Mac, Sammy and Junior
Fans -- and players -- enthralled by trio's pursuit of history
Posted: Tuesday August 18, 1998 06:50 PM
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Target 61: Mark McGwire is on pace to hit 62 homers and break one of baseball's most prestigious records AP |
ON THE ROAD TO 61 (AP) -- Then there was the shot that ...
Flew higher than the left field foul pole in Coors Field, over Madeline's
ice cream shop, bounced a few feet from a startled couple sitting on a
bench licking cones, then into the parking lot, past the players' fancy
cars, and crashed against the fence near the railroad tracks, oh, about 700
feet from home plate.
The crowd, 20,000 showing up two hours early for batting practice, surged
to watch, mouths agape. If the fence weren't there and the ball hopped a
freight train rumbling by, why, it might have traveled over the Rocky
Mountains.
So grows the legend of Mark McGwire as
Roger Maris and 61 loom ever closer.
Then there was Sammy Sosa's
drive, the one that ...
Flared low through the wind blowing in at Candlestick, soared up, up, up
over metal bleachers where no one hits them, not a fence-scraper like his
first of the night, special delivery near the Priority Mail sign in dead
center, 480 feet on the fly, tying him for a day with McGwire at 46.
McGwire would pull ahead the next day, then Sosa would tie him again at 47
Sunday.
And how about Ken Griffey
Jr.'s dinger that ...
Crashed hard into the blue tarp in center at the Kingdome, a tidy
396-foot liner that gave him 41 through July, triggered the Mariners'
typically extravagant fireworks, and left vapors and hope hanging in the
air that he would be the anointed one to break the record. Alas, Seattle
lost the game to Cleveland in 17 innings, and Griffey faded.
What now after a two-week drought that ended with No. 42 over the
weekend? Is Griffey going, going, gone from the chase? Surely he's capable
of catching fire again, ripping 10 homers by the end of the month, making
this a fluid three-way race once more, with maybe all of them passing
Maris.
Or maybe none will do it. Maybe Maris' mark, already older than Babe
Ruth's record from 1927 to 1961, will withstand another assault as it did
last year when McGwire smacked 58 and Griffey 56. 'History in the
making'
How cool is this season-long home run derby? So cool that even a
perfect-game pitcher like the New York Yankees' David Wells, a
man who so reveres baseball history he wears Babe Ruth's cap, would get a
thrill in helping them break the record.
"We're watching history in the making," Wells said. "I love it. I
wouldn't want to lose a game, but if I were on the mound with a 10-0 lead
against one of them when they had 61, I'd groove one just to see them whack
the ball and break the record. Then I could be the answer to a trivia
question."
Ruthian is baseball's ultimate adjective. McGwiresque may someday surpass
it. What McGwire does ought to count for an extra run, like a 3-pointer in
basketball.
McGwire's shots are flying over lighted palm trees in San Diego, over
rock gardens, evergreens and fountains in Denver, over Big Mac Land in St.
Louis, busting seats and signs, beyond walls and imagination.
"For sheer, awesome distance, no one I know who has ever played the game
has hit balls so far, so consistently," says San Francisco manager Dusty
Baker, who played with a fellow named Aaron. "Big Mac has hit the longest
balls in just about every park in the majors."
Yet, there is only disdain in McGwire's tourmaline green eyes for the
mammoth batting-practice blows, meaningless, he knows. He feels like the
big monkey of the moment, performing in a cage.
Everyone's analyzing his every move, every word, every new silver hair in
his red goatee.
"My goal is to get through this season without my beard turning all
gray," McGwire says, knowing people will use those flecks as evidence of
pressure -- the same kind that made Maris' hair fall out.
They watch McGwire stretching like a yogi before games, meditating in
poses, his body remarkably supple for one who is 6-foot-5, 245 pounds with
forearms twice as thick as the barrel of his bat. Sosa and Griffey are
powerfully built, but on a smaller scale.
"Sammy's a little bigger version of Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays," says
Chicago Cubs manager
Jim Riggleman. "He doesn't hit a lot of huge homers. If it scrapes the back
of the wall going out, it counts the same as if it goes up in the third
deck. Henry Aaron didn't hit prodigious home runs. The outfielder ran to
the wall thinking he had a chance. I'd take 755 of those over 100 that go
500 feet."
