Sights on 70

In a scene reminiscent of last September, Mark McGwire gazed into a battery of cameras and microphones in a room full of reporters Wednesday and said it will soon be time to turn the page on the historic 1998 season, when the St. Louis Cardinal first baseman slugged 70 home runs to bury the 37-year-old record of 61.

“I’m mentally prepared to talk to the media about last year up until the last day of spring training,” a relaxed McGwire said in a news conference designed to cope with the crush of interview requests in the aftermath of his remarkable onslaught.

“Once the season starts,” McGwire said, “talking about 70 is gone. It’s foolish to think I’m going to carry this over and talk about last year.

“The past is past. Let’s talk about 1999 and what it [holds] for the Cardinals and what I can do to help them. Period.”

Turning that page, of course, will be easier said than done--and McGwire knows it.

He acknowledged that his life has been forever changed by the events of 1998 and the impact on others.

He will be shadowed by the memory, held to a higher expectation, his production compared to a season that may never be repeated.

In an industry yearning for a face and icon, he is it.

Linked, perhaps, with home run rival Sammy Sosa but alone at 70, he is the record holder and magnet.

More than a week before the exhibition openers, for instance, a crowd estimated at several thousand overflowed steel bleachers to watch McGwire take batting practice on a distant field at the Cardinals’ camp Wednesday, after which Bill DeWitt, the club’s managing partner, began the news conference by saying that while McGwire may have produced high ratings for his appearance on the TV show “Mad About You” this week, “There are other ratings I like better.”

DeWitt cited the 20,300 season tickets his team has sold compared to 18,200 at the start of last season and the 2,215,000 tickets that have been sold compared to 1.7 million at the start of last season, when the Cardinals went on to draw 3.2 million, their highest total of the decade.

McGwire said he is happy with what he accomplished, willing to accept the hero’s label if that is what he is.

“I’ve never had so many people join me for dinner,” he said with a laugh, referring to a winter in which fans would simply sit down at his table to tell him how much he was admired and where they were and what they were doing when he hit his 62nd homer to break the Roger Maris record. “Sometimes, I think I’m too nice,” he said, “but I’d sit there and listen to the stories and it was pretty neat. I had a positive impact on a lot of people, and that’s cool. My life has forever changed, and for the better.”

When McGwire wasn’t entertaining unexpected dinner guests, he met Pope John Paul II, visited with Leno and Letterman, watched son Matt play Little League in Huntington Beach and found solitude during two vacations to Mexico and another to Australia--until spotted by U.S. tour groups that responded as if he were one of the landmarks.

On Monday night, trying to join teammates at a local restaurant/bar to watch his episode of “Mad About You,” McGwire fled when he encountered a TV crew waiting for him in the parking lot. Sometimes, he said, there has to be consideration for his privacy, but he labeled as untrue the report that he will be accompanied this spring by three bodyguards.

“I don’t want them and I don’t need them,” he said. “I want to be myself.”

He also wants to get to work, feeling at 35 as if he is 19 and in his prime, capable of playing five more years.

But is he capable of hitting more than 70, as Manager Tony La Russa has suggested, if teams pitch to him--maybe even 80, as new teammate Carlos Baerga predicted Wednesday?

“Anything is possible,” McGwire said, “but I would be foolish to sit here and think I could break the record.

“What I did last year hadn’t been done in 37 years. To break 70, I think you’d have to have 40 at the all-star break, and I can’t fathom the pressure, although nothing could be worse than what I had to deal with in September. That was more pressure than any athlete in any sport has ever faced. I said last year that I was in awe of myself, and I’m still in awe thinking of it.”

If that pressure intensified as he closed in on 61, it was worse, he revealed, after he hit 62.

“There was a lot of time left in the season and Sammy was having a great year himself,” McGwire said. “If I wanted to keep the record, I had to keep going.”

McGwire wrapped up that great chase with five homers in the final three-game series against Montreal. Now, as always, he is back thinking in terms of 50 as his standard, thinking that would be another good season and get him to 500, an important plateau. Beyond that, he said, 600 is realistic, but 700 “is a long way off. The only guy that has a realistic chance is Ken Griffey Jr.” (Griffey has 350 home runs.)

McGwire touched on several other subjects in a news conference that lasted almost 90 minutes:

* He said he continues to use androstenedione, a testosterone booster, to help him get through his weight work over a long and tiring season. He emphasized that it remains legal in baseball and “has absolutely nothing to do with hitting home runs.”

* He said he is mystified by baseball’s failure to do the kind of mass promoting and marketing that the NBA does, and added, “you would have to be on another planet not to be scared” about the potential for another labor stoppage in 2001 given the increase in salaries and disparity in competitive balance.

“If owners and players let that happen again, I’d probably be so disgusted that I’d walk away from the game,” he said. “We can’t wait until then. We’ve got to keep working to put the game on top. This is something that has to be dealt with now, but half the time I don’t think anyone in those [labor] meetings uses common sense.”

* He said he thought it ridiculous that the 70th home run ball was sold to a private investor for $3 million because “it belongs in the Hall of Fame,” and he said he was equally disgusted to see the 66th home run ball become a subject of legal debate on TV’s mock court show presided over by Ed Koch, the former New York City mayor.

“I couldn’t believe it,” McGwire said, ready to turn the page on all that but aware of how hard that will be.