22 January 2024
Aramis Ramírez and Kerry Wood stood at the steps to the main stage Friday night at the Cubs Convention, still not totally clear why they had been summoned to Chicago for the weekend’s fan festivities.
Then a video played featuring voice-overs by their sons, Justin Wood and Aramis Ramírez Jr., who announced the two will be inducted into the Cubs Hall of Fame this summer. Neither player had be informed beforehand of the honor.
“I was so caught off guard,” Wood said. “You’re listening to the video and then you start to hear your son’s voice and it’s like, oh, and then you’re trying to compose it before you go out (on stage).”
The former teammates spent seven seasons (2003-08, 2011) together in a Cubs uniform, appearing in four postseason series.
“The wins we had as a team, the losses that we had together and what we went through as a group there and for him to be a part of it and him to go in together with me and have it be a surprise both of us and both of our sons on there talking — it was a pretty special moment,” Wood, 46, said.
Ramírez had originally planned to be home in the Dominican Republic this weekend until his agent told him he needed to get to Chicago but couldn’t reveal why.
“Any time you have a positive impact on fans is a good thing,” Ramírez, 45, said. “We did that, those teams did that. They knew we left it on the field and do our best. We didn’t win the World Series but every single year we battle, we compete, we played through injuries.”
Ramírez finished his Cubs career as one of the best third basemen in franchise history. He posted a .294/.356/.531 slash line and 126 OPS+ with 239 home runs, 256 doubles and 806 RBIs. In two stints with the organization spanning 12 seasons, Wood owned a 3.67 ERA in 341 appearances (178 games). He most memorably struck out 20 batters in his fifth career start and hit a home run in Game 7 of the 2003 National League Championship Series.
Asked whether there is anything about his journey that he has been able to appreciate more in the years since his retirement, Wood said, “It’s the injuries, it’s being written off by some media and some fans throughout.
“And I understand. As many times as I was on the DL, that’s understandable, but the majority of the fan base sticking with you and some of the naysayers is what helps motivate guys, it really is. And so for me to be told by fans and some media and some doctors, like, you’re probably not ever going to be able to do it again and to be able to bounce back and grind through it and want to quit so many times and then keep doing it. There was a stretch where I just played so (Justin) could see me, so he could get old enough to know that I did what I did.”
Sammy Sosa was among the players eligible to be inducted by the panel assembled by the team. Ramírez, who played 1 1/2 seasons with Sosa, would like to see him be inducted into the Cubs Hall of Fame.
“Numbers-wise, yeah, nobody has better numbers than Sammy Sosa,” Ramírez said. “I don’t know how the relationship with the Cubs and Sammy is right now. … He’s a Dominican just like me. He did a lot of great things in Chicago. When I got traded here, he was one of the role models with the Cubs. I looked up to him, showed up and played hard every single day. You can ask every single teammate he’s had — I respect him for that.
“He did some wrong things, but nobody’s perfect.”
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