Legends: The Best Players, Games, and Teams in Baseball

by Howard Bryant

  McGwire had hit so many home runs, so fast, that suddenly baseball’s past became part of its present, for McGwire’s hot start drew comparisons to Roger Maris, the old New York Yankees right fielder who held the all-time single-season home run record of 61 home runs. It was quite possibly, along with Hank Aaron’s all-time career home run record of 755, the most revered record in all of American sports.

  Each day McGwire hit another home run, he captivated the nation, and people began to remember why they loved baseball so much—how hard it was to spend the summer months, when all the other sports were finished for the year, without the game they grew up with as kids.

  When the home runs started flying, the fans started coming back.

  The truth was that between 1994 and 1998, players had begun hitting home runs in record numbers. Babe Ruth had once hit 60 home runs in 1927, which stood as the monumental achievement in sports at the time. Sixty home runs? No one would ever break that, right? Yet Maris, with the odds against him, broke the record in 1961. 61 homers in ’61.

  The new record would stand for decades, as a home run drought persisted from 1962 until 1993. Even getting to 50 home runs was considered a massive achievement during that period. All told, in the 76 years between 1927, when Ruth hit 60, and 1993, the year before the strike, only nine players had ever hit more than 50 homers in a season.

  Now, suddenly, everyone was doing it. In 1994, Matt Williams, the Giants’ third baseman, had hit 43 home runs by August 12, the day the season ended due to the strike. He never had the chance to hit more that season, and so the record of 61 stood firm yet another year. In 1995, Albert Belle of Cleveland led the league by hitting 50 home runs. In 1996, Baltimore’s Brady Anderson, who had never hit more than 11 home runs in any previous season, hit 50. McGwire, then playing for the Oakland A’s, hit 52 that same season. In 1997, another slugger, Seattle’s Ken Griffey Jr., hit 56 homers. McGwire, traded midseason to St. Louis, hit 58 that year.

  What in the world was going on?

  Many people in the game believed the reason was simply that players were bigger, faster, and stronger. They made so much money they could afford to keep in shape year-round. They didn’t have to work odd jobs in the off-season, as the lower-paid stars of the past had. And they were so rich they could afford nutritionists who taught them to eat better, and personal chefs and trainers to keep them fit in ways that players of the past had never dreamed possible.

  Whatever the reason, baseball fans certainly loved the results, and the media noticed. On May 25 of 1998, McGwire hit another home run, this time against Colorado. It was his twenty-fifth of the year and the sports writers began calculating his chances of breaking Maris’s record.

  None of the attention made McGwire happy. He was a big man, six-foot-five, 250 pounds, but was uncomfortable in the public spotlight. In turn, McGwire’s discomfort with being the star of the moment made Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, unhappy too. Here was baseball with a wonderful opportunity to win back its fans after a bitter work stoppage with a moment that happens once in a lifetime, and the star of the show, Mark McGwire, acted as though he wanted to be anywhere else in the world when the game needed him.

  On the same day that McGwire hit his twenty-fifth homer, Sammy Sosa, the talented but frustrating right fielder of the Chicago Cubs, hit two home runs against Atlanta. McGwire had 25 home runs. Sosa had just hit his eleventh and twelfth of the year—a long way from McGwire’s total. But what followed was one of the greatest home run tears—and one of the greatest competitions—ever.

  The Philadelphia Phillies came to town. Sosa hit two home runs.

  The Cubs played the Florida Marlins. Sosa hit two more home runs.

  The Cubs played three games against Sosa’s old team, the Chicago White Sox, and Sosa hit a home run in each game.

  During one five-game stretch, Sosa had blasted one out of the park in every game.

  Over 33 days, Sosa would hit 21 home runs. At the All-Star break, McGwire had 37 home runs, Sosa 33. First it was one guy chasing history. Now there were two! And America had taken notice. Attendance in ballparks was up, as were TV ratings.

  Baseball was back!

