Last week, Sammy Sosa said that, following his retirement, he would "calmly wait" to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. The headline from a weekend story in the Chicago Tribune: "Sammy Sosa gets reluctant Hall nod from most." That isn't from most Hall of Fame voters, mind you, just most of the eight Hall of Fame voters who happen to work for the Tribune. And, as the headline suggests, the support isn't exactly strong:

Until there's significant evidence he cheated, Sosa gets my wobbly vote . . . No, no, a thousand times no . . . we still don't know any more about the steroid suspicions surrounding Sosa, which were circulated merely based on the "eye test" of fans and media. Fortunately, we will have another four years to uncover any possible revelations regarding Sosa and others . . . You can't disqualify Sosa using those guidelines. But that doesn't mean he didn't cheat. Just that he did it better than some others . . . I'm calling for a separate wing for the Hall of Fame for candidates like Sosa, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez and others who have been suspected of bulking up with improper chemicals . . . The answer now is a yes vote, but we have four years to have our minds changed, thank goodness . . . Obviously, suspicions about Sammy Sosa also exist, and he never quite has addressed them, but as he continues to work on his English over the next four years, we should feel confident that he will provide a clearer picture of how he did what he did.

If that's the kind of sentiment that comes from the guys who covered Sosa for this defacto hometown newspaper for so many years, we can only guess that the sentiment against him among the other Hall of Fame voters is going to be much stronger.

Not that this is particularly shocking. At least no more shocking than the fact that one newspaper gets eight Hall of Fame votes.