Apparently, Sammy Sosa has reached the end of the line, or so abounding theories would have us believe. He drew his line in the sand and stuck to it, turning down the Nationals' offer since it did not come with a guaranteed starting job.

Lifetime Dodger Jackie Robinson retired instead of playing for the hated Giants. Sosa refuses to spend more time cheering his teammates from the dugout rather than from on the field. At least he's taking a stand, I guess. One man's meat yudda yudda.

The rumor that Alex Rodriguez has been wooing him to platoon with Bernie Williams in the DH spot is now being drowned with rumors that Sosa either has already retired (but just doesn't know it) or will retire when he gets around to it.

Let's assume the rumors are true and Sosa is retiring 12 homers short of being the fifth man in major-league history to amass 600 dingers in his career. So what will his legacy be?

I have to admit that I was very slow to warm to fan-favorite Sammy. I was in the camp who early in his career looked at his inability to draw a base on balls and labeled him a sabermetrically weak player though he had very impressive conventional stats. I think his being awarded the 1998 NL MVP awards was one of the worst decisions by the writers since Pete Rose won the Good Guy Award in 1965.

However, Sosa convinced me that a player could develop at the major-league level. I would call his peak from 1998-2003, extremely impressive and definitely Hall-worthy. The only problem is that the eight-plus years before that peak and the two since have been anything but revelatory.

The prototype for these years was 1997 in my opinion. Sosa hit 36 home runs and drove in 119 but he batted just .251, slugged .480, and got on base just 30% of the time. He stole 22 bases but got caught 64% of the time (12 times). His OPS (.773) was ever so slightly worse than the park-adjusted league average. Oh, and he led the league in strikeouts, 174, while walking just 45 times. He was a sabermetrician's nightmare.

Then he turned his career around in one of the most over-publicized performances of all time. His OBP shot up 77 points, his batting average 57, his slugging 167, and his OPS—get this—244 points. It was now 60% better than the adjusted league average. And, of course, he hit 66 homers, did you hear?

He had a great season by anyone's standard, just not as good a season as Mark McGwire's historic one—his OPS was 117% better than the adjusted league average, for example. But they both saved baseball, as legend has it (Did you hear Abner Doubleday apocryphally invented the game, too). Sosa won the MVP on the strength of his Cubbies qualifying for the playoffs as a wild card after winning a one-game tiebreaker. Never mind that Chicago got swept that postseason. Sosa was so dang cute, smiling and kissing fingers and hugging Mark McGwire and whatnot.

After saving the game, Sosa's legacy seems now as uneven as his career was. He famously got caught with a corked bat. He was ridden out of Chicago on a rail after some non-story about his leaving the clubhouse during the last game of a disappointing 2004 Cubbie season.

Next, he makes history joining Rafael Palmeiro in Baltimore thereby setting a record for career homers by two teammates (and broke it on a regular basis during the year). Not only that, the O's start off the season strong and lead the AL East for a long while. It seemed that his career would witness a rebirth.

So what happens next? The Orioles collapse, Palmeiro gets embroiled in a steroid scandal, and Sammy ends up having his worst season since leaving the South Side of Chicago. The scent of steroid use, true or not, seems to have attached itself to him. And after one season he is dropped by Baltimore and may be forced to retire because he can't find a job to his liking.

So back to his legacy…How will Sammy be remembered? Will it be a corked bat or a finger kiss? Os somewhere in between (a kissed bat)?

Sosa's legacy might be both, the incredible highs and the ignominious lows. At least it will be for me. That alone makes him a remarkable player. I mean, how many players learn how to draw a walk after eight years and then forget it after another six or so?

Well, actually, I studied that and found that there were 25 major-leaguers who had a more dramatic turnaround than Sosa. But few ahead of him on that list were able to turn their careers around as dramatically as Sosa did after "learning" to walk.

I guess the real question is how will his minor peccadilloes affect Sosa's Hall chances. It seemed unthinkable a few years ago, but could Sosa suffer the same fate as his ex-teammate Palmeiro. That is, could his contributions to the game be outweighed by the negatives, at least in the minds of Hall of Fame voters? Only time will tell.

So when all is said and done, where does Sosa rank among the best right fielders of all time? I looked up the players whose primary position was right field or, in the years in which all three outfield spots' fielding stats were lumped together, I took players whose primary position was outfielder and who played the most games in right (we do have the splits by game per outfield position at least).

I took the players that met these criteria and either had 250 or more career Win Shares or were in the Hall of Fame. Hopefully, those two lists will have a bit of overlap. Here are the qualifying right fielders by career Win Shares first:

Sosa comes in 25th, behind seven guys who have been found wanting by the Hall voters at least yet far (including Bob Caruthers who might, and probably should, be considered a pitcher, but meets our criteria since he played more games collectively in the outfield than at pitcher). But one might argue the merits of Win Shares. Let's try something else.

The stat of choice today, at least for batters, is OPS. Let's use our set of outfielders and sort them by OPS:

Sosa comes in 11th now, behind either players who are in the Hall already or are not yet eligible. However, Sosa also is from a high-OPS era. Let's use Baseball Reference's park-adjusted OPS (or OPS+) to compensate for era and park. Here goes:

That drops Sosa to a virtual tie for 29th, albeit it with Hall-of-Famer Dave Winfield. OK, I'm not sure that told us anything more than we already knew: Sosa's stats look great on paper but are not so sabermetrically sound under the veneer. Well, maybe that's a bit facile. One could make the argument that Sosa is not in the top twenty right fielders of all time based on Win Shares and adjusted OPS. One could argue that that makes him a borderline Hall of Famer even though his Hall fate may depend more on how he was perceived outside of the stats.

Finally, here's the 500-homer club sorted by career Win Shares just for the heck of it. You may note that Sosa comes in last:

As someone who's neutral in the Sosa Hall debate, I'll be interested in how Sammy gets handled. It starts with how the first steroid-laden class is perceived next year. If McGwire is kept out because of Andro, then anything can happen to Corkin' Sammy. Who knows, a new set of criteria incorporating personality traits could be adopted. It may be the sort of thing where a modern-day Ty Cobb would be kept out because of his moral turpitude. Whatever happens, it will get interesting and the voters could always use a new way to screw the Hall up.