It’s Been Long Time Since Baseball Had This Much To Offer

As a 13-year-old, I planned ahead for weeks to see Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris come to Washington as they chased Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1961. Naturally, I picked a summer doubleheader. Twice as much chance to see my slice of baseball history. Were Bennie Daniels and Marty Kutyna going to stop the M&M; Boys?

The great Yankee sluggers (and lousy Nats pitchers) didn’t disappoint me. Mantle and Maris hit three homers, though my child memory can’t recall who had two and who only one. That may have been the only day of my childhood when I didn’t hate the Yanks.

Still, that long-ago summer pursuit of Ruth focused on only one team. And, for those outside New York, it was the least-liked team in the game. Imagine how much fun it is to be a kid this summer.

Actually, I don’t have to wonder. In a way, I am a kid again. For weeks my son and I have turned on the TV every morning to see whether Mark McGwire or Ken Griffey Jr. hit a homer the previous night. We’re part of the nationwide Homer Watch. How could it get better than Big Mac and Junior? It just did. Now we’ve got Sammy Sosa, too.

“Sosa hit another one,” I reported on Friday morning. “That’s 19 this month. And McGwire got his 34th.”

“No, Dad,” said Russell, 11. “That’s 35 for McGwire.”

It has been a long time since the game headed into summer with so much to offer so many. To create new fans, and repossess old ones, you need something truly special. Right now, as the All-Star Game approaches on July 7 at mile-high Coors Field in Denver, baseball is special again. This home run circus not only has three rings but, thanks to interleague play, it has showtimes in both leagues. Everybody’s part of it.

This weekend, Sosa will thrill Royals fans in Kansas City as the Crushin’ Cub tries to push the homers-in-one-month record so far out of reach that nobody will ever match it.

In Minneapolis, McGwire will try to rip holes in the baggie in the Metrodome. Or will Big Mac puncture that ugly Twins roof? In Arizona, Diamondback catchers may wear out that dirt path to the mound trying to figure out how to pitch to red-hot Griffey, and his partner in power, Alex Rodriguez, who is on pace to become the first middle-infielder to hit 50 homers.

And guess who’s coming to San Francisco? Texas’s Juan Gonzalez who, by some lights, is on track to break a record even more ridiculously remote than Maris’s 62 homers. Gonzalez has 94 RBI-a pace for 195. That would top Hack Wilson’s mark of 190. For reference, if you can even call it that, Mantle once won the most valuable player award in the American League with 89 RBI for the season.

Those who say baseball’s late-’90s slugfest is some impure plague that has been visited upon the game are out of touch with the sentiments of those who actually follow the sport. We’re loving it. Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, Rogers Hornsby, Joe DiMaggio and Hank Greenberg got to post monster stats with the ‘30s rabbit ball. It’s just our turn.

The stars of this generation -- who are the equal in gifts of those from any baseball period -- are simply capitalizing on this small-park, small-strike-zone, expansion-diluted-pitching, once-in-a-career chance. Sometimes, too much of a good thing is just the right amount.

Once, I enjoyed watching Frank Howard’s record 10 homers in six games for the old Senators, especially that 500-footer off Cleveland’s Sudden Sam McDowell. But what Sosa has done this month has left me far more slack-jawed. Thanks to WGN, millions of us get to sneak a peek at the daily progress of a man on a 66-homer pace.

The 29-year-old Cubs outfielder hits hat-high fastballs over the left field bleachers in Wrigley Field and golfs low curveballs far enough to par the 18th hole at Congressional. You can’t pitch around him. He has always swung at everything (36 non-intentional walks in ‘97). But now, for a while anyway, he is also hitting everything. Can you really hit 62 home runs while drawing less than 62 walks?

Ever since the strike of ‘94, fans have asked when, if ever, baseball would show that it was still worthy of joining football and basketball in America’s continual debate over Best Sport. In ‘95, Cal Ripken held the fort for the game virtually alone, thanks to his streak. Then, in ‘96, the Yanks were reborn as a powerhouse. Finally, last year, McGwire and Griffey created credibility for their Maris march this season by hitting 58 and 56 homers. It was possible. Now, when we hear that McGwire is on a pace for 74 homers, we don’t laugh.

Luckily, baseball has other rejuvenating forces. The game needs glamour teams in megamarkets with maximum TV exposure. Since Ruth’s day, the Yankees (53-19) have seldom had a better team than they do now. Across town, the Mets are a wild-card contender. So, this weekend’s Yanks-Mets series is awaited with biblical anticipation.

Both Los Angeles teams are in the playoff hunt, too. And the two century-long sentimental losers -- the Red Sox and the Cubs -- once again have World Series delusions. The Padres and Giants have a legit California rivalry brewing. The Indians are a class act.

If the ancient, held-together-with-baling-wire Orioles ever stumbled into a 10-game winning streak, even Camden Yards might start to feel the electricity that is pulsing through parks everyhwere else.

Look down any day’s schedule of major league games and you’ll realize that a genuine marquee name is probably on display. Greg Maddux, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, Mike Mussina, Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez or 20-K rookie K-K-Kerry Wood is pitching. Mike Piazza, Barry Bonds, Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra or Tony Gwynn is playing.

Baseball only has one snake in the grass to fear. Forward thinkers in the game are pushing for a World Cup of baseball, perhaps in 2001. Aaarghh! After the infantile tantrums of the U.S. Olympic hockey team and, this week, the U.S. World Cup soccer team, how can anybody in their right mind want to inflict a World Cup on baseball?

Please, let’s not go there. Baseball is coming back to life quite nicely on its own -- without help from the geniuses in charge. Let’s just leave the job to Mac, Sammy and Junior. They’re doing fine.