Baseball’s Winning Season

On the pyrotechnic night of Sept. 8, shortly after hitting his 62nd home run to break Roger Maris’ 37-year-old record, Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals climbed over the box-seat railing at Busch Stadium and embraced Roger Maris Jr. and his five brothers and sisters.

“If I live to be 100,” baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said in reflection, “I’ll never forget that scene. I was sitting with [Hall of Famer] Stan Musial, and I remember him saying that he had never seen anything like it.”

Perhaps no other moment more vividly captured the historic, industry-revitalizing impact of the baseball season that ended Sunday. Only four years after a disastrous players’ strike that canceled the World Series and drove millions of fans away from turnstiles and television sets, the games of ’98 seemed to lift the once-national pastime out of the past tense.

The riveting home run duel between McGwire and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs was all but determined Sunday when the Cardinal first baseman hit two more to finish with a magical number of 70. Sosa, with 66 homers, can still tie or pass McGwire today when the Cubs play host to the San Francisco Giants in a one-game playoff to determine the National League wild-card berth. Statistics from the game count toward the regular-season totals, but only 10 players in history have hit four home runs in a game, and no one has hit five.

The McGwire-Sosa home run duel overshadowed all else this summer, their grace and percussive proficiency playing the same energizing role as that of the emerging Babe Ruth when baseball struggled for survival after the 1919 Black Sox scandal.

But the contest between McGwire and Sosa was not the only memorable development--statistical or otherwise. And in the end, it might have been more than baseball that was being energized.

Noting the convulsive events surrounding President Clinton, McGwire referred to Sosa and himself in saying, “I definitely think we’ve brought the country together and helped make baseball a sport that people care about and talk about again. I definitely think it’s the national pastime again.”

Baseball historian Randy Johnson, the intimidating and dominating pitcher of the Houston Astros, sat in the visitors’ clubhouse at Busch Stadium recently and said that every player owes thanks to McGwire and Sosa and to Cal Ripken Jr., the Baltimore Oriole third baseman. Ripken broke Lou Gehrig’s record for playing in consecutive games in 1995 and extended it to a seemingly unbreakable 2,632 before ending it Sept. 20, bringing new meaning to the terms durability and work ethic.

“Watching McGwire and Sosa this year has given all of us a sense of what Maris [who hit 61 homers in 1961] and Ruth [who hit 60 in 1927] went through,” Johnson said. “It’s given all of us a greater appreciation for what they accomplished. I feel like I’ve had the opportunity to go back in a time capsule.”

There is no one person or one book to go to in comparing and quantifying seasons. The comparisons are often muddied by the march of time, the camera of the mind. But there is general agreement among those who make it part of their business that the home run chase and Ripken’s decision finally to sit out a game alone elevate 1998 to baseball’s pantheon.

Cliff Kachline, a former editor at the Sporting News and a member of the Society for American Baseball Research, said there has not been a comparable season since 1961, when Maris and New York Yankee teammate Mickey Mantle, who finished with 54 homers, vied for the Ruth record. “But even that was mostly a New York thing and failed to generate the national attention that McGwire and Sosa have,”he said.

Lyle Spatz, an author and SABR official, said the Ripken decision “put this season over the top as probably the most memorable of our lifetime. The only thing it lacked was a great pennant race. I guess there was interest in the West in the Angels and Texas Rangers, but that didn’t generate much interest nationally. Nor do I consider the wild-card race [that went down to the last weekend in the National League] a real pennant race because it really involves only the fourth-best teams in each league.”

Steve Hirdt, an official of the Elias Sports Bureau, which maintains baseball’s statistics and records, said the only thing 1998 seemed to lack was an assault on Joe DiMaggio’s record hitting streak.

“But even that lasted only 56 days and probably produced intense interest only when it got over 50 or so,” Hirdt said. “In that sense I don’t remember a story to compare to the six months of the McGwire story.” Breaking the home run record, he said, was identified as a possibility even before the season began when McGwire, who had hit 58 homers last year, was on the cover of so many magazines.

“Then he homered in each of the first four games of the season to tie Willie Mays’ record and then he passed Ruth’s record in May for home runs to at-bats ratio. There was just never a day when someone didn’t ask, ‘Did Mark McGwire homer today?’ And secondarily, by mid-June, they were starting to ask, ‘Did Sammy Sosa homer today?’ ”

On and Off Field, a Memorable Season

McGwire and Sosa, and Ripken for one huge night in September, hogged the spotlight, but there was much more--on and off the field.

The Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays began to play. The Milwaukee Brewers became the first team since the inception of the American League in 1901 to switch leagues.

The sale of the Dodgers by Peter O’Malley, representing the last family ownership, to global media magnate Rupert Murdoch was approved in March, triggering a series of controversial and tradition-shattering moves that included the trading of Mike Piazza and Hideo Nomo and the firing of general manager Fred Claire and manager Bill Russell. In July, major league owners ended a six-year interim term by electing Brewer owner Selig the ninth commissioner.

Amid all of that, and obscured at times by the home run barrage, the Yankees, for one season at least, regained their legendary dominance and threatened the season win record before settling for an American League record of 114 wins. Then, too:

* Kerry Wood, a Cub rookie, burst on the scene with a performance that historian Kachline compared to fireballing Bob Feller’s emerging from an Iowa farm in the 1930s. Wood tied the major league record with 20 strikeouts in a one-hit victory over the Astros on May 6 and came back five days later to strike out 13 more, setting a record for strikeouts in consecutive games.

