Chicago ? Sammy Sosa is said to have two offers to play baseball in Japan next season, but word is he’s not interested. Too bad. Now we’ll never get to hear him say, “I no longer am a gladiator. I’m a samurai.”

Sosa is putting all of his considerable strength into reclaiming his good name, but the only major-league team showing much interest is Washington, and that interest comes with strings attached. The Nationals want Sosa to come to spring training next month without a guaranteed contract.

In other words, the former Cubs superstar has to earn a spot on the team.

Allow me to pause a second while a spasm of sympathy passes. Thank you. That was a close call.

As some of you know, I’m not given to bouts of compassion when it comes to Sosa. There’s no “I” in team, but there is a “me” in Sammee. Even so, there’s something almost sad about watching him try to convince teams they should give him a guaranteed roster spot.

I never thought it would come to this so quickly for His Samminess. I figured there always would be buyers for whatever Sosa was selling. Frank Thomas and his ailing ankle just signed with Oakland. Sosa and his ailing bat can’t find a home?

Think about it. This is the only player in baseball history to hit 60 home runs or more in three seasons. This is the 1998 National League Most Valuable Player. This is a man with 588 career home runs.

Then again, this also is someone who is going to have a hard time getting a toe into the door of the Hall of Fame. I never thought I would say that either. But voters will wonder whether he indulged too liberally in those Flintstones vitamins he said he took over the years. They also will be skeptical of Mark McGwire, who will be eligible for the Hall in 2007.

One of the indelible images of the congressional hearings into baseball’s steroid problem was Sosa’s need for an interpreter. Here was a guy who spent 15 years in Chicago and, in that time, rarely needed someone to translate English into Spanish for him.

McGwire, a fellow testifier, would say only that he didn’t want to discuss the past. Another, Rafael Palmeiro, insisted he never took steroids, then tested positive for them soon after. Cooperstown for any of them? Tinker to Evers to Fat Chance.

All of this, together with Sosa’s incredible shrinking body and incredible shrinking statistics, has turned him into something I never thought I’d see: irrelevant. Say what you will about him, but Sosa always was able to draw a crowd. Now he can’t draw a guaranteed contract.

We had Sosa around here long enough to know he requires a big stage, so we can surmise this is killing him. Japan has a stage, but the problem is it’s in Japan. It’s hard to picture Sosa living a relatively obscure life in, say, Yokohama. And it’s difficult picturing him playing the kind of team game the Japanese prize.

(It is easy to picture him saying, “Bunt the man over from first to second? Sammy doesn’t do that, buddy.”)

If the Nationals do sign him, it will be a very intriguing story, what with Sosa playing for his baseball life. And what if he doesn’t make it? Would he be willing to prove himself in the minors? A better question: Is a player allowed to have an entourage in the minors?