CHICAGO -- Man, what a wild weekend this could be at Wrigley Field. It was supposed to have been one, anyway.

As the Cubs close out their 2002 season, franchise icon Sammy Sosa needs two more home runs to become the 18th man in history to hit 500. Imagine the scene if the loveable losers were doing what they were put together for -- to take the hated St. Louis Cardinals down to the wire in the National League Central.

Instead Sosa is what he has been for the most part since joining the Cubs in 1992 -- a pleasant diversion to keep fans coming through the turnstiles and in their seats until the ninth inning, or at least his at-bat in the bottom of the seventh or eighth.

	Sammy Sosa is batting only .229 with five home runs in the month of September.

Except it's not so pleasant for Sosa.

Given his gift for self-promotion, you'd expect Chicago's beloved slugger to beat his chest on a daily basis about the inevitability of becoming the first Latin American to hit 500 homers. But you'd be wrong.

After hitting home run No. 498 last Friday in Pittsburgh, here was Sammy's take on the milestone: "I just want to get it over with and get ready for next year.''

While Sosa certainly appreciates the scope of his life journey, undoubtedly one of the greatest rags to riches stories in the history of sports, he wants more to celebrate. He wants to be surrounded by a team that can win.

Because Sosa felt this year's Cubs were the strongest team he had played on -- one with reliable starting pitching and more middle-of-the-order thunder due to the addition of Fred McGriff and Moises Alou -- this has been his most disappointing season.

It's one thing for Sosa that his own totals have dropped -- from 64 homers and a majors-leading 160 RBI to 48 and 106 -- but another entirely that the Cubs unraveled completely behind him.

This, after all, is a franchise that has had only five winning seasons since 1972 -- and has followed each of those rare steps forward with an immediate retreat below .500.

After winning 88 games in 2001, the Cubs didn't make enough moves to overtake St. Louis and Houston as preseason favorites in the NL Central's class system. But given the starting rotation built around Kerry Wood, Jon Lieber and newcomers Mark Prior and Juan Cruz, it seemed likely they would deliver back-to-back winning seasons for the first time Leo Durocher was in the dugout.

Oops. The Cubs started 8-17, winning only four of their first 14 games at frosty Wrigley, and officially checked out for the season by losing nine in a row against St. Louis and Milwaukee -- Milwaukee! -- to hit rock bottom at 13-27 on May 18. Manager Don Baylor was fired on July 4 and interim manager Bruce Kimm has done little more than arrange shuffleboard games for passengers aboard the Titanic.

Sosa is fed up.

"They've got to clean up the club, including myself,'' Sosa said a couple weeks ago. "I include myself because I'm on the team. I'm not going to say things about someone else and not include myself ... There's no question I want to be here next year, but I don't want to be in the same kind of September next year ... Hopefully they'll clean up the mess they have, and we go to the playoffs. I don't care if I only hit .200, I want to go to the playoffs.''

Sosa will turn 34 in November. Like Ernie Banks before him, he is a sympathetic figure in Chicago.

Once Sosa reaches 500 homers, he will join Banks and Barry Bonds as the only members of the 500 Club never to appear in the World Series. The other 15 guys have 58 appearances between them, with only Ted Williams, Willie McCovey and Harmon Killebrew getting to only one Series.

Can a slugger do more for his team than Sosa has for the Cubs since 1998? In the last five seasons, he's hitting .307 with 291 homers and 703 RBI. That's the most homers ever in a five-year stretch and the fifth-most RBI.

Sosa has been the one staple in the Cubs' lineup. In the last five years, no other Cub accounted for more than 75 home runs (Henry Rodriguez) or 262 RBI (Mark Grace). This is the first season in the last five that he hasn't led all of his teammates by at least 32 home runs and 50 RBI. No wonder he sometimes gets jealous when he looks around at the support for Bonds and others.

