A famous Chicago plastic surgeon was walking home one night when he thought he saw a hunched-over human shape scurry into an alley and hide behind a dumpster. The surgeon, his curiosity piqued, took out his pen light and shone it into the alley – revealing a hideously deformed hunchbacked vagrant cowering among the detritus. He bore the scars, physical and psychic, of a lifetime of abuse, derision, rejection, cruelty.

The surgeon spoke gently, urging the vagrant not to be frightened. He told him that he was a world famous plastic surgeon and had pioneered techniques for correcting some of the most severe defects and deformities, and thought he might actually be able to help – at no charge, if the vagrant would sign some hold harmless documents and consent to be the subject of the surgeon’s new experimental procedures.

Well, what did he have to lose? He went back to the surgeon’s upper Michigan Avenue clinic and there followed months of excruciating procedures – clavicles sawed through and reset; spinal rods and braces implanted, orbital bones replaced with rayon implants, septum replaced with a plastic wedge, you name it – and the vagrant, when not under heavy sedation, knew only horrible aches and pains when allowed a few moments of consciousness.

Then, after all of this suffering, it was time for the bandages to come off. The surgeon proudly held up a hand mirror to the vagrant revealing….a pretty decent looking guy who could stand up straight and enjoy a heretofore unimaginable range of motion. He just couldn’t believe it. He asked the surgeon how he could ever thank him but the surgeon refused to be compensated. He noted that he had filmed and recorded the entire process and might well win himself a Nobel Prize in medicine for them, and said that no thanks were necessary.

And to top it all off, he handed the former vagrant an address and phone number for the new job he had arranged for him at a medical insurance office, and the key to the new apartment on the North Side near Wrigley Filed that he had acquired for him and for which he had paid the lease off for an entire year, and a set of season tickets to see the Cubs. The former vagrant, flabbergasted, walked out of the surgeon’s clinic and out into a beautiful sunlit afternoon for the first time in more years than he could count. Children were playing in the park across the street. A spring breeze stirred the crocuses. Smooth jazz issued through a window somewhere nearby. The former vagrant drew a deep, hearty breath and began crossing the street….when suddenly, a screaming firetruck careened around the corner and, unable to stop, squashed the former vagrant like a bug.

So this former vagrant goes up to heaven. He arrives at the gate and snarls at St. Peter, angrily demanding an audience with God immediately. God is summoned and asks what the problem is. The vagrant is shaking with fury. You bring me into this world deformed, hideous, crippled – you subject me to a life of humiliation and derision, poverty and suffering – and then you subject me to months of agonizing surgical procedures – and then, just as I am given a decent normal life, you snuff me out like an insect! Why??????

God blinks at the vagrant a couple of times and then smack his forehead. “Oh, I am so sorry,” he says. I didn’t recognize you!

Still seems kinda cold for the Cubs to diss him though.

I realize the Trib no longer owns the Cubs, but he made a lot of people very rich, including himself. They were all happy to look the other way as long as the $ was flowing their way.

They should have invited him.

Sosa, of course, hit 60 or more home runs three times…and did not lead the league any of those seasons. (He lead the league in 2000 with 50 and 49 and 2002). That’s the 3rd, 5th and 6th highest single season home run totals of all time.