Erasing Roger Maris's home run record would be a thrill for muscular Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire, but what he really wants to wipe out is child abuse

More flashbacks

by Tom Verducci

Issue date: March 23, 1998

At the very same spot every winter's day, as he returns home from his weight-training session, Mark McGwire eases up a bit on the gas pedal of one of only 172 special-edition Porsches in the world. McGwire is such a large man that he seems to be not so much driving the silver sports car as wearing it--a suit of armor with cruise control. He is so big that his forearms are the same circumference as the neck of a very large man: 17 1/2 inches. The steering wheel is a doughnut in his massive hands.

The sight that prompts his caution is so unremarkable as to be ignored by most everyone else driving in this quiet Orange County, Calif., neighborhood. Beyond a chain-link fence is an ordinary elementary school with grassy ball fields, a blacktop basketball court and, of course, children. It could be any school in any town, and that's exactly what worries McGwire. As the Porsche slows, this is what he imagines on the other side of the fence: frightened souls and shattered lives.

"What kills me is that you know there are kids over there who are being abused or neglected, you just don't know which ones," McGwire says. "And most of the adults who are doing it get away with it. It just breaks my heart."

Statistics on child abuse are tricky and, because many cases go unreported, a little like trying to count fish in the ocean. Two widely cited studies of sexual abuse in the U.S. and Canada estimate that one of every three girls is abused before her 18th birthday and that one in six boys is abused before he turns 16. (Other studies cite different percentages.) A simple kickball game becomes an achingly sad math problem. How many children are there? Maybe 30. How many will know the horror? Seven, maybe eight. Who are they? And why does the most amazing home run hitter since Babe Ruth cry for them?

The biggest, strongest man in baseball is really a softy. His eyesight is 20/500, which means that without his contacts, he is Mr. Magoo. His glasses have lenses that could have been pilfered from the Hubble telescope. His body breaks down more than a '76 Pinto. He has such an awkward, knock-kneed batting style that he had barely buttoned up a professional uniform when a coach in the Oakland organization told him, "You'll never hit in the major leagues like that." He has seen a therapist. He's unlucky at love. He thinks the man who married his ex-wife, Kathy, is a terrific guy. He aches to see more of his 10-year-old son, Matthew. And if the next time you go to the movies you happen to see a great big redhead crying in a nearby seat, that could be the guy who has hit more homers in one season than any man alive. "Oh, sure, I cry at some of them," says McGwire, the first baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals. "I mean, how can you not cry watching Philadelphia? And Driving Miss Daisy? I cried at that."

This giant is more sensitive than a sunburn, though pitchers might have a difficult time believing that. "The one creepy thought I have when he comes up there," says righthander Curt Schilling of the Philadelphia Phillies, "is the fear that he'll hit my best pitch right back up the middle. He's the one guy in baseball who could hit a ball that goes in one side of you and out the other, and it would be going just as fast when it came out."

McGwire hits home runs so far that you can measure them with your car; he launched one off Randy Johnson last year that would have clicked off more than one tenth of a mile on the odometer. He hits them so often (one every 11.9 at bats in his career) that he is nearing Ruth's career-record frequency (11.8), thanks to an astounding run over the last three years (8.6) that is unprecedented in baseball history (chart, page 83).

Everything about him is big: 6'5", 250 pounds, 20-inch biceps, 538-foot home runs and 58 dingers, his total last season--the closest anyone has come to the sport's sexiest record in the 37 years since Roger Maris hit 61, a record never more endangered than it is right now.

"Mark is one of those players who is so special, you cannot put limits on what he can do," says Cardinals manager Tony La Russa. "He might hit 40, 50 or 60 this year. He might hit 70."

McGwire came up just short of the record last year despite hitting only three home runs while in a 33-day fog _— the period during which he endured daily trade rumors and ultimately, with a July 31 swap between the Oakland A's and St. Louis, a switch in leagues. Now only the Arch is more of a fixture in St. Louis than a contented McGwire, who is 34. As was the case for Maris in '61, this season will be a fascinating convergence of an expansion year, with its inevitable dilution of major league pitching talent, and a career that seems to be peaking.

"I've always appreciated how difficult it is," McGwire says of hitting 61, "and now I know how possible it is. I hit 58 and had a terrible July. But it would have to be almost a perfect season for it to happen."

