BASEBALL’S LATEST POWER BROKERS : A’s McGwire Keeping It All in Perspective Despite the Comparisons to Ruth and Maris

Though still within a tape measure or two, Mark McGwire is no longer ahead of the home run pace of Babe Ruth in 1927 and Roger Maris in 1961.

The graduate of La Verne’s Damien High School and a star with USC and the U.S. Olympic team, McGwire doesn’t blame the press for making those early season comparisons. He simply thinks they were unrealistic.

It would be more appropriate, perhaps, to reflect on his pace and conclude that he has come a long way in a hurry, particularly since many, among them former USC coach Rod Dedeaux and McGwire himself, once thought he would become a professional pitcher.

Now 23 and in his first full season as the Oakland A’s first baseman, McGwire may not match or surpass Ruth’s 60 home runs or the 61 by Maris, but his colleagues suspect that he will remain in the running for the American League’s home run and runs batted-in titles--as well as for Rookie of the Year.

“I expect him to be the type hitter who combines a respectable average with high run production,” A’s Manager Tony LaRussa said.

“Can he win the home run title? Definitely. There’s some legitimate home run hitters in this league, but I don’t see anyone more legitimate than he is.”

Legitimacy? LaRussa only has to look in his own clubhouse. Reggie Jackson, his designated hitter, has 554 homers. Jose Canseco, his left fielder, hit 33 en route to the 1986 rookie award.

Jackson has 6 homers this year, Canseco 9 and McGwire 20. McGwire also leads the A’s with 42 RBIs, though he didn’t become a regular until April 20, Oakland’s 14th game. He had 1 homer, 1 RBI and a .166 batting average based on 3 hits in 18 at-bats then. He has since delivered 19 homers and 41 RBIs in 45 games, averaging a home run every 9.3 times at bat.

Canseco, who averaged a home run every 18.8 at-bats last year, predicts that McGwire will be a unanimous winner of the rookie award.

“He has size, strength and a compact swing,” Canseco said. “He’s going to hit 30 homers and drive in more than 100 runs.

“The only thing he lacks is speed, but power hitters don’t need speed. They only have to jog around the bases.”

Jackson, who has turned that jog into an art form, said it was too early to provide a definitive analysis, but added: “The thing I like about him is his makeup. He’s never too high or too low. He’s the same every day.”

Same, in this case, being defined as polite, soft-spoken and unpretentious--borderline “aw shucks.”

Said rookie catcher Terry Steinbach, his road roommate: “Mark is very pleased about what he’s accomplished, but as far as being carried away or caught up in all that talk about Roger Maris, he keeps it in perspective.

“We’ll talk about game situations and how we’re being pitched, but he’s very realistic. When he was hitting a home run every seven at-bats and people were saying he’d hit 70, he was saying, ‘Forget it. Don’t be ridiculous.’ ”

McGwire and others credit his wife, Kathy, for helping him develop and maintain that balance. She’s three years older. They met when she was a batgirl at USC and he a pitcher-first baseman. A big night for the McGwires almost always includes “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune.”

“We watch a lot of TV,” he said. “In school, a bunch of us would always get together on Thursday nights and have a ‘Cosby,’ ‘Family Ties’ and ‘Cheers’ party.”

Animal House it isn’t. Not now, then or when McGwire and his four brothers were growing up in the Pomona-Claremont area. Ginger and John McGwire, a dentist, obviously taught their sons the meaning of respect.

A veteran reporter, accustomed to the rebuffs and cynicism of many athletes, wrapped up an interview the other night, then nearly required resuscitation when McGwire said: “Thanks a lot. I really enjoyed it.”

Jim Lefebvre, the former Dodger who is now Oakland’s third-base coach, reflected on the 6-foot 5-inch, 220-pound McGwire and agreed with Jackson’s analysis.

“You’ve got to be impressed by his size, by the way he stands at the plate, by his power and ability to hit the breaking pitch,” Lefebvre said. “But what I like most is his makeup. He’s very mature for his age. He reminds me of Steve Garvey. Garv could strike out three times or have a great day and be the same. He just walked in and went about his business.”

