An Old Milwaukee Bugaboo Enters Race

It’s a good thing Mark McGwire has already passed Roger Maris in the home run derby or the good burghers of Milwaukee would never hear the end of it. How one of theirs robbed the mighty Mark of that crucial home run.

The name of Michael Chapes would go down in baseball lore right next to Jeffrey Maier’s.

Jeffrey Maier was the 12-year-old who reached over the railing at Yankee Stadium and caught a fly ball hit by Yankee Derek Jeter while Oriole right fielder Tony Tarasco stood there, wondering where the ball had gone. That was in Game 1 of the 1996 American League championship series at Yankee Stadium. Umpire Richie Garcia ruled home run--he said later he’d blown the call--but that faux homer tied the game and the Yankees went on to win it, and the pennant, and the World Series.

So now it’s 1998, McGwire is resetting the record with each home run he hits and has already moved baseball’s real magic number to 65 as he steps to the plate for the Cardinals against the Brewers in the fifth inning Sunday at Milwaukee County Stadium. And darned if he doesn’t hit Number 66. Or so it seems.

Then Michael Chapes either does or doesn’t reach over the top of the left-field fence as he gloves the ball. Chapes, 31, a high school gym teacher and cross-country coach, says he was behind the fence and the ball was a home run. McGwire says right on.

Umpire Bob Davidson says baloney, it was interference and calls a ground-rule double.

Cardinal Manager Tony La Russa appeals to the National League, pleading special circumstances.

To the surprise of no one, league President Leonard Coleman calls St. Louis General Manager Walt Jocketty on Monday, telling him the play stands. Judgment call, y’know.

And Chapes stands as the goat. He caught the ball, but he didn’t get it. A guy from New York, Johnny Luna of Queens, wound up with it, stole it, Chapes says.

“It was like being held up in broad daylight,” Chapes told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

McGwire might have said the same thing.

Chapes didn’t even get to see the rest of the game. He was ejected and ordered to pay a $518 fine for trespassing. In the best of Milwaukee traditions, though, he has hired a lawyer, hoping to save the $518.

The rest of Milwaukee? Well, this is nothing new.

It was only a few years ago, 1982, to be exact, that a similar play occurred in left field. Only then, it was easier to tell what had happened, unless you were umpire Larry Barnett. There was only one fence at the time. Now, there’s a separate bleacher railing about a foot inside the outfield fence.

In the third game of that year’s American League championship series--the Brewers began life in the AL--Angel Bob Boone led off the eighth inning with a drive to left. Outfielder Ben Ogilvie scrambled back to the fence, then stood there, wondering where the ball had gone.

It had gone to a fan who’d leaned over and made a nice two-handed catch.

Interference, said Ogilvie.

Home run, said Barnett.

Luckily for the fan--deputies hustled him out, released him and never told anyone his name--the Brewers held on and won that game, then won the next two and went to the World Series, where they lost to . . . the Cardinals.

So you see how what goes around comes around?

Oh, and the next day, Barnett allowed as how he’d blown the call.

Mark McGwire in ‘98? He’s already got a potful of homers and he’ll probably get some more before it’s over. What’s one more or less at this point?