	“	I've been here forever and it's the same crap all the time. This year we made an effort (to win), but I'm getting old, bro'. I'm looking for a ring before I retire. ”
		— Sammy Sosa

Sosa has leverage, as well.

When agent Adam Katz negotiated the four-year contract extension that Sosa signed in the spring of 2001, he got Cubs president Andy MacPhail to make the 2004 and '05 seasons mutual options. That means that Sosa can declare himself a free agent after one more season in Chicago.

Out of the blue, Sosa started talking about his options in early August.

"I've been here forever and it's the same crap all the time,'' Sosa said. "This year we made an effort (to win), but I'm getting old, bro'. I'm looking for a ring before I retire.''

In a story in the Chicago Sun-Times, Sosa took the veil off those threats.

"I've been here almost all my life and have always said I'd like to finish my career here,'' Sosa said. "But if this doesn't get fixed next year, after the year, I can be a free agent. I will take my option into serious consideration and see what else is out there. I don't want to just continue every year, come here and play hard, have the great numbers that I have been having and not make the playoffs. C'mon, it's over and over again. Really, something has to be done.''

Not many people take Sosa's threats seriously. Even Katz downplays the chance that he will take an early exit.

"I think Sammy is obsessed with winning and performing at the highest level,'' Katz told ESPN.com's Jayson Stark. "Sometimes he says things that reflect that agenda. But he's a Cub. I'd view it as remote that he'll be anywhere else.''

Cynics believe Sosa's diatribe was aimed at getting a better (and longer) contract than the one that is due to pay him $13 million in '03, $16 million in '04 and $17 million in '05. He believes he can play at least six more seasons, which would give him a legitimate shot to catch Hank Aaron's record of 755 homers, and wouldn't mind having a deal that would take him to retirement. But don't expect MacPhail to renegotiate.

For Sosa to leave after 2003, he'd have to believe there was another team that would give him a monster deal. No such animal came forward when MacPhail made it known that Sosa was available in the summer of 2000 and spring of '01.

Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was intrigued, but the opposition of his baseball people carried the day. The Dodgers and Mets discussed a three-way deal that would have sent Gary Sheffield to New York and Sosa to Los Angeles, but Fox (Dodgers ownership) wasn't willing to give Sosa the commitment he wanted to waive his no-trade clause.

The Cubs seem willing to bet that the new labor contract will make it even less likely that high-profile suitors will be in a lather to get Sosa a year from now. His best chance to win, then, very well may be to stick around for some heavy lifting in Chicago.

And, with apologies if this seems too demanded, we'll answer a question asked earlier. Yes, Sosa can do more for the Cubs than he is doing.

While MacPhail and other club officials forgive him for his traditional late arrival because he always wants to play 162 games, it would help to show a commitment to his teammates if he arrived in Mesa, Ari. the same time they did.

It would help if he didn't try to distance himself from his teammates when the team is going bad. At times this year he even chartered his own jet to avoid the team plane, which he felt might not be safe.

It would help if he kept his approach at the plate pure, as it was in the first half of 1998 and then again throughout 2001, and not get caught up trying to hit the ball 500 feet. After spending this spring sparring with Bonds and talking about home run records, he couldn't buy a big hit in April and May.

As deep into the season as mid-June, he was batting .227 with men in scoring position. He's batted .226 with only 27 runs scored in the 486 at-bats in which he has not hit a home run. Compare that to the less celebrated Magglio Ordonez, who has 38 homers yet is hitting .274 with 63 RBI when he doesn't hit one. The White Sox right fielder trails Sosa by 11 homers, but leads him by 24 RBI.

Could Sosa have saved this year's Cubs by doing any of these things? Of course not. But if anything is clear by now it should be that for Sosa to get what he wants -- that is, a World Series ring -- it is going to take both a better supporting cast and him performing at his very best.

Phil Rogers is the national baseball writer for the Chicago Tribune, which has a web site at www.chicagosports.com.