SOSA SHOULDN'T GET JUST SO-SO TREATMENT.

Byline: Karen Crouse

Hurricane Sammy was sweeping through Cincinnati, that much everybody knew. Rob Butcher and his Reds media relations staff couldn't be sure when or where Sosa's historic 60th home run would make landfall, but they made provisions, just to be safe. They squirreled away extra seats and tables to handle the media tsunami.

Like all the South Floridians who cleaned out hardware stores in anticipation of Hurricane Floyd's arrival, theirs was so much needless preparation. The Reds' three-game set against the Chicago Cubs attracted a few more reporters than usual, but nowhere near the waves of denim and polyester that lapped Cinergy Field last September when Sosa was nearing the 60 home run mark in his epic duel with St. Louis slugger Mark McGwire.

By the close of the series Thursday, the extra seats had been returned to storage. Though usually found at the eye of any storm, the media hordes in this case were among the first to evacuate. Whether or not they repaired to higher ground is debatable.

Is it another home run race gathering power and force while the first is so fresh in our minds that has made the media blase? Or is it the fact that the player bearing down on history this time isn't from the good ol' U.S. of A.?

Either way, shame on us.

With his next home run, Sosa will become the first player in baseball's storied history to achieve back-to-back 60 home run seasons. It's a milestone, another feather in baseball's cap, and if people can't get tickled silly about that, well maybe it's because Sosa's success is striking a nerve far below the surface.

Last September, when Sosa became the second man in history to surpass 61 home runs - only four days after McGwire became the first - nobody outside his native Dominican Republic was quite sure how to react. His own teammates couldn't have felt more conflicted if they had been Richard and Oracene Williams at this year's U.S. Open.

Hail him or hug him? Lionize him or patronize him? Adore him or ignore him? People's perspectives shifted more capriciously than the winds at Wrigley Field.

For a few, it was a black-and-white issue: McGwire passed Maris first and that's why he got the car, the curtain calls, the commissioner's hug, the Maris clan's applause, the king-size newspaper headlines, the commercials and all the magazine covers.

Others scoffed that it was a black-and-white issue, all right. At the time, a number of readers wondered if Sosa wasn't getting second-rate recognition because he is dark-skinned and McGwire is not. We thought it ludicrous at the time, this raising of the race card amid all the ``Hit it here, Sammy'' banners.

Then we watched this year as Sosa picked up speed and strength in August and early September and instead of admiring the force of nature barreling down on the magical 60 barrier, the American public yawned as if to say, if you've seen one record assault, you've seen them all.

And we were reminded of something the late right fielder Robert Clemente used to tell the press, when he was in the mood to talk to the media at all: ``You guys never give me credit.''

Thirty-nine years have passed since Clemente batted .314, drove in 94 runs and finished eighth in the league MVP balloting. We'd like to think we've come a long way from those days. After all, didn't we vote Sosa the league MVP over McGwire last year?

Maybe it's no longer true, what another Latin - Orlando Cepeda - said in the '60s, that ``Latin players have to do twice as much as the American players to earn respect.''

But it sure doesn't look like progress when MLB commissioner Bud Selig can't find a way to get to Cincinnati himself or at least send someone in his stead to put an imperial seal on Sosa's impending accomplishment.

Selig followed McGwire the last couple of steps in his Maris pilgrimage, but was disguised as an empty seat in Chicago when Sosa hit No. 62 (Selig did phone the right fielder from his home in Milwaukee 90 miles away).

Selig filed away his absence then by saying the first man on he moon is the one who gets the ticker-tape parade. Fine. Just the same, we remember it being a pretty big deal when Alan Shepard hit that golf ball on the moon after earlier becoming the second man in space.

Maybe the worst thing we're guilty of is nationalism. It could be the U.S. public is rooting for the long ball the same we do the long jump. As it is with Olympians, perhaps it is for all the athletes: As long as they're related to us by country, we'll embrace history-makers as warmly as we would a distant cousin at a family reunion.

Sosa long ago adopted the U.S. The least we can do is return the gesture.

CAPTION(S):

photo

PHOTO Sammy Sosa's run at consecutive 60 home run seasons has been met with far less enthusiasm than the feat deserves.

Al Behrman/Associated Press