Enjoy the Moment as McGwire Gives us Someone to Believe In

It was a moment for the professional cynics among us to take another look. Mark McGwire was going to break the home run record. There was no suspense, no Roger Maris race against an asterisk. Wake me in an hour when McGwire comes to bat again.

It wasn’t like a great pennant race when each pitch can be decisive. This was the continuing story like Henry Aaron’s march past Ruth’s 714 and Pete Rose’s past Ty Cobb. Except that Rose was witty, insightful and encyclopedic twice before each game and once afterward. McGwire is, in his words, “just Mac,” before most games and after some.

Then, when the instant came, it was an electric surge. It moved grizzled graybeards of the media who have done this for 10 or 30 years to rush for a souvenir that said “I was there.”

I was there. My darling daughter Neila reminded me not to come home without a memento. Bob Ryan, a grizzled graybeard who covered a galaxy of Boston Celtics, made sure to take something home from this. I bought a limited-edition one of 16,000 “I was there” baseballs--$20, cheap.

McGwire gave us something for the memory bank, of course, but--better--he gave us back the present. He liberated today from the likes of Latrell Sprewell. We had a hero in the time sports needs a hero. McGwire wasn’t a soldier in combat, but he met Hemingway’s definition of grace under pressure, which is what makes war compelling reading. McGwire Watch reminded the grizzled ones why we are in this business.

Sweaty palms in St. Louis aren’t always related to tension. Stand on the field at Busch Stadium to talk with a player before a game and feel the riddle: How much clothes must you pack to keep dry in St. Louis? Not enough. Remember Casey’s evaluation of the new Busch: “Sure holds the heat well.”

Besides being overheated, St. Louis was overwhelmed on the big weeked. Last Sunday had 50,000 for the McGwire game, 60,000 for the Rams, a blues festival, a Moslem convention and an air show. Good restaurants were closed for Sunday. The few that were open ran out of food or patience. “We’re closing until 11 o’clock; when we open again we’ll have only pizza and finger food,” the waitress at Calico’s said. Uhhh.

Monday, restaurants were closed again for Labor Day as if this weekend were not different from all other Labor Day weekends. As Casey said, “Why wouldn’ya want to make a lot of money?”

Mike Shannon knew to keep his place, a ballplayer’s steakhouse, open late while he was working. He was on the mike for No. 62. Shannon was Roger Maris’ rooommate with the Cardinals when Maris played his last seasons.

McGwire is an appealing person who appears to have decent values. He is a kind of Catcher in the Rye at first base. The relationship between him and Sammy Sosa is delightful sportsmanship instead of an assault of foul trash talk. They can do their utmost to beat the other guy but still appreciate the other guy. The man-against-man contest in addition to the man-against-record was terrific.

McGwire acknowledged after No. 62 that he had tried to visualize how he would behave in the sudden explosion. Saying “the last week and a half my stomach has been churning and my heart beating a million miles a minute” was the common man doing the uncommon thing.

His emotional breakthrough of the season came when he hit his 50th at Shea, which mde him the first to hit 50 for three successive seasons. Then, he said, nobody could say, after the start he had, that he “failed.” He was a vulnerable man.

He--and Sosa--restored baseball to its rung of awareness. People know about Babe Ruth and Mark McGwire. Can we give Bud Selig credit because it happened on his watch?

Still we don’t know how far McGwire will go, or if Sosa will pass him. Which home run is the Big One, No. 62 or the last one? If Sosa passes him, will we remember where we were when McGwire hit his 62nd, or the one that stands as the record for years until, as McGwire said, his 10-year-old Matthew becomes a baseball player and breaks it?

Reggie Jackson would have loved to have played that stage. Next year, what about Albert Belle? Hoo-boy!

Now Baseball has its hero in Mark McGwire. It was right that the Maris sons and daughters were there to see it. It’s understandable that they wanted their father to keep the record. The next time we see them in the spotlight will be when McGwire goes into the Hall of Fame. I think that’s how they want it.

And when does Selig inform the owners that their revenue conflict is such that the home run record was set when Montreal and Florida had no big-league pitchers to throw against McGwire in a three-game series? Capital letter Baseball has to find a way to share revenue.

And when does Baseball and the union deal with the dirty little issue of androstenedione? McGwire broke no baseball rules. Neither Baseball nor the union knows what it should do about Andro as a steroid-precursor--unless self-interest has sealed their lips. A recent letter to the editor by a professor of pharmacology sees that McGwire-the-role-model will be the nutritional role model for a generation of unthinking adolescent would-be athletes.

“Sadly, self-experimentation by these young men,” the professor wrote, “will likely give us the answers about whether androstenedione has dangerous side effects.”

Don’t expect either side of Baseball’s seesaw to provide an educated answer that might interfere with the bonanza of McGwire for a long time.

Maybe it’s too soon to ask. Or maybe Baseball and the union, if it’s interested in the safety of its members, should have asked long ago.

Right now, just enjoy what’s happening.