Sosa hopes for a Wrigley return

CHICAGO — Sammy Sosa says he someday would like to be invited back to Wrigley Field.

The former slugger’s reported use of performance-enhancing drugs still casts a shadow on him and his career and strains his relationship with the Cubs, his team of 13 years.

Sosa’s comments came in an NBC Sports Chicago interview in which he equated critics with “the devil,” saying “they don’t know me” and “they don’t put food on my table.”

“If one day I come back to Chicago, I come back for the fans,” Sosa told NBCSCH’s David Kaplan. “I owe those people something.”

But Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts said in January at the Cubs Convention that before that debt can be cleared, Sosa and others whose achievements in baseball’s so-called steroid era are seen as tainted need to pay back people with something else first.

“The players owe us some honesty,” Ricketts said. “The only way to turn this page is to put everything on the table.”

Sosa hit 545 home runs in the 13 years he was with the Cubs in an 18-year, 609-homer career that ended in 2007. He had three 60-plus home run seasons with the club and was neither suspended nor formally charged for PED use as a player. A 2009 New York Times report, however, said Sosa tested positive in 2003.

Sosa, 49, didn’t own up to use of banned substances. He also didn’t deny it.