Athletes

Sammy Sosa Net Worth 2020, Bio, Age, Height

Sammy Sosa is an ex American baseball player of Dominican origin who became one of the best hitters of all times and was an extremely important player for the Chicago Cubs.

He played on the position of the right fielder. This is a quite popular position as well, so he gained some popularity pretty quick.

Sammy became a world known name in baseball with his skilled play, especiall with the Cubs, because he has reached a big record by becoming a 7-time All Star player.

He has also broke several different records for the Cubs but also in the complete American baseball history. He is very proud when he talks about this.

Early years

He was born as Samuel Kelvin Peralta Sosa on November 12, 1968 in San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic. He always says that he respects his hometown very much and he never forgets where he came from. A lot of people respect him because he had a tough time becoming famous, unlike many people who re from the United States of America. They sort of have an advantage over people who are from small countries.

He was born to Lucrecia and her husband Juan Bautista Sosa. Sammy is part Dominican and part Haitian. His parents are very loving and he says that he is extremely thankful for both of them.

Sammy has five siblings and they lived in an apartment with only two bedrooms as a part of abandoned hospital. They had a very tough childhood and this is one of the reasons Sammy had worked so hard to get where he is now, he wanted to provide a better future for himself and his siblings. It was really tough when he began, but he continued on despites all of the bad things that had happened along the way.

His father Juan Bautista Montero died when he was in his prime and left Sammy alone with his mum when he was seven years old. He suffered a brain aneurysm and died within minutes. This was a really tough thing for his kids to process and Sammy knew that he was going to be the caretaker of the family from now on, so he decided to work even harder.

He was really born in a Batey community settled in Consuelo but he was signed up to be born in the nearest big town which was San Pedro.

It is interesting that he was nicknamed Mikey from his early age because his grandmother from his mother’s side was a big fan of soap operas so she decided to call him Mikey because she liked the way it sounded.

That is why Sammy responds when someone cries Mikey.

It is even more interesting because she was the one to name him Samuel and was very pleased with her choice. He likes his grandparents very much as well.

Not much is known about his childhood and his schooling. It is known that he had liked all sports very much and was pretty good at them. He didn’t know if he could afford education and therefore decided that sports may be a good choice.

It is also known that he helped his mother a lot during growing up. He worked as a janitor, sold fruits and even shined shoes just to help her raise all of them. That’s why he appreciated his career later on when he got better jobs.

He was only 14 when he started playing baseball in a team and he was 15 when he signed to Philadelphia Phillies. It was a dream come true for him because he knew that he would be earning cash later and would even be able to do it while pursuing his dream of becoming a famous sports player.

Next year he signed a contract with the Texas Rangers and received a bonus of $3500. He bought himself his first bike and gave the rest of the money to his mother. This only shows how loving he was.

Career development

He left his home country in 1986 and came to Sarasota in Florida in the USA. It was to get better chances and job deals

He was 19 years old when he was chosen as the SA League All-Star while playing for Gastonia.

In 1988 he was a member of the Port Charlotte after which he was finally promoted to the major league.

In June 1989 he was proud to enter the big leagues with his first play for the Texas Rangers. He was the starting leader in this game.

One month later he was traded, alongside two more players, to Chicago White Sox where he started showing off his great baseball skills.

Nevertheless he wasn’t happy with his performance and he tried to find his game for several seasons. He trained very hard and really wanted the whole thing to work out.

After playing 1990 and 1991 season, his team traded him before the beginning of the 1992 season to a very popular baseball team named the Chicago Cubs.

There he started to improve his game and little by little he became a valuable hitter. He batted .261 in the 1993 season and was great at stealing bases because he was very fast. This was one of his greatest assets because speed is extremely important in baseball.

As time went by he has become one of their most improved players and by the end of the 1994 season he has gained great numbers for himself: he succeeded in .300 in batting, 25 home runs and over 20 bases stolen.

In 1995, Sammy Sosa became a member of an All-Star team and continued his great batting. Next season wasn’t that successful for him. He had spent a lot of time trying to get this title and it was very emotional for him when he did.

