Lifting His Spirits : McGwire Hopes Working With Weights (and Rader) Will Bring Him Back From Worst Season of Career

His batting average was sinking, his home run torrent had slowed to a trickle and he was struggling to right a relationship going inexorably wrong. With everything falling apart around him last season, Oakland Athletic first baseman Mark McGwire considered becoming a recluse to hide from the critics who were compounding his miseries.

“I said, ‘Do I stay in my house and not go out?’ I went out,” he said.

“It’s being able to look at yourself in the mirror. You have to face it. Sure, it’s tough and people look at you differently. People basically believe what they read in the paper, and they wrote a lot of bad things. From what I heard, people thought I was done. I had four great years and one bad one, and people thought I was done. Things will be different this year. I feel much better about myself.”

Lifting weights has helped McGwire lift his spirits. Back at a solid 240 pounds, his weight in 1987 when he hit a rookie-record 49 home runs, McGwire has recaptured the assurance lost during a miserable 1991 season. With the guidance of

Oakland hitting instructor Doug Rader, the former Angel manager, McGwire has harnessed his strength to his new wealth of self-confidence.

“I got away from (weightlifting) last year and I think it hurt me a little bit,” said McGwire, who hit 22 home runs in 1991, ending a streak in which he became the first player to hit 30 or more homers in his first four full major league seasons. “With about a month and a half left in the season, I starting working into it, and during the off-season I started working with my little brother J.J., who’s a body builder. It’s been great.

“The main thing is I feel good physically and I feel good mentally about myself. I don’t think I could say that about last year. I just got tired of not feeling good about myself. When you can look yourself in the mirror every day and say, ‘I feel good about myself,’ that makes a difference.”

Rader has helped promote that transformation, refining McGwire’s mechanics so imperceptibly McGwire doesn’t know it is happening.

“A lot of it is very subtle,” Rader said of their work. “I’m reluctant to talk for the reason nothing should be directed to me in the way of credit and because any kind of instruction should be confidential.”

McGwire makes no secret of his respect for Rader. “He’s what I need. He’ll sit there and be very, very positive and not tell me to change things,” McGwire said. “The times we’ve had talks, he makes so much sense. . . . He hasn’t changed my stance. Basically, I’m doing what I’m capable of doing instead of what people want me to do. It’s a tough thing to do, and I learned the hard way.”

Oakland center fielder Dave Henderson is more impressed by McGwire’s strong faith than his strong muscles.

“I don’t care how big you are or strong you are. It’s what’s in between the ears that counts, and he’s level-headed,” Henderson said. “He’s more confident, he likes himself, he likes life. Those things are important.”

McGwire, a Pomona native who was a star for three years at USC, didn’t lack reasons to like life in 1987, when he joined Carlton Fisk as the only players unanimously voted as the American League’s rookie of the year. Besides tying Andre Dawson for the major league lead with 49 homers, McGwire led the AL with a .618 slugging percentage, was third in the AL with 118 runs batted in and hit. 289.

That his average dropped to .260 in 1988 seemed unimportant because he hit 32 homers and had 99 RBIs; a drop to .231 in 1989 was overshadowed by his 33 homers and 95 RBIs. He raised his average to .235 in 1990 with 39 homers and 108 RBIs, but he never got going in 1991.

He hit no homers in April, five in May, then hit bottom when he batted .173 in July. Because of the A’s inconsistent pitching, McGwire was more a symptom of their problems than the reason they failed to win a fourth consecutive AL West championship, but he didn’t escape blame.

Although he has hit more home runs--175--in the last five seasons than any player in the major leagues and his career homer rate of one in every 14.9 at-bats is second among active players only to Detroit’s Cecil Fielder, his .201 batting average in 1991 sparked speculation that he was irreversibly declining. He has learned to ignore those who carp about his average.

“I throw that out the door,” said McGwire, who had four hits in nine spring at-bats, including a home run against the Angels Wednesday. “I’m not paid to hit .300, I’m paid to hit home runs and drive in runs. In 1990, I hit .235 with 39 homers. Which would you rather hit, that or .300 with 10 homers and 70 RBIs? I’d take .235 and whatever home runs and RBIs I got.”

He took it as a knock that he didn’t win a Gold Glove award last season, after committing only one error in the last four months and four in 1,191 chances, a .997 fielding percentage. AL managers and coaches chose the Yankees’ Don Mattingly, who played 127 games at first base, 25 fewer than McGwire.

