Sosa tested positive? Yeah, and the sky is blue

Sammy Sosa took performance-enhancing drugs.

And in other news, the sky is blue, it snows in Chicago in the winter, and Rex Grossman is bad.

Shocking stuff.

Seriously, did you need to see The New York Times' report Tuesday afternoon - that put Sosa on the list of players who tested positive in 2003 - to know he was juicing?

If you did, you're either delusional or asleep, but it's time to pull the blinds on the cave and see this guy for what he was during his years on the North Side.

The guy went from stick figure when he arrived from the South Side in the spring of 1992 to huge within a couple of years.

But that was nothing compared to the transformation that occurred following the 1997 season.

It was in the final series of that year that I stood in St. Louis and watched Sosa, his mouth agape, as Mark McGwire - cutoff sleeves and all - took batting practice. Sosa saw the massive chest and shoulders, the mammoth blasts, and the monster crowds that showed up to watch him swing.

Most important, Sosa saw the dozens of cameras, still and moving, that focused on every move McGwire made.

McGwire abused Cubs pitchers that entire weekend, and Sosa couldn't take his eyes off him. He saw the adulation McGwire received from the fans, and he wanted it all. Sosa craved attention and drank it up when he got it.

It's why he turned that incredible body he once possessed into that hulking figure that returned in 1998 with at least 30 pounds more than the previous September.

It's why he chose to be a bad baseball player who could hit 60 homers instead of a great all-around player who could steal bases and play the outfield.

It's why he corked bats when he felt his ability slipping away, because getting booed at Wrigley Field injured him to the core.

It's why he claimed a sneeze is how he once hurt his back so bad he couldn't walk, and why he left that last game early in 2004 and then lied about it, forcing the Cubs to bury him with the threat of videotape evidence.

It's why he tried to come back so frequently the last few years, because what water and food is to a normal person, cheers and bows are to Sosa.

It is what eternally feeds that monstrous ego.

In fairness to Sosa, the legend was created here by all who adored him, from fans and media to Cubs employees who paid Sosa millions and refused to see him for what he was - when he was as transparent as that idiotic bottle of Flintstones vitamins he once held up for the cameras.

That, by the way, was done simply to mock McGwire in 1998, when McGwire had been spotted with a bottle of andro in his locker.

He seemed to be mocking McGwire again last week when he told ESPNDeportes.com, "I will calmly wait for my induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Don't I have the numbers to be inducted?"

Sosa, if he wasn't already, will now formally be linked forever with McGwire, and neither will ever see the shrine in Cooperstown unless they take the tour with the rest of us schmoes.

But one of the all-time con artists, who was enabled by an organization for a decade and allowed to fool the paying public for a thousand games, also will be tied to McGwire for their testimony before Congress in March 2005.

Sosa denied all wrongdoing, something for which he may now be receiving a phone call from lawmakers, who don't like being lied to when they're investigating such nonsense.

While McGwire said nothing that day, at least he wasn't dishonest.

Another who testified was Bud Selig, and after so many years of promoting Sosa and McGwire as the duo who saved baseball from financial ruin - and the world from communism - Selig pretended that day that he'd never even heard the word steroids.

Tuesday's news is yet another wretched stain on the commissioner's legacy.

However, the Great Home Run Race of 1998 that Selig made the focus of all of baseball, also made all of Sosa's dreams come true. After years of being completely ignored by most media, once they arrived on Sosa's doorstep in June 1998 he wasn't going to let that attention get away under any circumstances.

He began to smile, tell jokes and shake hands, and he fooled millions along the way.

Knowing him as well as I do, having spent so many years traveling with him, I can tell you that Sosa was nothing like his new 1998 image and that the only thing more overwhelming than his ego and arrogance was his ability to charm when it suited him best.

But his arrogance did him in, and it's why he got caught. It's why he couldn't stop doing drugs even while they were testing. It's why he talked about the Hall of Fame as if it were his birthright.

Well, he can forget about it now.

The shame of it all, and I mean this sincerely, is that the Sosa I knew in 1992 could have been a Hall of Famer.

He was young and hungry, a five-tool player who told me that he hoped on his tombstone they would compare him to Roberto Clemente.

He was on his way to making that happen, but that wasn't enough for him.

Sammy Sosa needed more.

So instead, the link to McGwire and steroids will follow him to his grave.