  But there was more: Unlike McGwire, Sosa loved the spotlight. He began his career with the Texas Rangers, but they quickly gave up on him. As did his second team, the Chicago White Sox, who traded him to the Cubs. He was obviously a talented player who frustrated fans and teams because it was clear how much better he could be. He had already shown glimpses of his ability to run and hit for power, hitting 30 home runs and stealing 30 bases in 1995, and now, with his sudden explosion of power, Sosa was on the verge of becoming a star and was determined to enjoy every minute of it.

  While McGwire frowned, Sosa had fun. After a home run swing, he did a little hop out of the batter’s box that the TV cameras showed every time. When he reached the dugout, the camera would follow him and he would blow kisses and flash peace signs to the fans, gestures that became as famous as Sosa himself. People loved it.

  With Sosa sharing the attention, even McGwire started to enjoy the moment a little bit more. Sosa made him laugh, reminded him that baseball, after all, was supposed to be fun, and why not laugh? The whole world was watching this two-man home run show.

  One day, Steve Wilstein, a reporter with the Associated Press, noticed a bottle of pills in McGwire’s locker and asked him what they were. The pills were called androstenedione and they were considered to have similar effects to steroids. In other words, they helped a player increase his strength and even heal faster from injury. The pills were banned in other sports, but not in baseball. McGwire said he used “andro,” as the pills were called, but said he never used steroids. Using steroids would be cheating, and McGwire said he never cheated.

  For the rest of the summer, the McGwire-Sosa home run chase dominated the conversation about baseball as it captivated the country. It felt like each day McGwire would hit one, Sosa would follow with a home run of his own. The memory of the 1994 strike was being replaced with the kind of baseball chatter that is usually reserved for September, when every game is a must-win . . .

  Did Sammy hit one?

  Did McGwire hit one?

  By mid-August, it seemed a foregone conclusion that both players would pass Maris’s record of 61. Television news programs had begun cutting away from their broadcasts to show both players each time they came to bat.

  On August 31, with the Cincinnati Reds in town, Sosa hit home run number 55 and caught McGwire for the first time all season. With four weeks left in the season, and both only six home runs away from tying Maris, the pair was dead even.

  It didn’t take long from there. On September 7, just one week later, McGwire reached the all-time home run record of 61, beating Sosa to the prize. Then, one day later, with McGwire’s Cardinals playing Sosa’s Cubs in St. Louis, the magical moment occurred in the fourth inning. TV networks all over the country were tuned in. Pitcher Steve Trachsel delivered a fastball down in the strike zone. McGwire crushed it, hitting a line drive that just reached over the left field fence.

  The umpires stopped the game while the crowd cheered wildly. Waiting to greet McGwire at home plate, in addition to the entire Cardinals team, was his son, Matt, holding the bat that had just hit the record-breaking homer. McGwire lifted him up in the air as flashbulbs popped throughout the crowd. Sosa raced in from right field and hugged McGwire. McGwire had done it. He had passed a record that had stood for thirty-seven years.

  And there were still three weeks left in the season!

  Sosa, too, passed Maris, four days later, making it the first time in baseball history that two players passed the single-season home run record in the same year. For a moment, on September 25, Sosa even passed McGwire, leading 66 home runs to 65. Later that night, though, McGwire hit one of his own to tie things up again.

  Sosa wouldn’t hit another home run for the
rest of the year, finishing with 66. McGwire would go on a final tear to hit two on September 26, another on the 27th, and on the last day of the season, September 28, McGwire hit his last home run of the year off Carl Pavano of the Montreal Expos. His 70th of the year.

  Seventy home runs!

  McGwire had become a national hero.

  The next year, for an encore, Sosa and McGwire did it again! Both surpassed Maris’s mark of 61 for the second straight year. No one in baseball history—not Ruth, not Mantle, not DiMaggio, not Mays—had ever hit 60 home runs in consecutive years, and now both guys were doing it again. McGwire won this race, too, hitting 65 home runs to Sosa’s 63.

