For McGwire, Such Times Are of the Essence

By Thomas Boswell
Washington Post Columnist
Monday, September 28, 1998; Page D1

ST. LOUIS – The red of his mustache and goatee blend perfectly with the rust-colored pine tar on the handle of his bat and the ruddy brown of the infield dirt beneath his feet. Wherever he stands, Mark McGwire, in his scarlet-trimmed Cardinals uniform, seems perfectly matched with his game, as though he might bleed the crimson shades of baseball.

This is the moment to remember McGwire, hold him in our minds forever as he was this weekend, no matter how many homers he hits in his career or in some future year. This is the season, the summer, the hot early fall by the Mississippi River, when he made the heart of the Heartland race and left the rest of his nation proud.

For now, he is the thing he does, perfectly molded to it, at one with his game in a way that even he cannot completely understand. It's him. He's it. Players joke, "Be the ball." Big Mac is the ball.

If the pitcher throws a sinker at his shins, as Montreal's Kirk Bullinger did on Saturday, McGwire ropes it 435 feet over the center field fence. If Dustin Hermanson, one of the National League's ERA leaders, jams him with a fastball on the fists, he yanks it on a line over the left field fence, as he did later in that game.

If Mike Thurman snaps off a dandy curveball, as he did Sunday, McGwire stays back, collapses his front arm, gets the barrel centered on the ball and lofts it toward Big Mac land. And if, in his final at bat of the year, a heralded rookie fireballer named Carl Pavano throws him a 96 mph fastball – above the belt, just like the scouting book says – then what's the problem?

So what if you've never seen one pitch from the guy in your life? You are the ball. So you get that top hand rolling and scald the pitch – screaming like some spheroid in a cartoon – over the left field fence as the whole sports world faints.

On Friday night, in a different context, McGwire said, "Some things are unexplainable. So let's leave it unexplained."

Now, those words will probably be used, over and over, to genuflect before a season in which – after he obliterated the 61 home runs of Roger Maris in 1961 as well as the 60 of Babe Ruth in 1927 – McGwire finished with a fireworks display that resembled only one other thing in baseball: his own stupendous batting practice shows.

What McGwire did here this weekend was no BP display. Instead of swatting meatballs from some fat, middle-aged coach, McGwire settled his Great Home Run Chase with Sammy Sosa by crushing four home runs on four of what are called "pitcher's pitches." That means you ain't supposed to hit 'em, much less blast 'em out of the park.

Before Sunday's finale, a Montreal coach asked Cardinals Manager Tony La Russa: "How'd he hit that low sinker from Bullinger? You can't hit that pitch halfway up the center-field bleachers."

But for six solid months, ever since he started the season with homers in the first four games, McGwire has done it. "His mental state is impenetrable," says teammate Tom Lampkin.

"Any player who is clutch does something of what Mark is doing now," La Russa said. "If he could pass on that [mental] secret – what dynamite stuff!"

A century ago, a philosopher said, "What does not destroy me makes me stronger." If that's how supermen are made, it's a process not many would relish. But McGwire thinks that's the road he has been on for years. "I've been through everything," he said. "Injuries, year after year. Playing terrible. Losing confidence. Thinking about quitting. I could have stuck my head in a hole and never been heard from again. ... But I worked hard, climbed the mountain and reached the peak.

"I appreciate everything about this."

To baseball people here, this weekend was almost a clinical demonstration of what McGwire could do if he were treated like a normal power hitter, rather than some terrifying force that merits 162 walks in a 162-game season. Montreal Manager Felipe Alou told his pitchers on Friday to do what most teams do in meaningless late-season games: Challenge everybody, including Mac. Find out how good you are: your best against his best. Play with honor.

"We're here to develop players, not cowards," said Alou, who may have the best reputation in the game as a teacher of young players.

"What a comment!" said La Russa. "As soon as everybody forgets he said it, I'm going to steal it. That shows you who Felipe Alou is and why he's so respected in the game. He's a Dominican [like Sosa], but he's a big leaguer first of all."

Rising to the Expos' challenge, McGwire hit five homers in his last 11 at-bats – only one on a pitch that caught the middle of the plate.

Perhaps one moment this afternoon symbolized the power that McGwire has had this season to galvanize people to his cause, no matter where they are. The St. Louis Rams of the NFL were playing seven blocks away this afternoon. When McGwire hit his 69th homer, the crowd exploded with cheers. It yelled so loud and long that the Rams' linemen could not hear their signals and one jumped offside.

"Did they post it on the scoreboard?" asked La Russa.

No, thousands in the crowd had radios to their ears.

"Holy cow," said La Russa, rocking back in his chair. "Wow."

Thanks to Big Mac and Slammin' Sammy for the last six months, and McGwire for the last two days, baseball has reached out and grabbed the imagination once more of, well, anybody who has an imagination.

Nothing in sports is harder than hitting a baseball for distance. This season, the National League hit .262 with 9.2 runs a game and 1.98 home runs a game. That's plenty of offense. But it's not unusual. In many seasons, including the entire 1950s in the NL and the first half of the '60s in the AL, there were more runs and just as many homers.

"Everything had to go right for him," said Lampkin of McGwire.

No injuries. No mechanical slumps. And the inspiring, prodding presence of Sosa, constantly on his bumper, beeping to pass.

That, however, takes nothing whatsoever from McGwire. Playing a real position in an old-fashioned, no-designated- hitter league in a year with healthy-but-normal offense, McGwire showed – as Michael Jordan and Jack Nicklaus have at times – what it means to be at one with your sport.

Look at it this way: Babe Ruth hit 60 homers once. For the past three years, McGwire has averaged 60. Lock this moment, this final image of him at his peak, in some private place. And never let it go.