“We had smart players, very unselfish, the stuff you need during a long season. That type of stuff was special,” Willie Randolph said. “And when all those things were going on with other teams, we just kept playing the game right.”
In the years that followed, the Yankees of the late nineties would become yet another dynasty in a franchise history full of them. They may have been hated for their success, but they consistently led the league in road attendance, which meant that every other team in the American League benefited from a strong Yankee club. As the 1990s came to a close, it became a major coup for a new stadium to open with an exhibition series against the Yankees. It happened in 1999 in Houston and again in 2000 in San Francisco, as the Yankees and Giants played to celebrate the opening of Pacific Bell Park. It was just another example of the Yankee buying power. The Yankees always seemed to represent the rising tide that raised all boats. To Brian Cashman, there was no better way to trumpet the return of baseball than with the return of the Yankees. Throughout the sport’s history baseball had never seemed more urgent or popular than when a New York team was dominant. If Cal Ripken was the seminal event in the return of baseball to a position of luster, and the home run chase between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire tilted the balance, then the return of the Yankees was the third major phenomenon that made the country notice baseball again.
ON MAY 25, 1998, Mark McGwire homered off John Thomson in the bottom of the first inning in a 6-1 loss to Colorado. It was McGwire’s 25th home run of the season and, much to his annoyance, national reporters were not only writing about his home run pace, but had already begun appearing in the St. Louis locker room. The Cardinals were a team that normally had only one beat writer who traveled with the club, but the longer McGwire stayed on pace with Maris, the more media would appear. The attention was particularly bad this early in the season because McGwire was doing it alone. Reggie Jackson’s words to McGwire as he had chased Maris as a rookie a decade earlier resonated. “It’s lonely up there,” Jackson had told him.
By July, McGwire would be surrounded by reporters whose sole responsibility was to cover the chase. They weren’t in town to cover the Cardinals, who would finish the year nineteen games out in the National League Central. In St. Louis, there was only one story: him. Rich Levin, the baseball public relations man who took on the responsibility of filtering the interview requests that poured in not just from outside news organizations, but also from the networks that held hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with the league, recalled McGwire’s gruff exterior. They wanted McGwire to do interviews, pregame promotions, and the general grist. He was the story, after all, and it was the network’s job and in baseball’s best interest to promote the game. McGwire wanted nothing to do with it. If in later weeks and months McGwire would cultivate the Maris family during his home run assault, it was a sign of a magnanimity that did not exist in July.
This was the part of the business that McGwire hated. He had already gone through all of this in Oakland. He didn’t like all the attention then and especially didn’t care for it now. As the home runs mounted, McGwire seemed more and more to resemble Maris, joylessly pounding home run after home run, unwilling to embrace the wonder of the moment. To some players, it was almost as if McGwire was reliving Maris’s 1961 season thirty-seven years later. But there were critical differences. Unlike the Yankees, who left Maris’s free time and private space completely unprotected, the Cardinals and the league provided McGwire with a crucial buffer zone. McGwire would not be hounded at his locker or at the batting cage, but he did have to agree to discuss the record at press conferences before the first game of each series. Also, McGwire was not chasing the great Babe Ruth in the Babe’s New York. Nor was he in direct competition with one of his own teammates who was not only more popular, but the signature player of a championship era. McGwire wasn’t Roger Maris. Nor was he Hank Aaron, who chased Babe Ruth while the Ku Klux Klan was chasing him. Virtually the entire country was rooting for McGwire. To Levin, this was a time to be cherished, especially for a player who just three years earlier spent more time on crutches than in the batter’s box. A season like McGwire’s in 1998 should have been one of the most electric periods in a player’s career. He needed to enjoy this.