  Baseball hadn’t just returned. It had returned to the center of the American heart in a way it hadn’t in decades. The excitement that surrounded the summer of McGwire and Sosa served as a reminder that once again, when played at its best, highest level, America loved baseball in a more passionate, personal way than any other sport.

  The summer of 1998, however, was also too good to be true. It was soon revealed that many players had been using illegal drugs to enhance their performance. The players at first denied it, but the truth eventually came to light. The fans who had cheered on this magical season and given their heart back to baseball felt cheated, tricked. In the eyes of not only the public, but of the media, the government, and law enforcement, one of the most important records in baseball history had been broken by cheaters. The consequences would once again devastate the sport.

  For years afterward, the battle against performance-enhancing drugs made as many headlines as the players did themselves. Fans didn’t know whom to trust anymore.

  As for McGwire, he thought his record would stand for a long time, but Barry Bonds, who also would one day admit that he used illegal drugs (though he would say he did so unknowingly), hit 73 home runs just three years later. By this point, fans no longer believed what they were watching, even though they still attended games in record numbers.

  McGwire returned to baseball in 2010 as a hitting coach for the Cardinals, but on the condition that he admit he used steroids, including during the 1998 season. On national television, McGwire did just that and said he hoped the fans could somehow forgive him. He was permitted to work for the Cardinals and later the Los Angeles Dodgers, but he is rarely viewed as a hero anymore. Despite his great accomplishments on the field, he has yet to be elected to the Hall of Fame, and may never be.

  The price for 1998 would be enormous. Instead of cheers, baseball would treat 1998 as though it never happened. Over his career, Sammy Sosa would hit 609 home runs. In 2001, he became the only man in history of baseball to hit 60 home runs three times, when he hit 64, but when he retired in 2007, he would leave the game with no connection to it or the Chicago Cubs. He, too, came nowhere close to being voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

  Perhaps the best example of how differently people would look at what was supposed to be the greatest year in the history of baseball is that the sport itself rarely, if ever, mentions that momentous chase in 1998 for the record. That year was proof that there is no substitute for hard work, and nothing—not even millions of people cheering and billions of dollars earned by the players, owners, and the league—is as important, in the long run, as a person’s reputation.

  McGwire–Sosa

  TOP TEN LIST

  The Mark McGwire–Sammy Sosa home run chase simultaneously revived baseball while becoming a turning point in sports regarding the prevalence of performance-enhancing drugs. The record books would change as well as baseball itself. Here is a list of the all-time single-season home run leaders.

  Barry Bonds—73 (2001)

  Mark McGwire—70 (1998)

  Sammy Sosa—66 (1998)

  Mark McGwire—65 (1999)

  Sammy Sosa—64 (2001)

  Sammy Sosa—63 (1999)

  Roger Maris—61 (1961)

  Babe Ruth—60 (1927)

  Babe Ruth—59 (1921)

  (tie) Hank Greenberg—58 (1938) / Jimmie Foxx (1932) / Mark McGwire (1997) / Ryan Howard (2006)

  Victory Summer

  THE 1998 NEW YORK YANKEES

  On Monday April 6, 1998, panic struck the heart of New York City.

  The Yankees had lost their first two games of the season.

  People went nuts. There were 160 games left, but the season was obviously over because the Yankees were 0 and 2.

  These were the Yankees of George Steinbrenner, who spent millions upon millions of dollars each season to ensure his team won. The Yankees, who had won 96 games the previous season and 92 the season before. Winning and reaching the playoffs wasn’t just expected, it was demanded.

  Yet they lost again and were 0–3.

  After a win and another loss, an 8–0 beatdown by the Mariners, they were 1–4.

  The April 7 New York Times headline screamed.

  “YANKS SLIDE CONTINUES.”