In their close-knit family, the parents McGwire didn’t spare the rod. Ginger McGwire would take after her rambunctious sons with a wooden spoon. Then they got so big, Mark said, that by merely putting up an arm to fend off the blow they would break the spoon.

The McGwire roster resembles something out of the National Football League: Mike, 24, 6-4 and 210 pounds, the recent recipient of a Ph.D in psychology from the University of La Verne; the red-haired Mark, known as Big Mac and/or Orange Crunch among the A’s; Bob, 21, 6-4 and 210 pounds, closing in on a contractor’s license; Danny, 18, 6-8 and 235 pounds, expected to start at quarterback for Iowa; and John Joseph or J. J., 16, 6-2 and 215 pounds, a sophomore weightlifter and defensive end at Claremont High.

“Mom would have to double or triple every recipe,” Mark said, smiling. “J. J. is the only one still at home, but I don’t think she knows how to cook for just one.”

Ginger McGwire is 5-10, her husband 6-2. Polio limited John McGwire to a little boxing and a lot of golf, which all of his sons were playing by an early age.

Mark, in fact, quit baseball as a sophomore at Damien to concentrate on golf, reducing his handicap to a six before deciding he didn’t want to pursue it that seriously.

He returned to baseball, believing that no one knew him as a hitter, which was fine.

“All I wanted to do was pitch,” he said. “I always thought that was all I would do.”

The Montreal Expos thought so, too, and made him their eighth selection after his graduation from Damien in 1981. McGwire said he would have signed if the Expos had offered the financial equivalent of a USC scholarship, which was his only college offer.

The Expos didn’t, and McGwire signed with the Trojans, responding to a recruiter named Marcel Lachemann, then the Trojans’ pitching coach and now the pitching coach of the Angels.

On the night of Lachemann’s final visit, Ginger McGwire served strawberry pie. Mark got up the next morning with intense abdominal pain and ultimately had an emergency appendectomy. He was also found to have mononucleosis. He has since refused to eat strawberries.

Lachemann remembered the healthy McGwire.

“I saw him pitch three games,” he said. “In all three, he hit two home runs. I told Rod that he had a great arm but that he also had the potential to be an outstanding power hitter. We signed him for both roles, but I had the feeling that nothing was going to prevent him from swinging the bat.”

McGwire, by contrast, now has the feeling that he would have remained a pitcher, because of Lachemann’s coaching ability, if Lachemann hadn’t left to join the Angels before McGwire’s first year at USC.

The turning point occurred in 1982, when McGwire won the batting title in the Alaskan Summer League, pitching some and playing first base for the Glacier Pilots. The scouts began to peak his interest by predicting that he had the potential to be a No. 1 draft choice. He was majoring in public administrations, but baseball dominated his thinking.

“I still wanted to pitch some but I knew that I now had to concentrate on one or the other,” McGwire said. “And I had to convince Rod that I wanted to hit and play first regularly.”

That was before McGwire’s second season at USC.

Now, five years later, Dedeaux still believes that McGwire would have made it as a pitcher. He still believes that another former Trojan, Dave Kingman, faced with a similar choice years earlier, would have made it as a pitcher.

“It was my idea with both Dave and Mark to keep both options open as long as they didn’t hurt themselves in either area,” Dedeaux said. “There’s no doubt in my mind but that Mark McGwire was a major league pitching prospect, but I think the governing factor was that he was such a good athlete and competitor that he wanted to be in the lineup regularly. He’s going to be the type hitter who gets his 35 to 40 homers a year.”

McGwire pitched for the last time in 1983, compiling a 3-1 record in eight games. He also set a USC record with 19 homers, which he promptly obliterated in ‘84, when he hit 32. He batted .387 and drove in 80 runs. A year later, the fences at Dedeaux Field were moved back.

“The joke was that my dad paid to have them moved back so that no one would break my record,” McGwire said in the A’s clubhouse the other day.

