They Become Famous for All the Wrong Reasons

With one swing of the bat, they smash their way to immortality by slugging a monumental home run, thus becoming the ultimate heroes, their feat told and retold, played and replayed for baseball eternity.

Now add the name of Mark McGwire, who hit his 61st home run Monday at Busch Stadium, to those of Babe Ruth, Roger Maris, Henry Aaron, Bobby Thomson, Reggie Jackson, Kirk Gibson, Joe Carter and Dave Henderson.

But it takes two to hit a home run. Someone must throw the ball that usually winds up landing in Cooperstown. And those unfortunate pitchers, those unwilling partners in baseball’s most celebrated moments, become the ultimate goats.

Now add the name of Mike Morgan to that list, which includes Tom Zachary, Tracy Stallard, Al Downing, Ralph Branca, Charlie Hough, Dennis Eckersley, Mitch Williams and Donnie Moore.

Morgan, a Dodger from 1989-1991, has won 120 games and lost 170 in two decades of big-league pitching. He has worked 2,450 innings and given up 223 home runs.

But all anyone might remember is the 222nd, given up in the first inning Monday, the home run McGwire hit to tie Maris’ record.

“I’m more disappointed that we lost the game,” Morgan said. “If he hits No. 61 and we won, he’d be happy and I’d be happy.”

With a 1-and-1 count on McGwire, Morgan’s catcher, Scott Servais, had called for a slider. Morgan shook him off. The pitcher, who was acquired from the Minnesota Twins in an Aug. 25 trade, wanted to throw his fastball.

“I wanted to go with my strength,” Morgan said. “The pitch was supposed to be down and away, but it ran back over [the plate]. He’s locked in right now. I’ve got to tip my hat to him. I respect him dearly. Another foot and it would have been foul. But he’s in the record book and I’m on the other end.

“I’ve been up and I’ve been down. I’ve been with 10 teams in 20 years, but my thing is to keep grinding.”

Morgan also gave up Carl Yastrzemski’s 400th home run. But that was easier.

“I was 19 and I didn’t even know it was his 400th,” Morgan recalled. “I was kind of naive.”

It doesn’t seem as if McGwire’s blow will leave a scar on Morgan. If so, he’ll be one of the fortunate ones.

Williams had to get out of town and, ultimately, out of baseball.

But pitchers like Downing, who threw the ball Aaron hit for his 715th career home run, and Charlie Hough, who threw the pitch that Jackson hit for the home run that gave him a record three in one World Series game and five in one Series, smile and look at the big picture, refusing to let one pitch ruin a career.

Of course that’s easier to do when that one pitch didn’t ruin a season.

It would be simplistic to say that Moore committed suicide as a direct result of the Henderson home run, which came with the Angels one strike away from the World Series in 1986. Instead, they lost that game in extra innings and lost the next two to get bumped out of the postseason.

A series of injuries and poor pitching performances caused Moore to be released by the Angels two years later and he had been dropped by a minor-league club a month before he killed himself at age 35.

“There was a lot more hurt down there than any of us probably realized,” said Joe Torre, in the Angel broadcast booth at the time and previously Moore’s manager with the Atlanta Braves. “He tried to come back, he tried to come back and he finally got cut loose.”

After Branca threw the pitch that Thomson hit for the pennant-winning home run, enabling the New York Giants to beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in a 1951 National League playoff series, Dodger shortstop Pee Wee Reese found Branca stretched out in agony on some steps in the Dodger clubhouse.

“One thing I will never understand,” said Reese, “is how this game hasn’t made me crazy.”

It would be understandable if it did for some. After Williams threw the pitch that the Toronto Blue Jays’ Joe Carter hit for the World Series-winning home run against the Philadelphia Phillies in 1993, Williams received death threats and his home was vandalized. The Phillies traded Williams after that season.

Zachary gave up Ruth’s 60th homer in 1927 before the days of the media crush, but Stallard--who failed to return phone calls--was not so fortunate. A 24-year-old member of the Boston Red Sox staff when he threw the pitch that Maris hit for his record 61st home run on the final day of the 1961 season, Stallard felt like he suffered under the harsh glare of the media spotlight.

Stallard was still feeling the sting of his 1961 pitch to Maris in 1974 when he was interviewed as Aaron bore down on Ruth’s career mark of 714 home runs.

“A lot of people called me a bum for letting Maris hit that homer,” Stallard told the Associated Press in that interview. “Most of them were older fans who didn’t want to see Ruth’s record broken.

“The guy [who throws No. 715 to Aaron] had better have a sense of humor or he’s going to make it real tough on himself.”

That guy was Downing, who was then pitching for the Dodgers and went on to become a broadcaster. He lives in the Los Angeles area and has no problem talking about The Pitch.

“You can’t forget history,” said Downing when asked if he’d prefer to forget that day. “That would be narrow-minded. Things happen. And a negative is part of the things that happen. It’s a game of negatives.”

Downing said that when he took the mound in Atlanta that day, he was determined not to let Aaron and the hoopla throw him off his game.

“I didn’t go to the ballpark thinking about the guy breaking the record,” Downing said. “I went there thinking about the game plan. How was I going to pitch him? The way I had been pitching for years. If I had tried to deviate from my strengths, I might wind up pitching in triple-A.”

And how does Downing feel now, nearly a quarter century later, about his role in baseball history?

“I didn’t give up 755 home runs to him,” Downing said. “I gave up one.”

Hough, the pitching coach for the Dodgers, was also a Dodger when he gave up the Jackson home run on the night the New York Yankees won the deciding game of the 1977 World Series.

“That’s a keeper,” said Hough with a big smile of his famous pitch. “I pitched a long time and I had an awful lot of opportunities to throw home-run balls. So I gave up a home run to a Hall of Famer. I wasn’t going to walk the guy. He showed why he is a Hall of Famer. He hit what I thought was a pretty good pitch. It was a thrill for me just to be at that level of competition. I see that home run so much on television, maybe I ought to charge them for it.

“The only thing I regret is that I didn’t throw No. 715 to Hank Aaron. Then I could have done double duty.”

Double duty? Now that’s a sure way to drive some pitchers crazy.

Going, Going, Gone

Pitchers who have given up milestone homers:

* Babe Ruth’s 60th--Tom Zachary, Washington (Sept. 30, 1927)

* Roger Maris’ 60th--Jack Fisher, Baltimore (Sept. 26, 1961)

* Roger Maris’ 61st--Tracy Stallard, Boston (Oct. 1, 1961)

* Hank Aaron’s 714th--Jack Billingham, Cincinnati (April 4, 1974)

* Hank Aaron’s 715th--Al Downing, Dodgers (April 8, 1974)

* Hank Aaron’s 755th--Dick Drago, Angels (July 21, 1976)

* Mark McGwire’s 60th--Dennis Reyes, Cincinnati (Sept. 5, 1998)

* Mark McGwire’s 61st--Mike Morgan, Cubs (Sept. 7, 1998)