Opposites United in Singular Quest for HR Record

Mark McGwire has hit five home runs this year longer than 500 feet. "Mark is so physically intimidating," says one baseball official. (AP)

By Richard Justice
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 1, 1998; Page A1

One grew up the son of a dentist in a comfortable Southern California community of manicured lawns and country clubs. The other rose from the stifling poverty of the Dominican Republic, selling oranges and shining shoes to help his mother feed a family of six.

One attended the University of Southern California, played for the 1984 U.S. Olympic baseball team and was in the major leagues to stay before his 24th birthday. The other left home at 17, scared and so thin that one of his early minor league coaches considered him malnourished.

One occasionally has seemed burdened by his summer's pursuit of baseball history, at times growing testy with reporters and umpires and recently revealing he has sought counseling to help him deal with the stress. The other appears to be having the time of his life, basking in the interviews and adulation, playfully blowing his mother a kiss after every home run.

Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals, the dentist's kid, and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs, the once-skinny boy from the Dominican, are so different, from such contrasting backgrounds and with such varied personalities, that their names might never have been mentioned in the same breath.

Now, they will be forever linked in the hearts and minds of a generation of baseball fans as an unforgettable season begins its final month with both closing in on the most storied record in all of professional sports – 61 home runs by Roger Maris of the New York Yankees in 1961.

In more than 100 years of Major League Baseball, only two players – Babe Ruth in 1927 and Maris – have hit 60 home runs in a season. This season, two players could do it. Sosa hit his 55th home run last night, tying McGwire for the major league lead, with nearly a month left in the season.

In recent weeks, cameras have captured the two joking with one another, sharing a private moment or a private thought. In truth, they barely know one another, their relationship limited to a few brief visits before and during games.

Recently, when McGwire attempted to strike up a conversation with Sosa before a game, he had to back away when a half-dozen television cameras swarmed in to eavesdrop.

Still, they do seem to share a warm regard for one another. Throughout the summer, Sosa has deferred to McGwire, saying again and again: "He's the man." Friends say he's completely sincere when he says he's rooting for McGwire to break the record, while his own priority is to help the rejuvenated Cubs get to the playoffs.

"You don't have to know Mark McGwire so well to be a friend," Sosa said yesterday in Chicago. "He's a great guy. I admire Mark McGwire and the way he is as a person. I would like to be around people like that. I have a lot of respect [for him] and that's why he's the man."

Likewise, McGwire has been respectful of Sosa, calling him "a great player" at every opportunity. But it's clear that the two men are thrown together more by history and circumstances than by a real friendship.

	"I'm not thinking about hitting home runs or not," says Sammy Sosa, who says he expects Mark McGwire to break Roger Maris's record. (File Photo)

"I don't know Sammy well," McGwire said yesterday in Florida. "I've known him since he was with the White Sox and I was with Oakland, then he was traded to the Cubs. It's one of those things where you wish you really knew the guy, but hopefully someday we really can get to know each other."

Yet their differences make their run at history even more appealing. Major League Baseball was an exclusive playpen for white men for so long that it's at least a symbol of some progress that in the summer of 1998, two men of different colors and countries could be playing havoc with the record book.

And breaking the record would mean different things to each player. For McGwire, 34, it would mean the end of a trying few years during which he has endured injuries, a divorce and a trade.

For Sosa, 29, the reward would be even greater.

"If Sosa breaks the record, it's going to be considered a national feat in the Dominican Republic," said Baltimore Orioles General Manager Pat Gillick, who has scouted Latin American players for 33 years. "I think if Mark McGwire breaks it, it will be seen as a great feat for Mark McGwire, a personal record."

Maris's Lonely Legacy
No matter what happens to McGwire and Sosa over the final weeks of this season, they probably will never understand what Maris went through in 1961. As if it weren't enough to be chasing the ghost of the most famous baseball player in history – Babe Ruth – Maris was competing with a teammate who was vastly more popular with fans and the media. Some teammates openly pulled for Mickey Mantle over Maris; many fans rooted against Maris to break Ruth's record.

Maris and Mantle apparently got along well, even sharing a Manhattan apartment for a while that summer. Mantle later told friends that Maris helped him immeasurably because he had given the New York fans someone new to pick on. After all, Mantle had arrived in New York as the replacement for the great Joe DiMaggio and was viewed as an outsider until Maris came along.

"Mickey once told me that fans didn't really accept him until Roger got here," New York Mets Manager Bobby Valentine said. "I mean, neither of these guys this season is facing the pressure Roger Maris faced. He was trying to break Babe Ruth's record! Think of that. Nothing could come close."

With more than a hundred reporters chronicling his pursuit, Maris attempted to oblige them all. Sometimes he stayed two hours after a game to answer questions and occasionally showed up on off days to do interviews.

Neither Sosa nor McGwire has dealt with anything like that. Sosa has made himself available to the media almost every day, but only for a few minutes before and after every game. McGwire has been more reclusive, giving interviews only before or after selected games.

"I know a little about what Roger went through," McGwire said, "and I think it's sad. Here, he has one of the great years in history, and he can't enjoy it. I'm just not going to let it come to that. I'm going to continue to live as normally as I can and to enjoy my life."

Still, McGwire has been the focus of attention since he hit 58 home runs last season. Since the first day of spring training, every interview has been about two subjects: Babe Ruth and Roger Maris.

"There are times I've wished I could speak with Roger," McGwire said of the former Yankee, who died of cancer at 51 in 1985. "I did speak with his kids, and that was a thrill. But I just feel like he's up there somewhere rooting us on. I believe he wants both me and Sammy to break the record."

