Cubs blogs are all a-twitter with reaction to the Sammy Sosa news, so it would seem to be a good time to honor some of the more impressive efforts to put it all in (or out of) perspective:

Lifetime Movie of the Week Award: Al Yellon from Bleed Cubbie Blue:

We now know, presuming the report on Sosa is true, that the joy was indeed stolen from us.

Unintentional Irony Award: Rob at Goat Riders, who wrote a 1,460-word post rife with odd capitalizations that includes the words "hate" twice, "punk," "fraud," "whiff machine," "disgust," "puke," "freaking," "ludicrous," "infuriated" and "outrageous" before concluding with this sentence:

Sammy Sosa doesn't deserve our emotional investment.

Say It Ain't Sosa Award: The melancholy Ace at Bleacher Nation:

Whatever happens - this sucks, friends. So many of my favorite Chicago Cubs memories rode on the back of number 21. And now we know for sure that he wasn't carrying them alone.

Well crap.

Cap. Renault Award: Stormin Norman at Not Qualified To Comment:

I was unlike most fans.  While I suspected everyone and believed pretty much any wild allegations, be it hard test results or wild Canseco allegations, I still felt that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't everyone.  Maybe it was just a few bad apples, or a lot of bad apples.  But I never just assumed everyone did it.  My example of that was Sammy Sosa.  How foolish of me, right?

The Keep Kermit Away From Norman Award: Bad Kermit at Hire Jim Essian:

If anyone is surprised about this, you should punch said person in his giant Mongoloid head.

Brevity Award: Mercurial Outfielder at Another Cubs Blog:

Okay, so now we have proof that Sosa was one of the PED users.  BFD. 

Revisionist History Award: Andy Dolan at Desipio, claiming the '98 season didn't save baseball:

The naive among us might still claim that you and your churlish chum from St. Louis "saved" baseball in 1998, while most are going to look back on the era that started that year with more than a little bit of embarassment.

Tough shit, buddy.

While baseball undoubtedly would have survived without the 1998 McGwire-Sosa chase (not to mention the '98 Yankees), that summer did indeed "save" baseball. That is not to say that something else would not have "saved" it in '99 or 2002 or 2047; it is to say that summer - and the home run chase - reinvigorated the sport in a way that was sorely needed after the labor strife earlier in the decade.

Whether Sosa and Mark McGwire (and assorted New York Yankees) cheated does nothing to change that fact.