Following in the footsteps of Roger Maris, Mark McGwire showed Saturday that Babe Ruth’s home run record remains as mortal as the legendary slugger himself.
But McGwire did more than become the third man to hit 60 homers. He demonstrated that it’s possible to survive in such rarefied air without losing either sleep or hair.
McGwire says he feels constant pressure when he’s on the field with the St. Louis Cardinals, yet he has the appearance of a man who is at peace with himself and the improbable feat he is accomplishing.
His calm is as surreal as the pace at which he is hitting home runs. His shot off Cincinnati rookie Dennis Reyes in the first inning of Saturday’s 7-0 victory was his fifth in four games. It moved him within one of Maris’ record, which has stood since 1961, and three ahead of the Cubs’ Sammy Sosa. Sosa later got one back, hitting his 58th.
Asked later if he felt he belonged in the Hall of Fame, McGwire had a quick answer. “What?” he said, “are you going to bronze me?”
McGwire needs only two homers in the remaining 21 games to claim the most coveted record in baseball, if not all of professional sports. He has 13 in his last 57 at-bats. Both math and karma are in the corner of the man who Sosa predicts will finish with 70.
“Let’s just accept what is happening,” McGwire said after going 1 for 4 with three strikeouts. “Enjoy it. Ride the wave.”
For Maris, the pursuit of Ruth’s record turned into an ordeal. It appears to be a delight for McGwire.
“I’ve had a lot of people who say, `Just enjoy it,’ ” McGwire said. “I don’t know if I will ever be in this position again. . . . I am realistic about things. You can’t get a home run every day and you can’t get a hit every day. But there is one thing I can do: make adjustments and try to do my best. That is what I do.”
McGwire’s first-inning homer came on a 2-0 fastball from Reyes, a left-hander the Reds acquired from Los Angeles in a trade for reliever Jeff Shaw this season. The ball jumped off his bat on an arc headed toward the left-field bleachers.
It stayed fair by about 20 feet, landing in the bleachers that sit above the outfield fence. McGwire may have been the only calm person in Busch Stadium, which was populated by a sellout crowd of 47,994.
As McGwire rounded the bases, he did a little stutter-step at second that was a reasonable facsimile of Sosa’s stylish trot. He later said it was a misstep, not a salute.
“I was just a little out of sync,” McGwire said. “I touch the bags a certain way, so I had to continue to do it.”
McGwire had come to bat with one out and John Mabry on first. Reyes was booed lustily when he started him out with two breaking pitches out of the strike zone.
In the Cincinnati dugout, manager Jack McKeon had a simple thought for the 2-0 pitch. “Throw it out of the strike zone,” he said later.
If Reyes read his manager’s mind, he didn’t comply. He gave McGwire a chance to hit his first homer of the year against Cincinnati pitching, and McGwire took advantage.
“For me, it’s another home run,” Reyes said. “He just hit another home run. I wasn’t going to be the first one (to give up a homer to McGwire), and I’m not going to be the last one.”
By getting No. 60 out of the way in the first inning, McGwire gave himself three chances to catch Maris. He struck out each time against Reyes and relievers Mike Remlinger and John Hudek.
Reyes got him on four pitches in the second inning, with McGwire swinging through a 1-2 slider. Remlinger–like sidearming reliever Scott Sullivan on Friday night–struck him out on three pitches in the fifth inning, including a 93 m.p.h. fastball to finish the job.
Hudek pitched to McGwire despite having two on and first base open in the seventh inning. He went to 3-2 and then got McGwire to chase a high fastball for his 136th strikeout of the season.
“He’s the one going in the record book,” Hudek said. “If I go in, I want it to be for my personal accomplishments, not somebody else’s thrill. I didn’t want to be one of his victims.”
McGwire complimented the Cincinnati pitching staff for challenging him. He will face them three more times in the next five games, with a two-game series against the Cubs in between.
“My last three at-bats I was pitched very well,” McGwire said. “Hudek was flat-out nasty–outside black and a little off the plate. Those are the ones . . . you just tip your hat at the pitcher and say nice job.”
McGwire’s parents had come in from their home in Pomona, Calif., to watch the game. They should soon be joined by their grandson. McGwire said his 10-year-old son, Matt, would join Team McGwire once he reaches 61, if not before then.
McGwire hopes he can get to 62 within the next three days, as the Cardinals leave Wednesday for a five-game trip to Cincinnati and Houston. He knows that some are watching to see if he does what Maris did not–surpass Ruth’s total within the 154-game period that composed a season in 1927. But he is hardly sweating such details.
“It is not my fault I was born in a different age where (the season) wasn’t 154 games,” he said. “It is unfortunate that there is always somebody who is going to say something that we have to put an asterisk to.”