How will it add up? Never have there been better reasons for marking McGwire. Yet the numbers he prefers to talk about are the ones that refer to children he's never met. That, too, is the measurement of McGwire.

He pulls the Porsche into his garage, with its black-and-gray rubberized floor so spotlessly shiny that you think, for a moment, that he might have parked in the wrong spot — perhaps the gourmet kitchen. "I'm kind of a neat freak," he says, unnecessarily.

There is almost no evidence that a ballplayer lives in this tastefully decorated harborside house. McGwire gave his 1990 Gold Glove to his optometrist to display in his office. He gave one of his two Silver Slugger bats to his father, John, a dentist, to hang in his office. Like most of his other trophies and mementos, his 1987 Rookie of the Year Award is stashed in a storage facility. McGwire exudes a remarkable lack of self-importance for someone in the look-at-me culture of pro sports. For instance, the gym he frequents is a busy but ordinary family fitness center tucked in a strip mall near a sushi joint and a dry cleaner. Mothers in spandex lug their toddlers to the baby-sitting room, and off-duty policemen and firemen want to know the secret for developing forearms like his. "Genetics," he tells them. "You should see my father."

John McGwire provided his son with inspiration, not just genes. At seven John was bedridden for months with an illness that left him with one leg much shorter than the other. But John was interested in all sorts of sports, eventually training as an amateur boxer. One of Mark's earliest memories is the rat-a-tat-tat of a speed bag echoing in the garage as John pounded away.

His father's influence has never waned. One night in Oakland a few years back, John happened to be following Mark out of the players' lot when someone in a BMW raced in front of McGwire, cutting him off. "Mark! Mark!" the driver yelled. "You have to sign this for my son. You're his hero! Please! You're his hero!"

McGwire jumped out of his car and marched over to the man. "You, sir, as a parent, should be your son's hero," he said, pointing his finger. "Not me!" Then he signed a baseball card.

"Oh, I say that all the time," McGwire says. "I know we're role models. And you may have a favorite baseball player, but how can that person be your hero? You don't even know him. That really bothers me. Your hero should be your father, or your mother, or an aunt, or an uncle. Look to your family, to people around you."

No matter where you sit or stand in Mark McGwire's house, it is impossible not to have within sight a framed picture of his son. On the last day of the 1987 season, needing one home run for 50, McGwire excused himself to be by his wife's side when Matthew was born. (He and Kathy were married too young, he says, and were divorced a year later.) "I was born on October 1, and he was born on October 4. It's scary how much alike we are. I don't have to say a word to him sometimes, because he knows what I'm thinking."

"When we traded Mark," says an Oakland A's official, "we knew there was a good chance he'd stay in St. Louis. He develops emotional attachments quickly. He has a soft spot in his heart for children. His being a major league player often makes him an absentee father. And maybe that creates some guilt, which might have something to do with the concern he shows for child abuse."

He grew up happily in the Los Angeles suburb of Claremont, Calif., with four brothers. About the worst thing that happened to him was walking so many batters while pitching in a Little League game that he cried right there on the mound. His father, a coach, told him to switch places with the shortstop. But even that came with a silver lining. "I can still remember looking in at the plate from shortstop, and everything was real fuzzy," McGwire says. "I got glasses right after that."

It was only in the past two years that the issue of child abuse touched a nerve. Two friends told him that they had been abused as children; then he began dating a woman who worked at a home that assists sexually abused children. He met some of the kids and began to learn about the numbers. One morning he stood in the doorway of the home as parents dropped off their children for therapy. How could you? he thought.

"It's a calling," he says. "I'm a firm believer that children can't recognize what is happening to them, and they cannot be the adults they want to be unless they can get help. The biggest thing I'm trying to do is make sure the money goes to the right place. I want every dollar to help the children."

McGwire refuses to participate in events where people are charged for his autograph — unless the money goes to charity. As part of a three-day benefit for Cardinals Care, a charitable foundation set up by the ball club, he had agreed to sign for 300 people. Half the tickets to be redeemed for his signature at Monday's session would be sold on Saturday and half on Sunday. When the benefit began at a downtown St. Louis hotel, a stampede like nothing seen this side of Pamplona took dead aim on the McGwire ticket booth. La Russa quickly telephoned McGwire to ask a favor.

"I know you said 300, but could you sign more?" he asked.

"How many?" McGwire said.

"How about 400?"

"Let's make it 500."