A World of Differences
McGwire and Sosa are different in another way. McGwire looks like a man who could follow in the footsteps of the great Ruth. At 6 feet 5, 245 pounds, he's five inches taller and 45 pounds heavier than Sosa. A year-round weightlifting regimen has given him 19-inch biceps and powerful arms that make a bat seem small in his hands.

But McGwire has drawn attention recently for his use of androstenedione, an over-the-counter supplement legal in baseball but banned by the National Football League and International Olympic Committee as a steroid.

During his 12-year career, he has averaged a home run every 11.4 at-bats, the best ratio in major league history – and no one hits longer home runs. When he hit a 501-footer Sunday night, ESPN measured his bat speed at 98 mph, tops in the majors this season.

As for Sosa, he has added about 60 pounds since the day he showed up in Florida after receiving a $3,500 contract to sign with the Texas Rangers. He's strong but thin, quick but not imposingly so. He had never hit more than 40 home runs before this season, and only one of his 55 this season went 500 feet. McGwire has hit five of 500 feet or more.

"Mark is so physically intimidating," Chicago Cubs President Andy MacPhail said. "Outside of the uniform, Sammy might be able to walk down Fifth Avenue unnoticed. But it's a strange thing with Sammy, and there are other players like this: When he puts on the uniform, he gets bigger. There's not an ounce of fat on him."

Their approach to the game is also different. Sosa arrived in the United States as a wildly undisciplined player, one who seemed in a hurry to do everything. He swung the bat too hard, ran too fast and seemed intent on getting everywhere in a hurry. He led the National League with 174 strikeouts last season and has never had fewer than 92 in a full season.

"From the first time I saw him, he set himself apart with his aggressiveness and his drive," said Arizona Diamondbacks executive Sandy Johnson, who was scouting director of the Texas Rangers when Sosa arrived in 1986. "He had this fire in his eyes. He was like a young colt out of control. He was just so determined to make it that you couldn't help but notice him. He stayed that way."

McGwire is the opposite in many ways. Controlled and disciplined almost to a fault, he leads the National League in walks and has an outside chance to draw a record number of walks and hit a record number of home runs.

Unselfish Approach
What they do have in common is the admiration of their teammates and associates. One former teammate described McGwire as "the kind of person who laughs the loudest at everyone else's joke, but never tells one himself because he doesn't want the attention."

Indeed, McGwire has become the angriest at reporters this summer when they've sought him out after a game in which another teammate has been the star.

"The one thing that bothers me is that the focus is on me and not our team," he said. "If we were winning more games, people would know what great years Brian Jordan and guys like that are having."

McGwire has been so consistent in this team-first mentality that he has refused to swing at bad pitches even with the Cardinals far out of any pennant race. Maris was said to have hit nine of his final 10 home runs on pitches out of the strike zone. McGwire apparently will not change his approach even if it means falling short of 62 homers.

Sosa repeatedly has said that getting the Cubs into the postseason is more important to him than the home run record. The Cubs – who have made a name for themselves not as a powerhouse franchise but as lovable losers – have not made the playoffs since 1989, but they are in the hunt for the National League wild-card berth this season.

"I have to say [the playoff race] is one of the reasons I'm there [in the home run race] because I'm not thinking about hitting home runs or not," Sosa said. "I'm just thinking about doing my job, and that's why everything comes together."

Cubs Manager Jim Riggleman credits both players with an unselfish attitude.

"I get the sense that they're not competing with each other at all. I think that they are trying to win ballgames..." Riggleman said yesterday in Chicago. "I think the competition for Sammy is that he's trying to get his team to the playoffs. And one of the ways he's going to help this team is to hit some home runs."

Coming Back
A few years ago, neither player would have predicted his special season. Life seemed easy for McGwire when he led the major leagues with 49 home runs as a rookie in 1987, then played on Oakland A's teams that won three straight pennants (1988-90).

Three of the next four seasons were a struggle. He hit .201 in 1991 and almost retired after foot injuries wiped out most of his 1993 and 1994 seasons. He went through a painful divorce and admittedly has battled himself to accept success and happiness.

By the time the rebuilding A's traded him to the Cardinals last summer, he was once more one of the game's best players.

Sosa overcame so many obstacles on his way to the big leagues that some of the people who know him best get emotional when they speak of him today.

He arrived in the United States knowing only a word or two of English, but survived on what one friend called "street smarts." One minor league teammate recalls how Sosa once bought – and consumed – a can of cat food, which he believed to be tuna.

However, he made it, arriving in the big leagues to stay in 1989. He was traded from the Rangers to the Chicago White Sox that summer, then was acquired by the Cubs before the 1992 season.

Proof that he arrived came last summer when the Cubs signed him to a four-year, $42.5-million contract. He has used some of his money to build a house for his mother and to finance an array of projects in the Dominican, including the purchase of dozens of computers for the public schools.

"The more people know Sammy, the more they like him," MacPhail said. "I think in the beginning people were rooting for Mark McGwire to break this record. But I think as people have gotten to know more about Sammy, they've started to root for him, too. He's the type of person you root for."

If both players break Maris's record, they likely will celebrate in their personal styles. McGwire will return to his native California to be near his 10-year-old son Matthew and attempt to disappear in the neighborhoods and golf courses near Los Angeles. "I like L.A. because no one really cares who I am," he said recently.

As for Sosa, he already has envisioned what life will be like when he returns to the Dominican Republic as a national hero.

"I won't even be able to get through the airport," Sosa said, smiling at the prospect.

Staff writers Josh Barr in Chicago and Rachel Alexander in Miami contributed to this report.