Right on the Mark

On his father’s 61st birthday, Mark McGwire blasted his 61st home run of the season Monday, then pointed to his dad sitting in the stands as he crossed home plate.

A split-second later, now tied with Roger Maris for the all-time single season homer record, McGwire scooped up the St. Louis Cardinals’ batboy--who also happens to be his only child, Matthew--and carried the 10-year-old back toward the dugout, punctuating one of America’s sweetest sports moments.

“What I kept thinking (throughout the game) was, ‘What a great birthday present for my father,’ ” said McGwire, who drove a fastball from Chicago Cubs pitcher Mike Morgan off the facing of the second deck of Busch Stadium inside the left field foul pole in the first inning. With his 430-foot blast, he matched the record Maris set in 1961 so swiftly that he has 19 more games to set a new mark so gaudy that, just a few years ago, it seemed unimaginable.

After the ball left his bat, McGwire threw his hands over his head, willing it to stay fair. He rounded the bases, pumping his fist once, then took four minutes of curtain calls.

“What a feeling that was, I tell ya. . . . I don’t think I’ll ever let go of that moment,” said McGwire, who tried to share it by pointing to the sky, taping his heart several times, then pointing to Maris’ family in the stands. “I’d like to point to everybody in the whole world right now.”

Sometimes, everything in sports comes together so perfectly that it almost defies belief. McGwire tied what is perhaps the most romantic and mythologized of all baseball records on a national holiday--Labor Day--when almost every U.S. worker could flip on the TV, undistracted by pro football, and watch the 250-pound redhead apply his own craft.

To make the moment richer, McGwire was competing head-to-head with his chief rival for sports immortality -- the Chicago Cubs’ Sammy Sosa, who has 58 home runs. As McGwire circled the bases, he shared a high-five with Cubs first baseman Mark Grace and then with third baseman Gary Gaetti. Meanwhile, Sosa stood in right field, smiling and applauding into his glove.

Both before and after this game, McGwire and Sosa talked warmly about their mutual admiration and their pleasure--bordering on glee--at battling each other, in a sportsmanlike way, over the next three weeks for the ultimate home run record. “Wouldn’t it be great if we just ended up tied?” said McGwire. “I think it would be beautiful.”

For this one day, however, it was Sosa who gave McGwire a bear hug at first base after an eighth-inning single; McGwire reponded with a playful punch in the stomach. Perhaps fittingly, the Cardinals ended up beating the Cubs, 3-2, with McGwire’s homer playing a crucial role while Sosa ended the game by striking out with a man on third.

In recent days, almost everything about this home run chase--which has become a national celebration, as well as a bit of a late-summer fixation--has been almost too idealized to credit. Maris’ four sons were here and -- thanks largely to McGwire’s gracious references to their father -- they’ve come to feel that they, and the late Yankee’s memory -- have gained something here, rather than lost a record.

“When he hit it, I felt like I’d been electrocuted,” said Roger Maris Jr., 39. “I had goose bumps the size of baseballs in my body. Tears came to my eyes watching him go around the bases.

“I think he signaled to us when he pointed up to the sky as if to say, ‘I know your dad is watching.’ ”

That, in fact, is exactly what McGwire said he did, and meant.

Even the fan who caught the ball, Mike Davidson, 28, of St. Louis, stunned many here by saying he’d be glad to return the ball -- which might be worth a very large amount of money -- to McGwire in return for a handshake and a signed Cardinals jersey “to show my unborn child.”

Would any offer change his mind? After all, in addition to a pregnant wife, Davidson works “40 to 80 hours” a week.

“No,” said Davidson. “It would mean more to him and to baseball than (money) would to me.” Then he added the story of a friend who had won the lottery “whom we don’t hear from anymore,” who had gotten little happiness from the money and lost his friends.

None of this surprises McGwire. “I believe in fate. Things happen for a reason,” he said after hitting his seventh homer in seven games and his 15th in a smoldering 20 days.

Monday, McGwire was concerned that his son, who lives with his ex-wife in California, would not arrive by plane in time for the game. At game time, no Matthew. As the Cardinals came to bat in the first, “I went into the hole to get my bat. He was there,” said McGwire. “I told him I loved him and gave him a kiss. The next time I saw him was at home plate.”

In the aftermath of this game, McGwire’s landmark home run seems to exist on two levels. To the casual sports fan, or even non-fan, it provided a day of celebration for the likable, generous McGwire as well as an opportunity to witness another chapter in baseball’s arduous comeback since its popularity-crushing strike in 1994, which erased the World Series. Starting with Cal Ripken’s shattering of the supposedly unapproachable consecutive-game record of Lou Gehrig in 1995, baseball has gradually regained its place as a great sport in good public standing.

For baseball fans, however, McGwire’s blast had different, and multiple, levels of pleasure. The last three weeks of this season offer McGwire -- or perhaps Sosa -- a chance to set a record that could last as long, or longer, than Maris’s 37-year-old mark. McGwire even mentioned the number 70 as “a nice round one” today, perhaps tipping his hand as to his goal.

TONIGHT’S GAME

Chicago at St. Louis

Channel 11, 5 p.m.