A’s Manager Tony La Russa said: “I don’t want to take anything away from Don Mattingly, but given the games he missed, I think Mark was the best first baseman in the league from the first day to the last. Mark had a difficult season, but he came to the ballpark ready to play. He didn’t ask out, ever. He showed a lot of toughness.”

Still, the slight hurt him. “Now I’m totally convinced the Gold Glove means offense and has nothing to do with defense,” McGwire said. “I even had people tell me I had a better year defensively last year than the year before, when I won it. It upset me I didn’t get recognized.”

He recognized his offensive shortcomings when he filed for salary arbitration last winter. He had intended to file at his 1991 earnings, $2.875 million, but he said the players’ association forgot to include a $25,000 bonus he had earned when it recorded his filing figure at $2.85 million. He later signed a one-year, $2.6-million contract.

“I realized, hey, I had a year where I didn’t do what I’m capable of doing and I didn’t deserve a raise,” he said. “I have to feel good about what I do, and I did feel good about that. I don’t want money to get in the way of what I’m doing, which is playing baseball. I’m not a guy who says, ‘I’ve got to beat this guy and get paid more.’ People lose what it’s about. It’s a game, a kid’s game. So much is made of money.

“You hear so much about money and the expectations that go with money. Sure, if you make millions and millions, people are going to expect a lot out of you, because if you’re getting paid that much, you’ve got to do what you’re paid for. Geez, how much higher is it going to go after (the $7-million contract signed by Ryne) Sandberg?”

Going to another team was a possibility he welcomed last season when the A’s offered him to the Angels for Wally Joyner. The Angels declined, fearing they would lose McGwire to free agency and wondering if his skills had eroded.

“I would have loved it,” McGwire said. “I always had a dream about owning a home right on the beach. When you’re a kid and you go to Anaheim Stadium, you’re walking around, never thinking you’ll be able to play there, and now I’m playing there. When I heard there were talks and I might go down there, I thought, ‘That would be cool.’ If that would have happened, it would have put smiles on my face.”

Not that he’s unhappy with the A’s, despite the team’s uncertain pitching prospects and the potential for divisiveness created by Jose Canseco, Rickey Henderson and Dave Stewart. Third baseman Carney Lansford last week said Rickey Henderson’s withdrawn behavior “could be a cancer” on the team, but that has since faded into background noise.

“We’ve been here long enough that it doesn’t bother us,” McGwire said of distractions caused this spring by Lansford’s remark, Canseco’s legal scrapes and both Canseco and Rickey Henderson reporting later than La Russa had requested.

“We know they’re great ballplayers, and they know what it takes to get ready and they’ll be there when the season starts. Sure, it would be great if they were there the first day we have to show up, but technically you don’t have to show up until March 4. You can’t really concern yourself with that. You’re here in spring training to get yourself ready. Everybody here gets so well prepared. I don’t think there’s that much turmoil. We do have some controversial players but they’re damned good players.

“It goes back to the same thing: When you get on top, people want to shoot you down. . . . I think we withstand a lot of stuff. This year we’re not picked to win, not to do anything, which might be really nice for us. People have looked at us like they’re going to look at the Minnesota Twins. Other teams are going to play them like they played us and got up for us.”

McGwire’s Career Statistics

REGULAR SEASON

Year Team G AB R H HR RBI Avg. 1986 Oakland 18 53 10 10 3 9 .189 1987 Oakland 151 557 97 161 49 118 .289 1988 Oakland 155 550 87 143 32 99 .260 1989 Oakland 143 490 74 113 33 95 .231 1990 Oakland 156 523 87 123 39 108 .235 1991 Oakland 154 483 62 97 22 75 .201 Totals 777 2,656 417 647 178 504 .244

AMERICAN LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES

Year Team G AB R H HR RBI Avg. 1988 Oakland 4 15 4 5 1 3 .333 1989 Oakland 5 18 3 7 1 3 .389 1990 Oakland 4 13 2 2 0 2 .154 Totals 13 46 9 14 2 8 .304

WORLD SERIES

Year Team G AB R H HR RBI Avg. 1988 Oakland 5 17 1 1 1 1 .059 1989 Oakland 4 17 0 5 0 1 .294 1990 Oakland 4 14 1 3 0 0 .214 Totals 13 48 2 9 1 2 .188