Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts 'just looking forward' despite Sammy Sosa's mixed messaging
Today at 07:07 PM
Sammy Sosa decided he'd been away for long enough.
"I'm 56, buddy," Sosa said Friday at Cubs Convention. "But I look 25, right? … Look, you make mistakes in your life, and you regret it."
The schism had lasted over two decades. So, according to chairman Tom Ricketts, Sosa reached out before last season, and they decided to talk in the offseason.
"We talked a little bit about maybe 10 years ago," Ricketts said in a sitdown with the Sun-Times Saturday. "And it just made sense that if he was going to be truly welcomed back, he had to say something, and it had to be more than just, 'I'm back.' And it just took a few years for everyone to get comfortable."
The conversation this winter led up to the release of two statements, one from Sosa apologizing for "mistakes" he had made, and one soon after from Ricketts, welcoming Sosa back into the Cubs family and inviting him to Cubs Convention.
"I'm just really happy it's behind us," Ricketts said. "I'm just happy to look forward."
Despite the lack of specificity in Sosa's apology, after an almost 21-year divide, the shift was swift. The Cubs embraced Sosa's return as the main event this weekend. And Sosa, in his words, "put on a show."
"I wanted to do it because [the fans] deserve it," Sosa said after making a running entrance on stage holding an American Flag above his head, as if he was running to right field to begin a game. "They've been supporting me for years."
He cited the fans as the reason he apologized, putting "ego" aside.
But when Sosa was asked Friday if by "mistakes" he was referring to the use of performance enhancing drugs, he said: "No, no."
Knowing the line Ricketts had drawn in the sand years before, will that response affect their relationship going forward?
"I'm just looking forward," Ricketts repeated.
Even so, references to the 21-year separation kept coming up all weekend, drawing attention to the past.
"Obviously, we inherited the Sammy situation," Ricketts said.
Sosa's departure from the Cubs was tumultuous, punctuated by him infamously leaving early from the last game of the 2004 season.
The Ricketts family bought the team after the 2009 season, which happened to be the same year the New York Times published a report that Sosa had tested positive for a banned substance in an "anonymous" 2003 MLB survey.
Ricketts reiterated Saturday that we owe players of the Steroid Era "a little understanding," acknowledging the "pressure to win." But he also stuck to his assertion that those players owe us "honesty," echoing comments he made at the 2018 installment of Cubs Convention.
In Sosa's statement last month, Sosa said he understood why some players of his era "don't always get the recognition that [their] stats deserve." He admitted to doing "whatever [he] could to recover from injuries" at times.
"I never broke any laws, but in hindsight, I made mistakes, and I apologize," his statement read.
Said Ricketts: "I'm 100 percent behind the statement."
Ricketts himself took the stage during the opening ceremony Friday to announce Sosa's impending induction into the Cubs Hall of Fame, a development that seemed impossible during the feud. Voting for the 2025 class was still open at the time of the reconciliation, Ricketts confirmed.
"It was great to have a chance for the fans to remember Sammy and cheer for him again," Ricketts said, pointing to the extra energy at Cubs Convention this year, "and then a chance for Sammy to come back and just be himself."
