McGwire, Sosa Are Also Ahead in Human Race

Imagine two powerful runners. One dark, one pale; one from San Pedro de Macoris, one from Pomona.

Imagine these runners sprinting side by side through the final rocky miles of an attempt to run farther than anyone in history.

Imagine a nation watching it, millions of dollars riding on it, the image of a national pastime depending on it.

Now imagine this:

The runners are cheering for each other.

And we’re cheering for them both.

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Can’t happen? Never happen?

It’s happening this instant, in the wonderful world of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, where barriers are falling as if thwacked with a 500-foot line drive.

More important than chasing history, McGwire and Sosa are making history with the chase.

Their race to surpass the single-season home run record is almost secondary to the manner in which they are running it, and we are following it.

For once, in a sports landscape irrigated with grudge matches and rivalries, we are not cheering for man against man, but man against sport.

Which is, one suspects, how cheering began in the first place.

For once, in a locker room culture where athletes try to mess up an opponent’s head before his body, these guys don’t.

McGwire compliments Sosa, says he should be the MVP. Sosa praises McGwire, calls him “The Man.”

McGwire says Sosa is great. Sosa says McGwire is better.

And on it goes, deliciously, into the last month of the classiest sports duel in years.

The essence of modern athletics dictates that no world-class competition can be held without a boastful leader and a whiny challenger; without somebody wagging a finger in celebration while somebody else points one in accusation.

So far, this race has had neither. Featuring vastly different men from different countries and rival teams, this race has been about one thing.

Baseball. Just baseball.

Imagine that.

A guy throwing a round ball 90 mph. Another guy trying to hit it out of the park with a round bat.

When you rush to the sports news at night, you are not caring whether the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Florida Marlins. You want to know if Big Mac beat the pitcher.

When you rush to the newspaper in the morning, only die-hard Chicago Cub fans are looking first at the score. Everyone else is looking to see, did Sammy slug another one?

Every at-bat is a drama, you running to the screen, calling the kids, shouting at the pitcher, “Throw strikes!” Shouting at the fly ball, “Get out! Get out!”

Filled with drama that has nothing to do with a beanball, tension that does not involve some angry traded player, heroics that do not leave the loser prone and cursing, it has a been a race back to our childhoods.

Fans have been reminded why they love the game.

Players have been reminded why they play.

Full credit goes to the two competitors, who could have been jerks, as McGwire showed earlier this year when he complained about everything from bad pitches to being a caged animal.

But when he hit his 50th in New York, he suddenly changed, smiled, enjoyed.

Sosa, sitting comfortably all season in McGwire’s draft, didn’t have to.

Now, it is as if they are trying to become the first athletes to break a historic record while conducting a seminar on the proper way to do it.

McGwire is discovered with a controversial over-the-counter growth supplement in his locker?

Instead of trying to lie his way out of a tight spot, he admits that he takes the drug, notes that it’s perfectly legal, and the issue disappears.

Sosa is accused of hitting a home run off a fastball grooved by a pitcher from the Dominican Republic?

Instead of crying foul, he simply denies the charge, asks fans to judge his play for themselves, and the issue disappears.

McGwire blows his cool and gets thrown out of a game by a rookie umpire in the first inning?

While talk-radio shows across the country blame the umpire, McGwire blames himself. He becomes one of the first baseball players in recorded history to say, yes, he should have been thrown out of a game.

Sosa, meanwhile, becomes one of the first baseball players ever to take an extra curtain call, stepping outside the dugout and waving to the fans in place of reluctant hero Kerry Wood.

Roger Maris long ago proved that chasing this home run record is tricky business. It turns out, this time the baseball gods gave us the two best people for the job.

Ken Griffey Jr. is sour and unhappy and too young for the part. Albert Belle would have been too surly. Anyone from Colorado would have been too phony.

These are the right two, maybe the only two, and for reasons that extend beyond the field.

McGwire has become a symbol for divorced fathers, doting on his 10-year-old son, Matt, taking him on the team plane, parading him around the clubhouse.

Few remember that in 1987, when McGwire had 49 homers, he turned down the chance to finish his rookie year with 50 and left the team before the end of the season to be there for Matt’s birth.

Sosa, meanwhile, has become a symbol for loving sons, finishing each homer by blowing a kiss to his mother in the Dominican Republic while mouthing the words, “Para ti, mami.” For you, Mommy.

Last year McGwire donated $1 million to help abused children. Sosa donates about $500,000 annually to charities both here and in the Dominican Republic, one a wishing-well fountain in the middle of his Dominican shopping center.

Coins collected from the fountain are donated to the local shoeshine boys, because Sosa used to be one.

They hit home runs, these guys, they gracefully circle the bases, they say the right things. We are flat-out mesmerized.

And every night, it begins anew.

There are 3 1/2 weeks left, plenty of time for McGwire to chase a belligerent fan, or Sosa to charge the mound, or an umpire to discover a corked bat.

But think positive. Think, baseball owes us this. Think, the only thing that can foul it up is . . . nah.

It’s a done deal. Five or seven homers in 24 or 23 games? Piece of cake. Easy money. Right? Uh, right?