It did not matter. McGwire wanted no part of the attention. When he was asked about the record, he was churlish. If pushed, he would tell his questioners that he wouldn’t talk about it. He tried to buy time by finding one milestone after another, each farther away than the last, as the moment when he felt the record could be discussed. Telling the reporters that if someone had 50 home runs by September 1 he would have a legitimate shot at Maris was his way of saying “leave me alone.” For Levin, who had begun to recognize early in the season that 1998 was developing into an uncommonly strong season, it was surprising how little McGwire realized how much baseball needed these moments to be celebrated. To the executives of baseball, attention was a non-negotiable prospect. It simply was not a mature response for a baseball player chasing the greatest single-season record the sport had to offer to demand isolation. If it frustrated the legions within baseball that McGwire was patently uncomfortable during a season so special, it was to Billy Beane the most genuine part of McGwire’s personality. Hardened by the game and by life, McGwire wanted to be left alone and he meant it. Levin did not comprehend. The guy was on top of the world and couldn’t bother to crack a smile.
THE SAME day in May that McGwire hit homer number 25 in St. Louis, Sammy Sosa homered in Atlanta off Kevin Millwood and again off Mike Cather. The blasts were the 11th and 12th homers of the season for Sosa. The next day, Sosa hit two more homers against Philadelphia at Wrigley, and for the next thirty-three days Sosa embarked on the greatest month of home run hitting in the history of baseball. In the process, he became a star.
Two days after the Philadelphia game, Sosa hit two more home runs against the Florida Marlins, giving him six homers in four games. Two days after that, Sosa started a streak of five straight games with a homer, including one in every game of a three-game interleague series against his old tormentors, the White Sox. Over the course of ten days, he had hit 11 home runs, driving in 25 runs. On June 15, Sosa went 3 for 4 against Milwaukee. All three hits were home runs. He now had 24 on the year, and had replaced Ken Griffey Jr., who hit 56 the year before and would have 50 by the night McGwire broke the record, as McGwire’s challenger. Whereas Sosa had been 14 homers behind McGwire just a few weeks before, he was now only 7 back. By midseason, McGwire would be at 37, Sosa at 33.
Sosa’s transformation had begun five years earlier, in 1993, when he hit 33 home runs, stole 36 bases, and played a stellar right field for the Cubs. What had always tantalized the scouts about Sosa wasn’t his mere power, but his combination of skills. Now, he had joined the exclusive “30-30 club” reserved for players who could beat a team with both power and speed. Sosa might have struck out 135 times that year, but he would no longer be discussed in terms of potential. Thrilled with his breakout season, Sosa went to a Chicago jeweler and had a massive gold necklace made that said “30-30.” He had long looked to be a complete player and now he wanted recognition.
Still, he clashed with management, which didn’t particularly care for the big hunk of gold, or his apparent fascination with his own numbers. Sosa seemed more obsessed with his stats than the team. In fact, he began to take on the look more of a statistical creation than a great player. In 1996, he had hit 40 homers in just 124 games. In 1997, Sosa hit 36 homers, but struck out 174 times. Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated pointed out that after his first nine seasons Sosa had nearly as many strikeouts as hits. In 1997, his on-base percentage was worse than that of Tom Glavine, the Atlanta pitcher, and with two strikes, Sosa was a .159 hitter.
During the final weekend of the 1997 season, Sosa and his manager Jim Riggleman engaged in a shouting match. Riggleman thought Sosa was playing too selfishly, amassing huge numbers but not necessarily playing winning baseball. The two did not
talk all winter.
Even those who felt the least affection for Sosa never begrudged his skills, but what surprised baseball people in 1998 was not only the sheer power Sosa now displayed, but also the sudden discipline. Mark Clark, a pitcher who was now a teammate, said of Sosa. “I remember pitching against him when I was with the Mets, and you could bounce a ball in front of the plate and he’d swing at it. He’d go for a high, bad slider. You knew he’d be up there hacking. You knew he could hurt you, but you felt you could handle him in tight situations. Not anymore.”