So would McGwire or anyone else. But there's something breathlessly
exciting about watching a ball launched off McGwire's bat. Big
cars, big trucks, big homers
"Americans love power," McGwire says. "Big cars. Big trucks. Big people.
Baseball fans have always been drawn to the home run and the guy throwing
close to 100 mph. That's what they want to come and see.
"I remember as a kid I always wanted to go see Mike Schmidt or Dave
Kingman, or Nolan Ryan and Frank Tanana. It's like going to see golfers,
John Daly when he came in and was hitting over 300, then Tiger. Not
everybody can do that."
Television cameras follow McGwire everywhere, even wait outside the
dugout toilet for him to emerge, his head shaking at the lunacy of it all.
They zoom in on him in the locker room after games, win or lose, homers or
not, catch him lugging an igloo of ice on his back, wrapped in Ace
bandages, for his bulging disc.
A scan of his locker reveals bottles of Creatine, a health-food store
powder hyped as a muscle energy and size enhancer, and Androstenedione, an
over-the-counter pill that increases the body's ability to produce its own
testosterone naturally -- the same drug that recently led to Olympic
champion shot putter Randy Barnes' suspension.
Though the drug is on the International Olympic Committee's banned list,
it is a legal dietary supplement that does not violate major league
baseball's rules against only illegal drugs. McGwire, an ex-Olympian, could
not compete in the Olympics again if baseball were to field its own dream
team.
McGwire's locker is crammed, too, with more innocent items: a white
baseball cap from the Roger Maris Celebrity Golf tournament, with Maris'
image in home run stride, 61 above the bat, '61 below; two cans of Popeye
spinach; packs of sugarless gum; and a photograph of him and his
10-year-old batboy son, Matt, on the field.
Nothing goes unnoticed in McGwire's life these days.
On the wall of fame above his locker in Busch Stadium is No. 6 Stan
Musial in gold letters, still The Man in St. Louis, where a
larger-than-life bronze of him stands atop a granite pedestal outside the
front gates. Someday, if McGwire keeps this up, he'll have his own statue
out there. 'Please, Mr. McGwire'
In every ballpark, fans wear his No. 25. In St. Louis, there is a red sea
of No. 25 jerseys, "McGwire" on the backs of thousands. When he comes in
from the field to sign autographs before batting practice, the sea swells
like a giant wave toward him, kids imploring, "Please, Mr. McGwire," adults
sometimes knocking kids out of the way, shoving all kinds of stuff at him
to sign.
In the rush to get his autograph a few weeks ago, a freckle-faced boy
holding a ball got his face crushed against a metal rail in the front row
and started screaming and crying. "Get off my boy," his father yelled, "Are
you all sick?"
McGwire didn't see that accident, had already moved down the line to sign
more autographs. Incredibly, opposing players and coaches also ask him to
sign bats and balls for their own kids.
"It's absolutely overwhelming, the response from the fans and the
children," McGwire says. "I wish every ballplayer could feel what I feel
when I go into visiting stadiums. It's taken me off-guard. I still get
blown away when I get walked and they boo their own home pitcher. The fans
forget that this is a game they're trying to win."
On the road, McGwire checks into hotels under a pseudonym to avoid
intrusive calls and knocks. He's claustrophobic, hates tight spaces, feels
cornered in small crowds and elevators. Even at dinners with his son,
devouring steak after steak, strangers come up to him, sit down, want to
chat and get his autograph.
Sports psychologists study the way he zones in before hitting,
visualizing pitches, digging trenches at the plate, seeking a sense of
balance and comfort. Physicists crunch numbers to figure out how far he's
hitting homers, using algorithms to work out variables of trajectory,
temperature, humidity, wind and altitude.
Some meteorological observers say he and Griffey and Sosa are hitting so
many homers because it's been such a hot, sticky summer. The way these guys
swing, they could hit snowballs 400 feet in January.
McGwire's power comes from more than his 20-inch biceps. He's blessed
with uncanny timing and hand-eye coordination, and helped by contacts that
improve his vision from 20-500 to 20-15 in each eye. He's developed a knack
for hitting the ball just under the center to give it enough backspin to
ride the air. A short, compact, quick swing generates enormous bat speed.