  Nothing seemed to work. When the pitchers struggled, the Yankees got creamed. When they pitched well, the hitters didn’t hit. When there were runners finally on base, the star players like Bernie Williams, Tino Martinez and Paul O’Neill couldn’t get that clutch hit that would score runs. Making matters worse, in the 8–0 loss to the Mariners, not only did Seattle superstar Alex Rodriguez hit a home run off Andy Pettitte, but later in the game, the Yankees’ best relief pitcher, Mariano Rivera, got hurt and would miss the next two weeks. Everything that could have gone wrong to start the season did go wrong. And it sent fans wringing their hands in dread.

  It wasn’t just that the Yankees were supposed to win, but that 1998 was supposed to be the year they rebounded from the heartbreaking way the 1997 season had ended. The Yankees had won the World Series in 1996 for the first time in eighteen years and, in 1997, fully expected to repeat as champions. Despite those ninety-six wins, they had played a very dangerous, very talented Cleveland team in the playoffs, and Rivera had given up a home run to Sandy Alomar in the eighth inning of the deciding fifth game. The season, suddenly, was over. This year was supposed to make up for the disappointment and restore the team to the top.

  Yet now they could barely win a game.

  When you lose game after game, you hope that eventually something, anything good will happen. A day after their 8–0 loss, the Yankees and Mariners played again. Jim Bullinger threw his second pitch of the game and Chuck Knoblauch, the Yankees’ second baseman, hit a home run. Then the talented young shortstop, Derek Jeter, doubled. O’Neill continued the rally with a double of his own. Tino Martinez hit a single, then Darryl Strawberry hit a home run, and Jorge Posada hit another home run. Before the very first inning was over, the Yankees led 6–0.

  They won that game, and just like that, things were looking up. “When you lose,” manager Joe Torre said, “you don’t think too big. You just want to win a game, just one game.”

  But it wasn’t just one game. They won again the next day, and the day after.

  And then the next.

  After two more wins in Detroit, it was eight in a row.

  And now, the team that couldn’t win suddenly couldn’t lose.

  By May 21, the Yankees were 31–9. They had won 30 of their last 35 games, but it wasn’t just the winning, it was the magic that lived within the winning. On May 17, David Wells took the mound against Minnesota. He faced twenty-seven Minnesota Twins batters, and got all twenty-seven out in a row. Nobody reached base. No hits. No walks. No wild pitches and no errors by his defense. It was the first time in the ninety-five-year history of the Yankees that a pitcher threw a perfect game during the regular season.

  New York is a big place, eight million people strong, with so many people from so many different places. There are tall buildings throughout the world, but no other city is filled with giant skyscrapers quite like New York. The personalities of the Yankees were just as big. There was right fielder Paul O’Neil
l, the tall kid from Ohio with a bad temper, who smashed the water cooler with his bat when he was frustrated, but played to win every day. There was Derek Jeter, the rising superstar, who as a little kid had said he wanted to play shortstop for the Yankees when he grew up—and then was so good he actually made it happen. There was Bernie Williams, the center fielder from Puerto Rico, who could hit both right-handed and left-handed, and was also an excellent guitar player. There was Darryl Strawberry, all six-foot-six of him, who hit baseballs so far they looked like they’d land on the moon. There were the fearless and carefree starting pitchers, David Wells and David Cone.

  And then there was Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, who had come to the Yankees after escaping his homeland of Cuba on a small boat, hoping to pitch in the Major Leagues. Hernandez was a star pitcher in Cuba, but was accused of being disloyal for refusing to give the government information on a teammate who had previously left the country. Once a national hero, he had been prohibited from playing baseball by the country’s dictator, Fidel Castro. Fearing for his future, he left the country, too, for America.

  The leader of the team was the manager, Joe Torre, who had begun his major league playing career in 1960. He had been a nine-time all-star, had played alongside legends like Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews and Bob Gibson, had won an MVP Award as a player, but had never won a World Series title until 1996 with the Yankees. Even Torre was a beloved celebrity in New York.

  Each of the key players on the team may have come from a different place, but they all had one thing in common: Each was so tough-minded that, together, the Yankees were a fearsome team to play.