The turning point had come with the arrival of Jeff Pentland, the Cubs’ new hitting coach. Pentland had never played in the major leagues, yet he appealed to Sosa shrewdly. He told Sosa that he was a superstar, and he was going to treat him like a superstar. It was a brilliant piece of psychology, for Sosa craved not only to be considered an elite player, but to enjoy the perks that came with stardom. Pentland gave Sosa videotapes of his at-bats to study in the offseason, telling him that he only cared about two things: 100 walks and 100 runs scored. Aware of Sosa’s reputation, Pentland gave him the tapes pessimistically, and was surprised when Sosa called him and said he wanted to hit .300, too. The result was an odd connection. Sosa had been a well-rounded player, a speed-power guy, but now became a slugger who hit for enormous power and had learned the art of swinging at strikes. He no longer got himself out as much. He referred to Jeff Pentland as “untouchable.” Another interesting phenomenon occurred. For a time, as his star intensified, the negative talk dwindled. Sosa had accomplished a feat very difficult to achieve in baseball’s closed world: His talent overcame the label.
THERE EXISTED a certain freshness to Sammy Sosa that did not exist with either McGwire or Griffey. Sosa loved his moment. After four years of surging, he had arrived on the national scene and seemed intent not only on capitalizing on his talent, but on enjoying every moment of the summer. As he crushed home runs, and his team began winning, Sosa became the new face of the Chicago Cubs. As his star power grew beyond the Wrigley ivy, and his home runs received more airtime on network and cable TV, Sosa also became the face of Latin baseball. Before Sosa, the impact of Latino players on the sport had never been properly acknowledged. Race was always discussed in terms of black and white. African Americans may have been the traditional minority, and certainly the group that defined the integration movement both in America and in baseball, but during the 1990s, blacks had lost their numerical significance in baseball. Latino players were now the dominant minority, but their concerns were largely unarticulated. All this came at a time when the Latin population had become a sought-after demographic in the eyes of Wall Street, and Latin flavor was all the rage on Madison Avenue. Ketchup had been overtaken by salsa as the country’s top-selling condiment and the following year the Latin Explosion would dominate the pop charts. There had been other Latino superstars during the decade—Ivan Rodriguez and Juan Gonzalez were two of the best players in the game while teammates with the Rangers, and Pedro Martinez was clearly its best pitcher—but none gained the type of traction that Sosa had. Almost by accident, the emergence of Sosa allowed baseball to appeal to the Latino demographic without pandering or prodding. Sosa had given the Latin player a face and a greater stake in the marketing of the game.
Sosa didn’t just emblazon himself upon the baseball conscious, he did so with a style that pushed baseball forward, giving baseball the veneer of cool that Madison Avenue advertisers such as Lee Garfinkel and Scott Grayson had tried so hard to encourage years earlier. Sosa had always been flamboyant, and as his home run totals increased, he began to exaggerate his flair. His home run swing was now immediately followed by a playful hop that launched his home run trot. Upon returning to the dugout he would tap his heart, flash the peace sign, and blow kisses directly into the camera for his wife and mother. Cubs home games began with Sosa sprinting full speed to his position in right. The cameras ate it up. In the Latino communities in New York, fans used soap to write Sosa’s rising home run totals on the rear windows of their cars. Sosa had come to embody something baseball hadn’t been associated with in years. Sammy Sosa made baseball fun.
Sosa’s enthusiasm for the season—more likely his own arrival on the baseball equivalent of Broadway—was so genuine that he became what McGwire would never be and what the marketers had hoped for from Griffey. One of the great differences between Sosa and McGwire, thought Glenn Stout, was that Sosa seemed to recognize the power of the television camera. It was all in the eye. With McGwire, you watched how far his home runs traveled. With Sosa, you didn’t watch the ball, you watched him. You watched the hop, the little shuffle as he trotted around the bases. You watched him mug for the cameras. You watched him blow kisses to the world.
It was almost too perfect. Where Sosa had come from, once selling oranges for pennies, was remarkable enough. The energy he brought to the moment could have been made into an instructional video for baseball on how to ride the momentum of a given moment. Moreover, baseball—or more important the advertisers and marketers long frustrated with the game’s inability to promote itself—discovered that Sosa’s particular effervescence played to middle America. The white middle class, the economic engine of the country, accepted Sosa not as a foil to McGwire, but as a full complement. The great home run chase that was fueling baseball’s return had grown multicultural.
