Forecast for McGwire Calls for Thunderous Reign

By Thomas Boswell
Washington Post Columnist
Tuesday, September 29, 1998; Page B6

In the aftermath of his 70th home run of the season on Sunday in St. Louis, Mark McGwire said, "I can't believe I did it. Can you?"

A couple of hundred reporters nodded in agreement. After all, nobody, nobody in the whole world could possibly have predicted that anybody, let alone one specific player, could hit 70 home runs in a season. Right?

Wrong.

Actually, somebody did – called 70 homers by McGwire on the nose.

Yesterday, I dug up an old Inside Sports magazine printed two years ago, after McGwire had hit 52 homers in 1996. Here's what it said.

"Babe Ruth was a pretty good home run hitter in his day. However, the Babe was no Mark McGwire.

"Only one thing stands between the slugger and 62 home runs: at-bats. . . . For the past two seasons, a different – and monstrously improved – McGwire has emerged. If healthy, the new McGwire isn't a 50-homer man. In this age of juiced balls, handkerchief-size strike zones, band-box parks, expansion-diluted pitching and religious weightlifting, McGwire could hit 70 home runs.

"Big Mac is in an entirely new place. Nobody, not even Ruth, has ever been there. . . . He's the eighth wonder of the world. . . . Baseball needed Cal Ripken in '95. Now it needs McGwire, another of the game's good guys, to cap this Power Era. McGwire deserves the all-time season home run record. Who the heck is Roger Maris, anyway?"

Boy, I wish I'd written that. Hey, I did write that!

For years, my late father always mocked my mixed record at predictions. "Seeing the future again?" he'd ask. Usually, my crystal ball gazing includes comically optimistic assessments – like a Post magazine piece a month ago about the high promise of the Redskins' defense. So far, they've given up more points than anybody in football – by a lot. And, of course, I had the Orioles in the World Series this year.

Still, I'm never going to call a bigger one than McGwire's 70. So, as Cards Manager Tony La Russa said Sunday, "If you don't enjoy the moment, you're crazy."

Many don't remember that, just three years ago, McGwire was considered washed up. Constantly injured, he was virtually forgotten. In Inside Sports in 1996, I noted that "never has a player had a monster season ignored as completely as Mark McGwire, who hit 39 homers in 317 at-bats [in 1995]. That's a 61-homer pace for 162 games."

After that, I obsessed on McGwire's progress as a slugger. He had rebuilt his body with weight work. He had completely overhauled his swing – shortening and improving his balance. He had become a student of pitchers, rather than a classic blank-brained free-swinger. And he had discovered he was wonderfully intuitive. He could read foes' minds. So, he became perhaps the most pronounced guess hitter in baseball.

Perhaps because I wasn't surprised that McGwire could have shattered Maris's record, I'm now more curious than most people about what McGwire can do in the future. McGwire himself said on Sunday, "I don't know if I want to break my own record. I think I would rather leave it as it is. I hope that doesn't sound too stupid."

It sounds like an exhausted man who has climbed a mountain and wants to give himself some rest, including some peace for his psyche, too. By next Opening Day, however, Big Mac may feel differently. True, he'll be 35. But he won't have the enormous pressure of a million "Can you break the record?" questions. He'll already own the record.

What McGwire really needs is somebody such as Sammy Sosa to challenge him again. Next year. Or some future year. Who could that person be?

That man might well be Sosa. It's widely assumed, though seldom said, that Sosa has just had a career year that he can never again remotely approach. A superior player? Absolutely. An all-time great, a Hall of Famer? Probably not.

Once again, the consensus is probably wrong. In its own way, Sosa's career has almost as many secrets to reveal as McGwire's. Sosa's true greatness couldn't have been better disguised until this year if he had been a secret agent.

The Cub's breakout season was 1994 – the strike year. His stats projected to 38 homers, 105 RBI, 33 steals and a .300 average. But he lost a third of a season. His next season he also lost strike time in April. So, what might have been a 42-homer, 130-RBI year was diminished. In '96, Sosa was on track for 52 homers and 130 RBI, but he spent six weeks on the DL. Yes, 52 homers.

So, how good is Sosa? The easiest statistical way to judge a hitter's career is to take his numbers at age 30 and double them. That tips you to who's headed to Cooperstown. Right now, Sosa has 273 homers and 800 RBI. Doubled, that's 546 homers and 1,600 RBI.

Those numbers would only be a hair behind Reggie Jackson and Frank Robinson. With his low career average (.261) and high strikeouts, Sosa strongly resembles a right-handed Reggie. However, Sosa has more speed (217 steals) and plays a far better right field than Jackson.

"I've always said Mark is the man. But to get to Mark McGwire, they have to get to me first," said Sosa, proud of his 66 homers. Perhaps Sosa has the best bead on McGwire's future. "He is probably going to come back next year and hit 72," Sosa said.

If, on your travels during the next few weeks, you should encounter an extremely large man on a remote beach with far too many muscles bunched up around his neck and the palest skin you've seen all summer, please, leave the guy alone. He'll probably be asleep in the sun, collapsed, so exhausted he might not even notice the tide coming in. This hero stuff is hard work. And Big Mac is tired.

However, when his rest is done, don't be surprised if McGwire amazes us once more next season or the year after that. There's only one living ballplayer who can hit more than 70 homers. Perhaps even he doesn't believe he can. But some of us do.