Spirit of St. Louis

Visiting relatives here last week, Lizette Cossyleon had but one item on her must-see itinerary.

The Arch? Naah. The Mississippi? Forget it. Scott Joplin’s house? You gotta be kidding. This tourist headed straight to the nearest sports store.

“I had to come see the McGwire stuff,” she said, showing off her $30 Mark McGwire mitt, her $17 Mark McGwire plaque and her latest find, a $6 McGwire glossy photo. “There’s no way I could come here and not look.”

And she’s from Sacramento.

Yes, it’s back: McGwire mania. Back, and as big as ever.

The Cardinals’ season opens tonight and it’s a safe bet that half the 48,000 fans at sold-out Busch Stadium will be wearing jerseys with number 25 on the back and popping flash bulbs every time Big Mac takes a swing.

“I don’t think,” said James Baer, marketing director for the Cardinals Hall of Fame, “that they’ll ever get tired of him in this town.”

Surely, they haven’t tired of him yet.

The Cardinals sold more than 2.5 million tickets before the season started--a club record, up 30% from last year. That’s an average of 30,000 seats sold for every home game--this, for a team that barely topped .500 last year. (The Dodgers, by comparison, have sold just over 2 million tickets.)

“The team’s not any better,” said Ron Jacober, sports director for KMOX radio, which carries Cardinal games here. “Obviously, it’s all McGwire.”

Seats in left field--prime home run landing ground--have become the hottest tickets in town. Every game against the Cubs (and Sammy Sosa) is just about sold out. Fans keep asking as well for tickets in the bleachers’ Big Mac Land, even though the section, sponsored by McDonald’s, has nothing to do with McGwire.

If that’s not enough, get this: A state senator in Illinois has proposed naming a bridge after McGwire. That’s right, Illinois, home of the Cubs, home of Sosa.

The Cardinals, meanwhile, have arranged at least six McGwire promotions. Come to the stadium on certain nights and you’ll receive pins, magnets, caps and Beanie Babies honoring the slugger. Never before has the team built so many events around a single player, said Marty Hendin, the Cardinals’ vice president of community relations. Then again, he added: “We never had a player do what he did last year.”

What McGwire did, of course, was smash Roger Maris’ home-run record en route to 70.

At the time, fans here agreed it was an incredible feat, almost superhuman, surely never again to be equaled. But then six months passed . . . and McGwire showed up at spring training with biceps bulging bigger than ever . . . and hit five home runs in his first 17 exhibition game at-bats . . . and looked, Manager Tony La Russa said, as if he were already in mid-season form . . . and suddenly, folks were talking 75.

At least 75.

“I’m hoping for 80,” said Phil Fernandes, who peddles McGwire memorabilia in downtown’s Union Station. “People say I’m foolish, but I think he’s really going to try for it.”

McGwire, for the record, says his primary concern is helping his team win a title.

Beyond that, his first personal goal will be joining the elite group of major leaguers with 500 home runs. He needs 43 to hit that mark; the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has already set aside the back page of the Sunday sports section to chronicle the quest week by week. (If he makes it this year, McGwire will have racked up his 400th homer one season and his 500th the very next.) McGwire also hopes to extend for a fourth year his streak of smashing at least 50 home runs in a season.

Impressive as those feats would be, however, St. Louis fans are expecting more. Not for a piddling 50 homers have they been stocking up on $25 McGwire beer steins and $50 Home Run King stuffed bears and $36 panoramic posters of Busch Stadium erupting with joy the moment Mighty Mac hit number 70.

“They know he’s shooting for 71 this year,” said Paul Russo, who sells a T-shirt printed with 71 baseballs, to be checked off one by one as McGwire chases his own record.

As manager of a sports store, Russo has special reason to root the big guy on: “Anything with McGwire’s name on it is golden,” he said, grinning. “He makes me a lot of money.” Indeed, Russo is opening a second store that is “nothing but McGwire,” he said.

Though it seems like heresy even to mention it, the relentless fawning over McGwire does grate on a few fans just a bit, even here in St. Louis. Jacober, the radio host, said he recently saw a promotional spot on television urging viewers to stay tuned to find out what McGwire eats for breakfast. “I think that’s a little much for some people to take,” he said.

But even the grouchiest stop-the-hype curmudgeon may find it hard to resist the excitement today.

A pep rally is planned downtown this afternoon, and when the game starts tonight--well, fans are buzzing already, pulling for McGwire to match the grand slam he hit in last year’s season opener. From his first at-bat, they’ll be snapping photos, readying their gloves, monitoring his home run pace--and, no doubt, checking the scoreboard to keep track of Sosa.

“As soon as [McGwire] gets in town,” longtime fan James Bell predicted, “it’s going to be the same thing as last year, all over again.”