If Sosa’s personality tantalized the camera and enthralled fans, it also seemed to energize Mark McGwire, who suddenly began to enjoy the moment. The turnaround came after a photo shoot with Sosa before a Cubs-Cardinals game. McGwire saw Sosa soaking up the moment, actually having fun, and was moved. Sosa had made it a point on a few occasions to remind McGwire that the world was going to remember the person who broke the record and that he should enjoy this, for it would be with him for the rest of his life. Sosa’s advice worked. McGwire softened. If he did not blow kisses to the camera after home runs, he began to warm to the idea that history was being made daily. McGwire, whose shoulders—at least to the network officials who zoomed in on them—seemed bigger than ever, took on the personality of the fearsome, gargantuan slugger. His home runs were now celebrated by a mutual belly punch with the on-deck hitter, a variation of the old Bash Brothers routine in Oakland. He was finally participating in the theater of the chase, and it wasn’t a threat. It was an asset. To Rich Levin in the commissioner’s office, Sosa’s ability to cultivate McGwire was the turning point in the elevation of the 1998 season into the seminal moment of the decade.
It was another sign of the changing times in baseball that Sosa was allowed to be so flamboyant. In another era, pitchers who had to watch Sosa belt a homer off them and watch him hop, trot, and blow kisses would have been waiting for him the next time up with something hard and inside. Yet neither Sosa nor McGwire was backed off the plate much, despite combining for 136 home runs that season, mostly because of new conduct rules that discouraged aggressive inside pitching. To Curt Schilling, the Phillies’ hard-throwing ace, it was a chilling thought. If you couldn’t pitch inside to these guys, to whom could you pitch inside?
In 1998, baseball also seemed to encourage an uncommon level of camaraderie between combatants. The reason, thought Peter Gammons, was that the game needed a victory so badly. Sosa-McGwire became a traveling circus. When the Cubs and Cardinals played, the two sluggers would engage in joint press conferences. At some level, the degree of friendliness between the two was unheard of in sports, especially for players on rival teams during the season, during the height of competition. The great rivalry tandems of the NBA, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, were collaborative in title only. Those men played with a respectful dislike. Sosa-McGwire was a lovefest. The positive energy between rivals was purely organic, an outgrowth of Sosa’s personality, and it lent a kind of playfulness to the chase that, even if the record was to be won by one player, made the game of baseball the true winner.
MCGWIRE AND Sosa were still hitting home runs in great volume
during the final six weeks of the season. But by the time Sosa, the underdog in the chase, caught McGwire at 55 on August 31 with a line shot to left off Cincinnati’s Brett Tomko at Wrigley, there had emerged a dangerous new element that threatened the season of wonder. Days earlier, Steve Wilstein, an Associated Press reporter, had peered inside McGwire’s locker and noticed a bottle of androstenedione, a pill that produced male hormone for the intended purpose of building muscle mass. Andro, as it was called, was a dietary supplement whose creation was designed to mimic a steroid. Confronted about the substance, McGwire admitted to using it. The news swept baseball like a prairie fire. Suddenly the celebrated home run chase was embroiled in scandal. The austere New York Times blared out: “The News Is Out: Popeye Is Spiking His Spinach.” Over the ensuing days, Sammy Sosa said he had used creatine. As it turned out, McGwire used not just andro, but creatine as well. The new question was What else is he taking?
The skeptics, who never thought it was possible to hit home runs at such an incredible rate and were searching for reasons for the decade’s insanity, were now vindicated. The bulging muscles now made sense. So did the home run numbers that had never been so pronounced for such an extended period. They now understood how Brady Anderson could look like a bodybuilder and hit 50 home runs and how the hulking McGwire, already imposing, could seem that much larger when he was no pipsqueak to begin with.
Juicing the Game Page 17