Slammin' Sammy: Sosa, who is tied with McGwire at 47, hit 20 homers in June AP | |
But the biggest mechanical change he's made in recent years is to release
the bat with his right hand just after contact, giving him full extension
and even more distance. He hit a rookie record 49 homers in 1987 -- "I
don't know how I did that," he says -- but he's become a more patient, more
polished, more powerful hitter in every way.
He showed his patience recently against the Padres, when he came up with
the bases loaded after going 4-for-4 with a homer. Reliever Roberto
Ramirez, taking no risks of a grand slam, walked him on four pitches just
out of the strike zone.
"A lot of guys would have gone up there and said, `I'm going for the big
salami here. I'm going to have nine ribbies tonight,' " said San Diego's Tony Gwynn, who
knows a little about hitting. "But Mac's become a very disciplined hitter.
Ramirez threw him a couple of doodle balls outside. He didn't fish. He
threw a breaking ball down, and he didn't bite. Fastball up and away,
didn't bite. Took the walk, got his ribbie, had a perfect night. Two, three
years ago, it might not have been the case." Long-distance
calls
Nobody, especially McGwire, puts much credence in the accurate-sounding
distances announced in different ballparks. They're all estimates, even the
ones based on computer programs that take into account whether the ball was
a high-arcing drive, a liner, or somewhere in between, and where it would
have landed on a level field.
A homer in May in St. Louis, where a giant Band-Aid on a sign in center
marks the spot, is supposedly his farthest -- 545 feet. But that's just a
guess, though it's probably more accurate than the supposed 565-foot homer
Mickey Mantle was said to have hit in 1953.
Yale physicist Robert Adair estimates Mantle's homer at 506 feet, and
calls the 565 figure "nonsense," a figment of a Yankee publicist's
imagination based on where a fan found the ball after a ricochet and
several bounces.
Then there was McGwire's shot in San Diego, No. 43, a liner that took off
like a heat-seeking missile, rising, rising and crashing into the second
deck in left-center. Announced distance: 458 feet.
"If that's not a 500-foot home run, maybe 550, I don't know what is,"
Gwynn said.
Gwynn, in right field, got chills watching the ball soar after the
unmistakably crisp crack of the bat.
"I knew it was gone, and as I turned to watch, it got in the lights," he
said. "I had to put my glove up to see where it landed. And I looked over
at [center fielder Steve] Finley and he looked over at me, and he went,
'Wow!' and I went, 'Wow!' And then I looked over at their bullpen, and the
bullpen guy, I don't know who it was, went 'Wow!' And he's seen it 43 times
already. I've seen it three or four. It's an amazing thing."
Amazing to everyone except McGwire.
If only he could preserve the innocence of the act, the purity of the
summer swing, the catches with his son, playing the game the way he learned
it should be played. Why, he wonders, does everyone analyze everything,
want to know so much about him?
"Not many people would be here if he weren't hitting them so darned
long," said Jeff Wahl, 32, one of the thousands packing the left field
stands during batting practice recently in Denver. "I mean, quit hitting
500-foot home runs and people will stop coming out. Batting practice isn't
baseball, but it's still fun to watch."
Ask McGwire if he wants to break Maris' record, he shrugs stiffly as if
he doesn't much care, and says, "I really don't know. It's not an obsession
of mine. It's not something I have any control over."
He says he doesn't read stories about himself, or any of the thousands of
letters, from all 50 states and at least eight foreign countries, delivered
to the Cardinals' offices every few weeks in shopping carts and plastic
crates. He doesn't have the time and, at the moment, the inclination.
Instead, a Cardinals employee and two interns respond with form letters.
McGwire mania
Maris and especially Aaron were inundated with hate mail in their
pursuits of Babe Ruth. McGwire gets virtually nothing but requests for
autographs, thank yous for being a good guy, and heartfelt outpourings from
victims of child abuse -- a cause McGwire adopted and is addressing by
donating $1 million per year through his own foundation. He is appreciative
of the praise, but uncomfortable with people using him, or any celebrity,
as a role model for kids.