In 1997 he has signed a controversial contract with the Cubs estimated at $10 million per year which was considered to be too much from most of sport analyst and even Cubs fans.

They shared their unsatisfaction over the media saying that he is not worth that much money and started calling him  “Sammy So So” because of his performance. This was pretty mean and he didn’t want to give attention to people who called him that.

He was seen as too much solo player, who cares more about his personal goals and great statistics than the benefit of the team. This is because people didn’t know that he actually worked really hard in his past to get to this point.

Sosa had his ego run to the top. He hit 30 home runs and stole 30 bases during 1993 season and bought himself an enormous gold 30-30 pendant Sosa commissioned an enormous, which he had to pull off and put in the safe before every game.

He has license plates SS 30-30 and he opened a shopping mall in his home Dominican Republic named “30-30”. These numbers started to be his whole life.

1998 was one of the greatest seasons for Sosa, due to his great batting and the numbers of home runs he managed to gather.

He has ended this season with 66 home runs and with that fact he had become the first ML (Major League) baseball batter to hit that many home runs in just one season.

This great success brought him a new nickname, given to him by the announcer of the Cubs named Chip Caray and it went Slammin’ Sammy.

He has also broken a record from 1948 for the highest number of total bases in one season.

In 1998, Sammy has won a very important award named the National League Most Valuable Player Award. He was the leading player for Cubs entering the playoffs.

He became so popular that he was invited to the White house to meet President Clinton. He was really nervous, but he did a great job and was praised by the media.

Sammy continued with his great performance in the next season so he gained the Babe Ruth Home Run Award.

He also became the very first player to make 60 home runs in three of his career seasons. This was something to remember, for sure.

In 2003 Sammy spent a part of the season away from the playground due to the fact that he injured his toenail which was eventually removed.

He was also suspended in a period of seven games because it was discovered that he had used a corked bat which is lighter than the real bat. Later it was discovered that he accidentally took the training bat instead of the real bat.

In 2004 he gained another injury, this time of his back which he received in a strange way, after a very strong sneeze.

At the beginning of 2005, he was traded to the Baltimore Orioles but he worsen his performance so he was released from the team and became a free agent very soon.

In 2005, he entered the “Baseball’s 100 Greatest Players” list in the book published by the Sporting News.

This was the same year when he was called into a congressional hearing in order to share informations about the use of perfomance enhancing drugs. He denied that he ever used any and that he has no knowledge about who did.

He was signed to his former team named The Texas Rangers in 2007, but to their minor league. He played very well and in the summer of the same year he has become one of the five players in the history to hit 600 home runs in the regular season.

In 2008, Sosa decided to retire but later changed his mind, hoping that he would be given a chance to show his skills one more time. Unfortunately, he wasn’t invited to join any club so one year later he decided to retire.

He was involved in a big controversy in the summer of 2009, after a known magazine named The New York Times had published an article which claimed that Sammy Sosa was positive on a 2003 drug test. He was one of the players which found themselves on the list.

He became eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2013 but couldn’t gain enough percentage from the voters to be inducted in the Hall.

Personal life

Sammy was married to Karen Lee Bright for a short period of time, from 1990 until 1991. They split up very soon. It just wasn’t mean to be, Sammy says. He doesn’t like to speak about these things on the internet.

As for his personal life he got married to a beautiful Dominican dancer named Sonia Rodriguez and they have six children together. They are named Keysha, Sammy, Kenia, Kalexy, Rolando and  Michael.

They exchanged vows at the end of 2004, in a Catholic Church but it was twelve years after they got married civilly.

In 2013, Sammy bought his family a new home, a house settled in North Miami Beach and worth almost eight million dollars.

He is involved in a controversy because he has lighten his face skin. In 2009, he was interviewed by the Univision and when they asked him how his skin light he had admitted that he is using a skin-softening cream which whitenes the skin and he uses it every night.

Quick summary

Full name: Samuel Kelvin Peralta Sosa

Date of birth: November 12, 1968

Birthplace:  San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic.

Age: 51

Profession: former baseball player

Height: 183 cm

Weight: 75 kgs

Net Worth: $70 million

Loading...