One of 13 members of the 1984 Olympic team to reach the majors, he was the A’s first-round choice that June, the 10th player selected.

The New York Mets, holding the top pick, had met with McGwire before the draft and told him he would be their choice if they could reach a contract agreement before the draft day.

The McGwires thought about it, then decided they weren’t satisfied with the Mets’ offer and weren’t keen on making a counter offer before the draft. The Mets ultimately made Shawn Abner the nation’s No. 1 pick after considering both McGwire and Cory Snyder.

Abner is one of the players the Mets traded to San Diego last winter for Kevin McReynolds.

McGwire, in the meantime, said he was excited to be drafted by the A’s, since it meant he would be playing for a West Coast team that trained and played in comparative proximity to friends and relatives.

McGwire hit 24 homers and drove in 106 runs in 138 games for Class-A Modesto in 1985, then hit 23 homers and drove in 112 runs after advancing to Double-A Huntsville and Triple-A Tacoma last year.

The 1987 plan was hazy, but it seemed to call for another rookie, Rob Nelson, to start at first, with McGwire playing some at his favorite position of first base, third base and in the outfield.

The A’s even submitted Nelson’s name as their first-base candidate for the All-Star ballot.

McGwire isn’t listed at any position, but may be selected by Manager John McNamara as a reserve, particularly since the game will be played in Oakland.

“Nelson had the edge (at first base) because he is a left-handed hitter who had played a full season of Triple-A and then spent a full season in winter ball,” LaRussa said. “Mark had to play his way on the team and did. He was something to see. He hit off the tee, in batting practice, in intra-squad games, in exhibitions. He hit in every situation possible. We had to find a position for him.”

Nelson returned to Tacoma, and McGwire became the regular on April 20, after which he began hitting homers at a pace reminiscent of, yes, Maris and Ruth. He even hit two in the same game against a sinkerball specialist and former patient of his dad’s--Tommy John.

Their friendship is such that John had previously arranged for his attorney, Bob Cohen, to represent McGwire, who figures to make a significant jump from the major league minimum of $62,500.

He is currently second in the league in homers and slugging percentage, and includes 27 extra-base hits among his total of 48. He has a shot at Al Rosen’s home run record for rookies of 37, set in 1950.

McGwire said he doesn’t set goals and thinks that any and all projections are unrealistic.

“To hit 15 homers in a month is kind of crazy,” he said. “I’m just trying to be aggressive and consistent. I’m not satisfied hitting .250 or so (.254). I would be satisfied if I got it up to .280 or so.”

The natural inclination is to compare McGwire’s story to Kingman’s. But the A’s, who refused to re-sign Kingman last winter, say they are similar only in that they both boast power, went to USC and started as pitchers.

They point out that McGwire has a shorter swing, which allows him to make consistent contact and avoid the strikeouts that hounded Kingman. They cite McGwire’s willingness to walk and ability to hit to all fields, making it easier to avoid slumps. Then, too, Kingman’s behavior was often a plague to reporters and teammates.

The pleasant McGwire sat at his locker and said it seemed hilarious that so many people are suddenly interested in him. He walked into a recent New York press conference expecting to encounter two writers and found 30. He and Steinbach have had to put a hold on their road phone to avoid the calls that come at all hours.

The one person, aside from Kathy, who can always get through is Ron Vaughn, a former hitting instructor at USC and Azusa Pacific who now scouts for the Chicago White Sox and has been McGwire’s hitting mentor. Vaughn was with McGwire during that Alaska summer, and they still meet regularly during the winter to analyze his swing. Does McGwire still think he could pitch in the majors?

He smiled and said: “Seeing how hard they hit it up here I don’t think I could do it without a screen in front of the mound.”

McGwire seems to have found his niche, although he misses Southern California. He and Kathy are expecting their first child in late September and will later leave their nearby Dublin apartment to look for a home in the Newport Beach area. There’s not as much smog or traffic here, but each to his own pace.