Sammy's Doping and the Tribune's Duping

While the Tribune has been pandering to Jay Mariotti by recommending a sensitivity specialist, a sports psychologist, and an advice columnist for Ozzie Guillen ("Dealing With Ozzie's Demons," June 25), we think it remains much more crucial for Chicago that the entire Tribune staff spend some time with a journalism ethicist.

Here's just one reason why: The Tribune has been suspiciously silent about former Tribune employee Sammy Sosa, who may have bilked Cubs fans out of millions of dollars while enjoying his misbegotten fame in our city.

One former teammate of Sammy's -- and therefore also a former Tribune employee -- has not been so silent. In March, former Cubs reliever Turk Wendell had this to say to Daily Herald columnist Barry Rozner:

“Everybody in Chicago knew what was going on, just like everybody in baseball knows about Bonds. The coaches knew. So did the managers and owners. How could they not know?"

Indeed. How could they not know? Tribune employees like to trumpet the difference between the "Chicago Tribune" and its master corporation, "Tribune," as if the sheer curtain between those offices magically excuses their daily lapses into unethical muck. But it seems to me that the corporation that controls most of our city's media shares the same obligations to this vast audience as the journalists they employ. And still, here we have one of their former employees saying the owners knew Sammy was juicing. How could they not know? And if the owners of your newspaper know something like that, how could the reporters down the hall not know?

Two reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle have been all over Barry Bonds, but it looks pretty clear by now that the Chicago Tribune has issued Sammy Sosa a free pass. If Wendell's allegations are correct, Sosa essentially committed fraud against the people of Chicago, taking millions from them as he did so. Maybe that's how the Chicago Tribune thinks business is supposed to be done, because now they're defrauding us out of a thorough investigation of Sosa's career here.

Ozzie's demons? What about Sammy's dope? What about Tribune coverups? Any reporters on that staff?