Two Cool

The question prompted Mark McGwire to laugh. A reporter wanted to know what he thought about director Penny Marshall’s interest in making a movie about this improbable home run race of 1998, pegged to that Sept. 8 night when McGwire slugged his 62nd to break the 37-year-old record of Roger Maris.

“That’s off the wall,” said McGwire, who grew up in Claremont, about 40 miles from Hollywood, but apparently isn’t interested in making the trip.

“I don’t understand it,” he said. “Why do a movie when the whole country already saw the movie? The whole country already saw the real thing happen. How much more can you do?”

How much more is there? How much more can be stuffed into the final two days of this remarkable season?

A movie?

Well, on Friday night there was another production of life imitating art as McGwire and Sammy Sosa, the two leading actors in this drama, homered for the 21st time on the same day, emerging tied at 66--those 61 by Maris, a total once thought unattainable again, now almost a forgotten memory.

“You’ve got two guys who are doing something that had never been done before in the history of the game,” McGwire said.

“How can you walk away disappointed if you’re one behind, even or one ahead after the last out Sunday? I mean, it’s remarkable what we’ve done.”

A Busch Stadium crowd of 48,159 saw McGwire connect on a 1-and-2 fastball from Shayne Bennett in the fifth inning of the St. Louis Cardinals’ 6-5 victory over the Montreal Expos.

The deafening ovation may have been heard in Houston, where Sosa, the Chicago Cub right fielder, had homered against Dominican countryman Jose Lima 45 minutes earlier.

When Sosa’s No. 65 was changed to 66 on the scoreboard here, the Busch Stadium partisans booed.

“Of course I was aware of it,” McGwire said, when asked about the Sosa homer. “I heard the crowd, but it doesn’t matter.

“I’ve said a thousand times that he controls his destiny and I control mine. How can you feed off each other when you have to get a pitch to hit, and then you have to hit it?”

In other words, those 21 homers on the same day?

“Unexplainable,” McGwire said. “Let’s leave it at that.”

Bennett, a 25-year-old rookie right-hander from Australia, had got a fastball in on McGwire Thursday night and produced a broken-bat tapper back to the mound.

This time, after McGwire had hit the first pitch of that fifth-inning at-bat into the upper deck in left but inches foul, Bennett caught too much of the plate and McGwire drove it into the lower deck in left, an estimated 375 feet, where it was caught on the fly by 48-year-old Doug Chapman, who had wisely brought his glove, in addition to his 11-year-old son, Brian.

The Chapmans said they would give the ball to McGwire.

“My son says it’s the right thing to do,” Chapman said, “and my wife said she’ll give it back for a hug. McGwire seems like a genuine guy, and that puts us on the same wavelength.”

McGwire could cite this as another example of the most memorable aspect of this memorable season.

“More than the numbers,” he said, referring to 66, “what I’ll always remember is the impact I’ve had on people’s lives. I mean, it’s pretty amazing you can have this kind of impact swinging a bat, but I’ve received thousands of letters and telegrams and I’ve been overwhelmed by the number of gifts that people have sent. I’m pretty damn proud.”

Sosa’s 45-minute lead was only his second of this great race. He had led for 57 minutes when he hit his 48th on Aug. 19, but McGwire hit two later that day to regain a lead he held until Lima grooved a fastball.

The resulting home run failed to prevent the Cubs from losing and ending the evening in a three-way tie with the New York Mets and San Francisco Giants for the wild-card lead. The injury-riddled Cardinals clinched a winning record with their victory, but Manager Tony La Russa said:

“I know it sounds like heresy, but Mark McGwire and the home run race is the most important thing the next two days.

“If there was justice, Sosa would win the MVP [“He should win it hands down,” McGwire said.] and Mark would win the home run title, but our game is not always about justice.”

La Russa had bristled before the game when asked about comments made by Cub coach Billy Williams that McGwire was swinging only for home runs because his team had nothing for which to play.

“I was half asleep when I read that but woke up like a shot,” the Cardinal manager said. “I mean, I watched a game on TV the other day when Sosa was up with a runner at second and no outs and made no attempt to hit a little ground ball and advance the runner. He swung from his heels three times and struck out. I don’t like anybody to take anything away from what Mark has done. It’s been incredible. He’s been pitched like the seventh game of the World Series from day one.”

The home run race has turned into a fall classic of its own. Someone ought to make a movie.