For three solid hours on Monday, McGwire signed for an orderly procession of worshipful fans. Listening to them during their 20 seconds with McGwire, you would not have been surprised if some of them were carrying gold, frankincense and myrrh.

"I know the home runs come first, but a lot of people are going to remember you for your generosity."

"Thank you for staying in St. Louis, Mark."

"I work with abused children, and I just want to thank you for what you're doing."

How many in that line carried the invisible scars? At least a dozen people felt compelled to tell this baseball player whom they'd never met that they were abused as children. "What's sad is you see they're holding a child," McGwire says. "And you just pray that this parent is stopping the cycle. Because if you were abused as a child, you're more likely to abuse children yourself."

After he's finished, McGwire slips on his wool peacoat and is escorted by four security guards out a private exit, through the hotel kitchen, up a dark stairwell and to a door that opens to daylight and his green BMW, which someone has pulled curbside with the engine warm and running. Even after all the subterfuge, here are four kids waiting with baseball cards and markers. McGwire signs. As he speeds away toward his outlying hotel, he is told that people began lining up at 1:30 a.m. for his autograph. "No way!" he booms, as if this is the most preposterous bit of news he's ever heard. "I can't believe it."

The next night McGwire is seated at the dais at the St. Louis baseball writers' dinner when he gets up to use the rest room. It's as if he just announced, "Simon says...." Many in the crowd push away from their tables, too. McGwire enters the rest room, slips into a stall. When he is done, he opens the stall door and can't believe his eyes: The room is packed shoulder to shoulder with men all pretending to have heard nature's call at the same moment.

"I've never seen or heard about St. Louis falling for a player like they've done for this guy," said Brian Bartow, the Cardinals director of media relations, who's been with the team since 1987. "Not for Musial, not for Gibson, not for Ozzie — nobody."

There is an undeniable element of novelty to McGwire's appeal. Two generations of fans have grown up in St. Louis without seeing a premier power hitter in their hometown. Only three men have hit more than 35 home runs in a season for the Cardinals — Rogers Hornsby, Johnny Mize and Stan Musial — none since 1949. In the second half of last season Cardinals fans were so eager to watch McGwire take a few hacks, even against out-of-shape coaches, that the club opened the Busch Stadium gates and concessions two hours before game time for batting practice, a policy that will continue this year. Some fans began requesting seats in the upper deck in the outfield; one leftfield section was regularly filled with fans wearing hard hats in tribute to McGwire's range.

"We've had great players, but we've never seen a guy like him come here in his prime and then want to stay here," says Marty Prather, a charter member of the helmeted Mac Attack Pack.

Last Aug. 8, McGwire stepped into the batting cage for his first practice at Busch just as the visiting team, the Phillies, was gathering on the sideline for stretching exercises. "We didn't even stretch," Philadelphia first baseman Rico Brogna says. "Everybody just stopped and watched."

The National League had not seen a 50-home-run hitter since Cincinnati's George Foster hit 52 in 1977. McGwire became St. Louis's traveling exhibit. In Chicago fans jammed Waveland Avenue outside Wrigley Field as McGwire's batting-practice shots fell like hailstones in September. In Denver, McGwire hit a ball out of Coors Field and into the players' parking lot.

Even his teammates swooned. One day Tom Pagnozzi begged pitching coach Dave Duncan to reschedule his daily meeting with pitchers and catchers. "What for?" Duncan asked. "We always meet during BP," Pagnozzi said. "We want to see Mark hit." Duncan obliged.

"He is a freak," Pagnozzi says. "There are power hitters, and then there is Mark McGwire. He's way beyond anybody else in this game. I've been in St. Louis 11 years, and I saw him hit more balls into the upper deck there in two months than all the other players in all my years there combined."

McGwire's appeal in St. Louis, though, is even more powerful than that. He made baseball fans feel as if they mattered again.

"With the A's, I lived downtown in San Francisco last year for the first time," says McGwire, who had resided in suburban Alamo. "The city is so full of life, so many things to do. I felt so much energy living there. But when I left for the ballpark, by the time I was halfway over the Bay Bridge, there was no more energy. Then I came to St. Louis, and the people just overwhelmed me. I had never felt anything like that. The energy level was incredible."

