt that "So-So" Sosa was worth the boost in pay. Some critics charged that he had become so self-absorbed with the quest to smash records that he placed the…
Immersed in family responsibilities at age 30, at a Chicago condo overlooking Lake Michigan and a luxury summer home at Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic, Sosa centered his hopes and activities on his wife, Sonia, and their children, Keysha, Kenia, Sammy, Jr., and Michael. Sosa treated his mother to a series of three upgrades in residence and rewarded himself with a fleet of expensi…
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