McGwire’s the Man, but It’s a Team Sport

Of all the unlikely places, this is the one place in America that seems to have the Great Home Run Chase in its proper perspective.

Normally no other big city has its sports priorities more out of whack than Chicago. A scandal at city hall is page 2 news if the Bulls have a playoff game that night. The schools can be falling apart, but everyone still smiles if the Bears are winning.

Right now, however, this is the only town that hasn’t forgotten that collective accomplishments are what matter most in team sports. It’s the only city that doesn’t think Sammy Sosa had a bad at-bat if he hits a single.

Team results still count here, especially for Cub fans who aren’t used to good results.

The Cubs have been waiting for next year for almost 90 years and this season is one of those rare opportunities to make it to the playoffs. The Cubs are battling the New York Mets for the National League wild-card spot, and if fans had to choose between that or Sosa setting a new home run record it would be. . . .

“The Cubs winning the wild card,” Brad Cohen said.

“The idea of the two would always be nice,” said his buddy Todd Burman, starting to get a bit greedy.

“When Sammy hits a home run to win the Series,” Noel Hara fantasized. He snapped out of it.

“Yeah, right.”

That would be a little too much to ask, wouldn’t it? For a team that hasn’t won a World Series since 1908 and hasn’t made the playoffs since 1989, winning the wild card would be plenty. Sosa’s 58 home runs and pitching phenom Kerry Wood’s 20-strikeout game have been bonuses. So Cub fans would be more than happy to let Mark McGwire set the record if it meant the Cubs got to go to the playoffs.

It has already been a special summer for Cohen, Burman and Hara, three 22-year-olds fresh out of college. They’ve attended plenty of games and caught the magic in person. They were on the verge of making the five-hour drive to St. Louis for Monday’s showdown between the Cubs and McGwire’s Cardinals, but decided against it when they heard tickets were going for $400.

So they came down to the Sports Corner Tavern & Grill on the corner of Addison and Sheffield, right across the street from Wrigley Field. The place was packed. They wanted to see history. They also wanted a victory.

They cheered when Sosa singled in the eighth inning. It didn’t draw him any closer to McGwire, who homered earlier to tie Roger Maris’ single-season record of 61. But it did put a runner on base for the Cubs, who trailed, 3-1, and he eventually scored.

“The one thing I feel, definitely, about Sosa is he’ll keep playing when he needs to win the game, whereas McGwire will keep swinging for the fences,” Hara said. The Cardinals are 20 1/2 games out of first place. The remainder of their season is meaningful only because it gives McGwire an opportunity to set the record. He doesn’t have to worry about things like advancing the runner. It has been home run derby for him the past couple of months.

The asterisk that was next to Maris’ name in the record book should have been used to draw attention to the fact that he hit 61 homers in the midst of a championship season. That’s what made him a most valuable player.

Mark McGwire should not receive a single vote for MVP. If someone wants to name him sportsman of the year for all of the positive attention he helped bring the game of baseball, that’s fine. But the only impact he’s had on the Cardinal season is at the ticket office.

Greg Vaughn, who carried the San Diego Padres offensively when they jumped out to an early lead in the NL West, would be a good choice. So would Moises Alou, who has led the Houston Astros to the top of the NL Central. If the Cubs win the wild card, give the award to Sosa.

Somehow we’ve got to get back to the notion that individual stats matter most when it helps the team do something. It sure gets tough in a year that saw all the Super Bowl focus go to John Elway when Terrell Davis and the offensive line really won the game, and the No. 1 topic after the exhilarating end to the NBA finals wasn’t so much about the team’s sixth championship but whether the game-winning shot was Jordan’s last.

The New York Yankees still have a shot at setting the record for most victories, a record that has stood more than twice as long as Maris’, and no one’s even talking about it.

Sosa got one more at-bat Monday, in the top of a ninth with two out and a runner on third. The excitement raced through the bar. A group of five people raised their beer cups.

“To Sammy,” one of them said.

Sosa hitting his 59th home run to give the Cubs the lead? That would be too good. Too good to be true, it turned out. He struck out.

Disappointed Cub fans filed out onto Addison, an oft-repeated act over the years--and a refreshing sign of normalcy in this summer of super hype.