Storm Center

	AT BATS	RUNS	HOME RUNS	RUNS BATTED IN	STOLEN BASES
Hank Aaron	12,364	2,174	755	2,297	240
Barry Bonds *	7,181	1,516	471	1,351	468
Joe Carter	8,422	1,170	396	1,445	231
Andre Dawson	9,927	1,373	438	1,591	314
Reggie Jackson	9,864	1,551	563	1,702	228
Willie Mays	10,881	2,062	660	1,903	338
Frank Robinson	10,006	1,829	586	1,812	204
Sammy Sosa *	5,553	889	356	1,663	228
Dave Winfield	11,003	1,669	465	1,833	223
*Active players; their statistics through Sunday

On the famed baseball corner of Clark and Addison in Chicago , four hours before the Cubs hosted the Montreal Expos at Wrigley Field last Saturday, a rack of Sammy Sosa jerseys hung as tellingly as the puffy, white letters of a skywriter. The message blared from those made-for-flea-markets Day-Glo orange price tags that were stuck to the shirts' hangtags: REDUCED FOR QUICK SALE. Across the street from the Sports World souvenir shop, inside the Cubs' clubhouse, the message was exactly the same; only the Day-Glo sticker was missing from the number 21 jersey actually worn by Sosa .

A mere few months ago, the idea of Chicago without Sammy Sosa seemed as unthinkable as Chicago without the Sears Tower. No other sports figure in the city moves more hearts—or novelty items—than Sosa . His public image is as cuddly as one of his beanbag-doll namesakes ($14.95), but when the Cubs, after another suggestion by Sosa 's agent that a contract extension is in order, announced two weeks ago that they would consider all trade offers for their rightfielder, Sports World owner Earl Shaevitz knew exactly what he had to do. He marked down every Sosa item in his inventory and hung a sign across his storefront announcing SOSA CLEARANCE SALE.

"The agent said the two magic words to the Tribune Company : Pay me," Shaevitz says, referring to the parent company of the Cubs. "Once he said that, I knew Sammy was gone, because the Tribune Company doesn't pay anybody. So I priced everything to move. And yeah, it's been moving."

As of Sunday it appeared that the 31-year-old Sosa was likely to follow his replica jersey ($29) out the door real soon, probably before the All-Star break. Chicago general manager Ed Lynch had dispatched his top scouts to file reports on minor league prospects of the New York Yankees , Boston Red Sox and New York Mets—the most likely Sosa suitors, in that order, along with the Arizona Diamondbacks . "If you're looking at Double A teams, you want to send in two or three people for five-game increments each," Lynch said last Saturday, thus indicating that a two-week study period would be required before talks intensify.

As a prelude to the trade discussions, Sosa engaged in ugly verbal sparring with his manager, Don Baylor , and complained about not being given proper respect by the Cubs' front office, which sometimes shakes its head over Sosa 's stretch-limo-sized affectations. Nonetheless, how one of the game's best drawing cards, home run hitters and reliable performers (through Sunday, Sosa had missed only four of Chicago 's 555 games since 1996) came to be given the eBay treatment isn't close to being a morality play about who's the good guy and who's the bad. The Sosa saga simply is the latest fallout of baseball's runaway economics and trench-warfare agentry. To put it in Day-Glo orange sticker form, as Cubs outfielder Glenallen Hill did adroitly last Saturday, "It's all about money." We're not talking Sammy Sosa key-chain money ($4.95), either.

With the usually loquacious Sosa tired of speaking about his purgatorial existence, it has been left to such friends as Hill and Red Sox infielder Manny Alexander to act as Sosa 's unofficial press secretaries. Alexander last week said Sosa told him he wants to play in Boston . ("He shouldn't have said that," Sosa said in his terse nondenial last Friday.) Said Hill, with whom Sosa shares agent Adam Katz , "The Cubs have to decide whether they're willing to pay him long term. Sammy wants to stay in Chicago . He wants to be appreciated. I don't think the team wants to pay one third of their payroll to one player, which is a lot. What do I think? In my heart, maybe a 65-percent chance he stays. I think it could happen with a little creative financing on the Cubs' part."

Hill's heartfelt assessment rings overly optimistic, considering that the Cubs put Sosa on the market without engaging in substantive discussions about an extension. The four-year, $42 million contract Sosa signed before his 66-home-run breakout in 1998 runs through next season, with a mutual option for 2002. Cubs president Andy MacPhail says that Katz had broached the concept of an extension "almost right from" the year the deal began. Although MacPhail and Katz agree that no specific figures have ever been presented, Katz apparently said enough to persuade Chicago management that Sosa wants to be among the highest-paid players in the game, with the kind of long-term security given to Cincinnati Reds centerfielder Ken Griffey Jr. (nine years, $116.5 million) and Los Angeles Dodgers righthander Kevin Brown (seven years, $105 million) and rightfielder Shawn Green (six years, $84 million), and offered this spring to Detroit Tigers outfielder- designated hitter Juan Gonzalez (eight years, $140 million). Roughly translated, that works out to between $15 million and $20 million annually over six or seven years. That's a lot of Sammy Sosa mousepads ($12.95).

The tepid negotiations, like a house constructed on a fault line, were built upon a fundamental rift. The Cubs' decision makers bristled at Katz 's accelerating what they took to be the normal timetable for talking about the next contract. The proper starting point for beginning such negotiations "is not 2� years into a four-year deal," one Cubs executive says.

Baloney, Katz retorts. He calls the timing "common in the industry." Like Sosa , Houston Astros first baseman Jeff Bagwell , Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter and St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire all stand to be eligible for free agency after next season, but none has created a similar climate of urgency with his team. But Sosa has earned a powerful right those players do not possess: He controls where and when he will be traded. Sosa , a Cub since 1992, can't be dealt without his approval because of his rights as a player with 10 years of major league service and at least five with his current club. Griffey used the same hammer to orchestrate his trade to Cincinnati with one year remaining on his contract with the Seattle Mariners , and righthander Roger Clemens leveraged a contractual perk that gave him essentially the same power to engineer his trade to the Yankees (with two years left on his contract with the Toronto Blue Jays ). In exchange for approving a deal, Sosa is expected to demand a contract extension.

"This has nothing to do with Don Baylor ," Katz says. "Sammy can play for him, and he can manage Sammy. That's not the problem here. It wouldn't matter if Don Baylor was managing this team or Sammy's mother was manager. This is a big-picture baseball decision. It's that simple. We'd like it resolved sooner rather than later. And it should be a collaborative effort in which both sides can get what they want."