Outfielder Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs entered the 1998 baseball season as a relatively unknown player to most Americans. His neck-and-neck battle that year with Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals for the major league single-season home run record made him a household name and a hero in the U.S. and in his native Dominican Republic. Sosa finished second to McGwire with 66 home runs--five more than the previous record--but he established himself as a legitimate star and will always be remembered in the baseball record books and in the hearts of baseball fans everywhere.

Growing up

Sammy Sosa was born November 12, 1968, in San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic. (The Dominican Republic is located in the Caribbean Sea and shares an island with the country of Haiti.) His mother, Lucrecia, raised him, his four brothers and two sisters after her husband, Juan, a farmer, died. "We were...