Back in 1998 when Mark McGwire went on to smash Roger Maris' record of 61* in '61, people seemed more keen to see the record fall than pay attention to the suspicon of steroids. Which is ironic because well, the reson Maris got stuck with the asterisk was because he did in a 162 game season rather than a 154 game season as Ruth had when he hit 60 in '27.
As a kid growing up, I actually liked Maris' record. I liked the symmetry of numbers; I like that it was a Yankee record; and how it seemingly looked to stand forever as a Titanic achievement. It was record that represented the greatness of the New York Yankees. I wasn't even aware of the asterisk they attached to his number until much later.
Years later when I watched Billy' Crystal's movie on the subject, I felt this oblique sentiment for a moment in my childhood where I innocently thought it was actually a pretty grand record that had so much meaning. When McGwire smashed past it and went on to hit 70, I was one who actually felt quite sad. After all, there went the last of the Yankee homer legacy - Especially in the year that the Yankees put together a 114 win season without anybody hitting more than 30 homers.
Now with the steroid allegations swirling around, Mark McGwire's 70 seems like it's going to get an unofficial asterisk placed upon it too. What do we make of all these allegations? What do we make of McGwire's '98 season? Here's the NYT take on it.
The disappointment is widespread, but not so the disbelief. Baseball fans have been hardened in the past year by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative investigation and by articles in The San Francisco Chronicle describing what it said was the testimony that Giambi and Bonds gave to the federal grand jury in the case.
The articles said that Giambi admitted to taking steroids and that Bonds acknowledged unknowingly taking substances that turned out to be steroids. Like many of the accused, McGwire's body changed radically over the span of his career, as did his statistics. McGwire had four seasons in which he batted over .298 and four seasons as an established player in which he batted below .236. He hit 49 home runs in his first full season, in 1987, when he was far more slender than he was in 1998, or in 1999, when he hit 65 home runs. He was injury prone, playing only 27 games in 1993, 47 in 1994 and only 97 in 2001, his last season in the major leagues. He retired in November of that year, forgoing a $30 million contract extension.
Nine months later, in a new bargaining agreement, baseball and the players union agreed for the first time to test for steroids.
McGwire is now 41, and those who have seen him recently estimate that he has lost about 40 pounds from his playing weight. He lives on a golf course in Irvine, Calif., with his second wife, Stephanie, their two young sons and a one handicap. He disdains the exposure associated with sports, yet he talks casually about joining the Senior PGA Tour and he posed with Stephanie for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue this year. In 1998, when McGwire heard from Congress, Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, was calling him and Sosa "home run kings for working families in America." Now, Congress has subpoenaed both of them to talk about steroids. McGwire has not offered a reaction since being subpoenaed, but he issued the latest in his series of denials last month, maintaining in a statement to several newspapers that he never took illegal substances.
"I think people would be devastated to think that 1998 is not what we thought it was, that it was in some way a fabrication of the truth," said Peter Roby, director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University in Boston. "When people come to love someone and then find that they have been in another relationship, their trust has been violated."
Well, for my part, I think Maris never got the praise he deserved. Then, McGwuire comes along, all pumped up on 'roids and steals his record; a few years after which Bonds smashes past that one with his magic flaxseed oil from BALCO; and peopple are still saying plausible deniability for both these clowns. It's all pretty crappy, really.
- Art Neuro
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