His easy moments come between the chalked lines of the field or in the
locker room when the cameras and tape recorders are gone. That's when he'll
laugh with his teammates -- he has a high-pitched giggle he muffles with a
towel when he indulges his favorite pastime, going to comedy clubs -- and
his eyes fairly twinkle.
Looking for the pine tar one day in the locker room, he exuded an air of
delight as he went around in a Tweetie Pie voice, singing, "Where's the
poin tah? Where's the poin tah?"
Sosa is always loose, the kind of guy who carries on a conversation
between swings, in Spanish and English. Where McGwire stands utterly still,
bat on shoulder, in deep meditation before batting, Sosa can't stop moving.
He takes practice swings with his big black bat and black gloves, stretches
one way then the other, looks around for family and friends in the crowd
from his home in the Dominican Republic.
Sosa insists McGwire's still The Man and he's just another kid. He says
he's not swinging for homers even when he's swinging from the heels. He
gulps ginseng for energy before games, chugs beer to chill out afterward.
Something must be working. Another 20-homer month like June and he'll blow
away Maris and Ruth, and probably McGwire and everyone else.
Many of those homers don't go much farther than the first few rows of the
bleachers, but they count the same as McGwire's gargantuan drives.
"It's not how far, it's how many," Dusty Baker said. Just doing
his job
Once considered a selfish player, Sosa shares a belief with McGwire and
Griffey that homers and the record are secondary to winning.
"I'm not thinking about MVP. I'm not thinking about Roger Maris," Sosa
says. "I'm thinking about just going up there and doing my job."
Sosa, like McGwire and Griffey, lives by the unwritten code of baseball
-- the team is everything, and woe to those who take pleasure in personal
performance when the team loses.
But that's not stopping Sosa from thoroughly enjoying his sudden
celebrity.
"The president of my country calls me a lot," he says. "We have a good
relationship."
When Sosa's name is announced at the start of games at Wrigley Field, he
sprints from the right-field line, turns toward the ivy-covered wall, and
caps a personal fanfest by flinging a ball into the bleachers. When he
homers, he skips toward first base, then honors his mother by blowing a
kiss and tapping his heart as he crosses the plate before saluting the late
Harry Caray with a victory sign.
"When I was back home a long time ago, when I was a shoeshine boy, I
never was thinking I would be in the major leagues," he says. "And now that
I'm here, anything can happen. I'm just having some fun right now. I love
America. It's a beautiful country."
Griffey is singularly pretty much responsible for the construction of a
new ballpark. Light and easy around teammates, he's been moody in public
this year, less because of the attention paid to his homers than the
troubles the Mariners have had on the field.
He points to the 1995 and 1997 AL West banners above center field at the
Kingdome.
"You see those flags?" he says. "That's what I want. I don't want
records. I want a World Series ring. I grew up in this game. That's the way
I was taught to think. My father didn't talk about how many hits he got.
All we cared about was winning or losing."
In recent weeks, with the team deflated over the trade of Randy Johnson
that everyone knew was coming, the Mariners have been doing a lot of losing
and Griffey has been struggling at the plate. He still has that classic,
long, looping swing, but he's been going through a stretch of fly balls
that come down on the warning track, liners with radar to outfielders'
mitts, grounders that don't sneak through the infield. In other words, a
slump.
"I'm human, maybe that's it," Griffey says.
Still, Griffey, Sosa and McGwire epitomize a new golden age for baseball
-- rich in talent and fun to watch -- just a few years after the nearly
ruinous strike. In record numbers, fans are responding by coming out to see
them.
Of the three, only Sosa has a real shot at reaching the playoffs, via the
wild-card route. But what they are bringing to baseball this season,
especially McGwire with the majesty of his rainbowlike clouts, is more than
a fascination with numbers and an assault on records. It is a stirring,
almost magical experience, seeing balls hit farther and more frequently by
three men in one season than ever before.
"The run that McGwire's on, that Griffey's on, Sosa, our guy [Greg Vaughn],
the Yankees maybe breaking the all-time record, it's great for the game
because it gives people a reason to watch," Gwynn said. "I love it. Years
from now people will be talking about this as one of the greatest seasons
in history, and the kids today will tell their kids about the time they saw
McGwire hit one out of the ballpark."
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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