* David Wells of the Yankees pitched a perfect game, only the 14th in regular-season play, on May 17; Roger Clemens of the Toronto Blue Jays, bidding for an unprecedented fifth Cy Young Award, won his last 15 decisions; Curt Schilling of the Philadelphia Phillies became only the fifth pitcher to record 300 or more strikeouts in consecutive seasons; Dennis Eckersley of the Boston Red Sox set a major league record for pitching appearances at 1,071; and Trevor Hoffman of the San Diego Padres became only the fourth relief pitcher to record 50 or more saves in a season.

* The sizzling Sosa set a major league record with 20 homers in June, McGwire became the first player to hit 50 or more homers in three straight seasons, and Ken Griffey Jr. of the Seattle Mariners surpassed 50 homers for the second straight year while becoming the second youngest to reach 300 for his career.

* Texas slugger Juan Gonzalez set an April record with 35 runs batted in, generated a pace that challenged Hack Wilson’s 1930 major league record of 190 and ultimately joined Sosa in finishing with the most RBIs since Vern Stephens and Ted Williams has 159 in 1949.

* Houston second baseman Craig Biggio became the first player since Tris Speaker in 1912 and the second this century to steal 50 bases and hit 50 doubles in a season, and Seattle shortstop Alex Rodriguez became only the third player to hit 40 homers and steal 40 bases in a season.

* San Franciso outfielder Barry Bonds hit his 400th home run on Aug. 12 to become the first player with more than 400 homers and 400 stolen bases; Chicago White Sox outfielder Albert Belle joined Ruth, Gehrig and Foxx as the only players to hit 30 or more homers and drive in 100 or more runs for seven straight seasons; Atlanta first baseman Andres Galarraga, who played for Colorado in 1997, hit his 40th home run on Aug. 23 to become the first player to hit 40 or more in consecutive seasons with different clubs and ultimately became the first National League player since Ducky Medwick in 1936-38 to drive in 400 or more runs over three straight seasons; teammate Andruw Jones, 21, became the youngest to hit 20 homers and steal 20 bases in a season, and another teammate, pitcher Dennis Martinez, recorded his 244th win on Aug. 9 to surpass Juan Marichal as the winningest Latin American pitcher.

“The boys of summer are back,” said agent Tom Reich.

“A year ago I was saying that we were in the early stages of a powerful recovery [from the 1994 strike],” Selig said. “Now I would say we are back, that we have pretty much repaired all of the attendance damage. It’s been a remarkable, storybook season. In my wildest, most optimistic dreams, I never would have thought we could come this far this quickly.”

A Record-Breaking Summer for Baseball

In a summer in which the National Assn. of Professional Baseball Leagues, which governs the minor leagues, also reported record attendance, the major leagues expanded to 30 teams, surpassed 70 million for the first time and went into the final weekend with a per-game average of 29,356, the third highest in history and the highest since the record 31,612 in the 1994 strike season.

Similarly, ESPN said its ratings for game telecasts were up 20%, and Fox reported an 11% increase for its Saturday telecasts.

When Fox preempted its prime-time schedule to telecast the game in which McGwire hit his then-record 62nd homer, the 12.9 rating was the highest for baseball since 1982.

While an attractive playoff slate promises to enhance those ratings and the overall resurgence, Selig expressed caution amid the glow.

There are widespread disparities among the teams in revenues and payrolls, creating competitive imbalance. Twenty of the 30 teams finished 10 or more games behind the division winners.

“There’s no question that payroll is the determinant of success,” Selig said. “For fans, baseball is hope and faith that your team has a chance to contend. If you remove that hope and faith from 20 or 22 teams that can’t compete in payroll, there’s a problem that has to be addressed.”

It will be Selig’s job to do just that and at the same time avoid another strike or lockout when the current labor agreement expires in 2001.

By that time, baseball’s stadium renaissance, which has already produced new or remodeled facilities for the Orioles, Indians, Rangers, White Sox, Braves, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Devil Rays, Blue Jays and Angels, will have been joined by potential new revenue machines in Milwaukee, Detroit, Seattle, Houston and, perhaps, San Diego.

Creativity often comes with a price tag delivered to the taxpayer’s mail box.

“This generation has lived through eight work stoppages,” Selig said. “We can’t afford another. There’s no margin for error.

“If we’ve learned anything from history that pain will have been worth it. This was a magnificent season because the focus was on the field.”

There was much on which to focus, but McGwire and Sosa were the magnets, and Dodger first baseman Eric Karros, among the many who were cheering even from the opposing dugouts, said, “I’d be very surprised if I ever saw something like this happen again in my career, maybe not in my lifetime.”

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IN SPORTS

* MAGIC NUMBER

Mark McGwire hits two homers and ends the season with a record for the ages.C1

* WILD WILD CARD

The home run record is all but out of reach for Sammy Sosa, but his Cubs can reach the postseason if they beat the Giants in a playoff for the NL wild-card berth today. The teams are tied after both lost Sunday.C1

* BILL PLASCHKE:C1