McGwire 1-Ups Sosa With Two

The wind was blowing in at Wrigley Field on Wednesday afternoon, which didn’t exactly make it a perfect day to resume the race to break Roger Maris’ home run record.

No matter.

The Chicago Cubs’ Sammy Sosa drove a ball into the final row of the bleachers for his major league-leading 48th home run of the year in the fifth inning.

The St. Louis Cardinals’ Mark McGwire answered two innings later with a mammoth shot that pulled him back into a tie with Sosa, then drove a ball over the center-field fence in the top of the 10th to retake the major league lead with his 49th and carry the Cardinals to an 8-6 comeback victory.

“That’s why he’s the man,” Sosa said afterward.

McGwire had gone 20 at-bats between home runs, enabling Sosa to creep up and take over the major league lead for the first time this season, but he worked reliever Matt Karchner to a 3-and-1 count in the seventh and jumped ahead 2-and-0 on veteran left-hander Terry Mulholland in the 10th.

Fastball counts.

“I was in a hitter’s situation,” McGwire said. “I got two fastballs to hit and I drove them.”

He drove the first one so far that Ken Vangeloff didn’t need an admission ticket to get the best look at it. The 36-year-old computer consultant smothered the ball on Waveland Avenue and held on for dear life as dozens of other ballhawks piled onto him.

It was worth the fight. He came up with a genuinely valuable piece of sports history--so valuable, in fact, that an unidentified fan offered him $1,500 on the spot for McGwire’s 48th.

No joke. He produced the cash. Vangeloff declined.

“This is worth more to me than $1,500,” he said.

The second home run landed in the landscaped area behind center field that serves as a dark hitting backdrop. A fan hopped the barrier to retrieve it, but tossed the ball onto the field before security personnel escorted him out of the ballpark. Presumably, it was forwarded to McGwire.

The home run derby obscured the importance of the second game of the brief series, but it wasn’t lost on Sosa, who couldn’t celebrate his good fortune after the Cubs blew a four-run lead in the eighth inning in a game critical to their playoff chances.

“My main concern is the way that we played,” he said quietly. “We should have had that game. There were a lot of situations we should have taken advantage of.”

Sosa and McGwire had been conspicuous by their inconspicuousness in the first game of the series Tuesday night, going a combined 0 for 9 with six strikeouts. But they generated excitement from the first inning Wednesday.

McGwire hit a long fly in the top of the first that was caught against the ivy. Sosa hit a line drive in the bottom of the third that hit the wall just below the home run net that rings the inside of the bleachers.

“The first two at-bats, I felt really good,” said McGwire, on the threshold of an unprecedented third consecutive 50-homer season. “I was just under a couple. To me, that’s a good sign. I just knew it was a matter of time. . . .

“With 50, that’s when someone has a legitimate shot to beat the record. When that happens, you guys will have to think of some new questions, because you’ve been waiting five months for this.”