McGwire Has Perfect Timing

Mark McGwire picked the perfect pitch for his 59th home run.

McGwire climbed within two homers of Sammy Sosa for the major league lead with a seventh-inning solo shot Monday night at Chicago, shattering Jon Lieber’s bid for a perfect game.

Lieber retired the first 20 batters. But after yielding McGwire’s homer, he fell apart. The Cardinals went on to score seven runs in the seventh with eighth consecutive hits--starting with McGwire’s blast--and beat the Cubs, 7-2.

“I can’t remember, but how often can you see someone have a perfect game and then all of the sudden eight straight hits?” McGwire said.

McGwire struck out in his first two at-bats, never even making contact. Then in the seventh, with Lieber mowing the Cardinals down, he finally did on an 0-and-1 pitch, driving the ball through a 16-mph wind over the center-field wall.

Sosa flied out to the wall in the first when the wind held up his ball, walked, singled and struck out to stay at 61 homers.

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Cincinnati 12, San Diego 1--Denny Neagle pitched two-hit ball for eight innings and Greg Vaughn hit his 41st homer as the Reds pulled within 2 1/2 games of NL Central leader Houston at San Diego. The Reds moved within 3 1/2 games of the idle New York Mets in the wild-card race.

Eddie Taubensee led Cincinnati’s assault on four rookie pitchers, matching his career-high by going four for four, including his 20th homer. He drove in two runs and scored three times.

Vaughn, traded from San Diego to Cincinnati on Feb. 2, hit a three-run shot off Carlos Almanzar to cap the eight-run eighth. Michael Tucker hit a two-run triple in the eighth, giving him three RBIs.

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Pittsburgh 11, Houston 5--Brant Brown hit a three-run homer and drove in four runs at Pittsburgh.

Brown’s three-run shot off Shane Reynolds (16-12) came in a rain-interrupted, six-run third inning in which the Pirates turned a 4-2 deficit into an 8-4 lead.

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Colorado 12, Arizona 7--Derrick Gibson hit the first two homers of his major league career, doubled and drove in six runs at Denver.

Gibson played in place of Larry Walker, who leads the majors in batting at .380. Walker was out of the starting lineup for the fifth time in 10 games because of a sore left knee.

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Milwaukee 5, Philadelphia 4--Jeromy Burnitz hit his 100th home run for Milwaukee and Alex Ochoa had a go-ahead, two-run single in the seventh inning for the Brewers at Milwaukee.

Around the League

The Philadelphia Phillies signed outfielder Rob Ducey to a two-year contract extension worth $1 million plus incentives, the club announced. . . . Vowing to put a championship team on the field every season, Dan O’Dowd was introduced as general manager of the Colorado Rockies, concluding a month-long search. The 41-year-old O’Dowd was assistant general manager of the Cleveland Indians from 1993-98.