The Picture Of Baseball Perfection
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Washington Post Columnist
Wednesday, September 9, 1998; Page C1
ST LOUIS Inevitable as it had become that Mark McGwire would pass Roger Maris, the moment it took for his uncharacteristic line drive to clear the left field wall was just as dreamy, just as joyous and dramatic and emotionally overpowering as if it had happened on the last at-bat of the season.
Folks from Major League Baseball had said as this chase heated up they didn't want the game to be interrupted after the historic 62nd home run. But thank God, McGwire paid them no mind. Thank God he and the Chicago Cubs and especially Sammy Sosa let it all hang out with their high-fives and back slaps and bearhugs. Thankfully, McGwire forgot all about the game long enough to hop the railing near the first base dugout and hug the Maris children, whom if they were conflicted about their dad being surpassed never let on, never did anything but hug McGwire back and thank him for honoring their late father.
I'm sure there are hard-nosed purists out there who don't understand infielders congratulating a man for hitting a home run in a game so critical to the standings. I'm sure poor Steve Trachsel who gave up the historic blast could have done without teammate Sosa rushing in from right field to be hoisted into the air like a little child by the mammoth Big Mac. I'm sure there were coaches in that Cubs dugout, old-school guys who ask no quarter and give none, who wondered where the players' priorities had gone to celebrate a home run that cut the Chicago lead to 2-1 in that fourth inning. To all of that, the only and obvious answer is, "It's once in a lifetime."
I don't know that there's ever been so much emotion, so much ecstacy released in a baseball game without a league championship series or World Series being contested. But this is what happens when a feat of 37 years is surpassed. That McGwire was able to hit No. 62 before summer turned to fall makes it even more remarkable. It took McGwire only 145 games, nine games fewer than Babe Ruth had available to him back in the 1920s and 30s, and 17 games fewer than were available to Maris.
The only suspense was when and how far. Only the details remained, like what he would do afterward such as high-five Cardinals Hall of Famer Lou Brock who was sitting behind the Maris children. McGwire was at first so uncertain the ball would clear the fence at 341 feet, it was his shortest home run of the season that he sprinted from the batter's box. Then, realizing the ball had cleared the fence, he was so juiced he went right by first base without touching it.
Now wouldn't that have been a historic moment? Suppose McGwire had never gone back to touch first base and the Cubs made an appeal to nullify the home run? You get the feeling a couple of the Cubs would rather have dragged McGwire back to first to make him touch up.
The Chase to pass Ruth and Maris has been as complete as it has been historic. Not all the record-setting nights in major league baseball have been conducted with such class. It's been a long time, but some of us will never forgive then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn for failing to be in attendance when Hank Aaron hit home run No. 715 to break Ruth's all-time mark.
Bud Selig wouldn't miss the culmination of a summer that has revived baseball. "It's been some summer," Selig said of McGwire and Sosa. "People for two or three generations will remember where they were when [McGwire] hit the home run. What utter grace and dignity they've brought to the game. It's not only their achievements, which are obviously magnificent, but it's the way they handled themselves."
The amount of goodwill and feel-good created the last few weeks as McGwire and Sosa cruised past 50 and quickly approached 60 has indeed been otherworldly. Seeing nearly 50,000 fans stand in unison and applaud a Cubs player so warmly and enthusiastically . . . well it goes against every thing fans in Chicago and St. Louis have learned since 1892 when these teams played the first of 2,062 games against each other.
I'd hesitate to call Cubs-Cardinals a rivalry, because the Cardinals actually are a real franchise while the Cubs since 1935 have been one of the biggest jokes in sports. Still, we (I'm from Illinois) hate each other. Neighbors and kinfolk have to declare sides early. Anybody from St. Louis, I hate automatically. I hate my family members who live in St. Louis. So to see this expression of affection and appreciation in St. Louis for Sosa and what he's done is just, well, disarming.
Goodwill, I have to point out, should only go so far. The biggest sidebar by far in The Chase has been the obsession (I'd say created by newspaper and TV people) with the fans who catch McGwire's home run balls. Fans have returned each of the last seven home run balls to McGwire for essentially nothing, stuff like autographed jerseys and balls. And that includes a young man named Tim Forneris who is a member of the Cardinals' ground crew.
God bless him. Forneris had handed over the ball and some eager cutoff man had gotten it to McGwire before he'd finished his home plate bumping and hoisting. It's probably a neat thing people can be so selfless.
But let me tell you here and now that McGwire, MLB and the Hall of Fame are all lucky it wasn't me who caught the ball. There's not a snowball's chance in hell I'd hand over anything for free when there was a million dollar check out there waiting for me. Mac is a multi-multi-millionaire. MLB and the Hall of Fame are multi-billion dollar businesses. I'd give them all the right of first refusal before selling out to the highest bidder. Like baseball itself, that's the American way.
I hope and expect McGwire to get whatever he can or wants from this achievement. He has earned and deserves every consideration in the world, monetary or otherwise. For instance, he reportedly has a deal with Disney, like the Super Bowl winning quarterback. That's cashing in, something of which McGwire does alarmingly little.
McGwire and baseball got lucky when that uncharacteristic home run didn't have its usual Big Mac arc, lofted like a golf ball with a 7-iron. It landed in an area where the Cardinals store batting practice equipment and the like, a place where a club employee like Forneris had the best chance to run it down. And like everything else that has happened over these last 21 games as McGwire has hit 15 homers, like most everything else that has happened to McGwire and baseball this season, the ball landed in the perfect place and was retrieved by the right guy. It was hit right here at home, in Busch Stadium, in probably the best baseball city in America. And the best part is, there are three weeks left in the season for all the encores and curtain calls an adoring fascinated public can muster.
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
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