Five weeks after the trade, McGwire called up his attorney, Robert Cohen, and said, "I want to stay here. Let's see if we can work out a deal with the Cardinals." A flabbergasted Cohen told McGwire to get a good night's sleep — and reconsider. McGwire was only two months away from being the focus of a free-agent bidding war. The Anaheim Angels, who had been rumored to be pursuing McGwire, showed no interest in bringing him home to be near Matthew. But surely large-market teams would create another huge McGwire number, one with a dollar sign preceding it. "Don't be surprised to hear from the Braves," Cohen said. When McGwire woke up the next day, he hadn't changed his mind.

Ten days later McGwire agreed to a three-year contract extension that guarantees him $30 million and will add another $9 million if a mutual option for a fourth year is exercised. He also pulls in $1 for every ticket sold beyond 2.8 million. (The Cards averaged 2.64 million over the previous two years.) And Matthew gets a seat on the team plane when he visits Dad during the summer. "Sure, I could have gotten more money, but why?" McGwire says. "I had everything that I wanted right in St. Louis."

On Sept. 16, at the press conference to announce his new deal, McGwire said he was establishing a foundation to dispense $1 million a year for at least the next three years to help abused and neglected children. When a reporter asked a question about his concern for abused children, something strange happened to McGwire. His stomach felt like a deep, dark well, all his words tucked in a bucket at the bottom. No matter how hard he tried, he could not bring that bucket up. He thought about all the kids in the world — kids the same age as Matthew — who have had the blessing of childhood ripped away from them. His mouth opened, but all he could do was cry. The cameras kept rolling, and 33 seconds passed before he could speak again.

"I surprised myself," McGwire says. "I didn't know all that emotion was going to come out."

Having changed his shirt and cap and guzzled his daily protein drink, McGwire zips off in his Porsche again, this time to his favorite lunchtime spot, an only-in-California beachside diner with framed movie posters, plastic patio furniture and leggy waitresses who warmly greet him by name.

"Raul Mondesi complained that the Dodgers weren't showing him any respect," McGwire says, digging into a turkey omelette. "Two days later he signs for about $9 million a year. He's a good player, but.... It's like the NBA. You've got guys making $56 million who've never done anything. It's gotten out of hand."

In '91 McGwire hit 22 home runs, drove in 75 runs — and didn't ask for a raise. That year he also hit .201, quit lifting weights out of sheer laziness, suffered through a miserable live-in relationship and finally telephoned the A's employee-assistance department and said, "I want to get some help." He found a therapist, learned to like himself, rededicated himself to year-round iron pumping and showed up at camp the next season with 20 pounds of new muscle.

Though McGwire did smash 42 home runs in that comeback year, it was also the first of five consecutive seasons in which he could not stay off the disabled list. He missed 40% of his team's games during that stretch; his enormously muscled body seemed to be too big for the rigors of playing baseball. A rib-cage strain, a torn left heel muscle, a sore lower back, a left heel stress fracture, a torn right heel muscle...those seemed to many observers to be the natural consequences of a body made unnaturally large. Many, including opposing players, believe he uses steroids. He denies the charge. Vehemently.

"Never," says McGwire, though he admits he'll "take anything that's legal," meaning dietary supplements. "It sort of boggles my mind when you hear people trying to discredit someone who's had success. Because a guy enjoys lifting weights and taking care of himself, why do they think that guy is doing something illegal? Why not say, 'This guy works really, really hard at what he does, and he's dedicated to being the best he can be.' I sure hope that's the way people look at me."

Spending time with McGwire is a bit like a tour of his home. Things seem so tidy, so neatly arranged as to make one wonder: Isn't there something wrong with this picture? Well, yes, the bed is unmade. And with McGwire, in addition to the whispers of steroids, there is the question of leadership. As the star system crumbled around him in Oakland — Jose Canseco, Rickey Henderson and Dave Stewart were among those who departed — McGwire was unable to grow into the franchise's standard-bearer the way Tony Gwynn did with San Diego under similar conditions. When he left, McGwire irritated A's executives by crowing about how he had never seen anything like the support in St. Louis. Had he forgotten the glory years in Oakland, when he and Canseco milked their Bash Brothers image, turning themselves into beloved Bay Area icons? Wasn't it possible that if a dispirited, needy McGwire had been traded to Baltimore or Colorado, anyplace with a welcome mat, with "energy," he would have felt just as wanted and signed on there just as readily?

The last time McGwire's body gave out, two years ago, it nearly prompted him to leave the game. After his third foot injury McGwire felt he'd rather quit than go through another rehab. Friends and family talked him out of it. He missed 18 games that season and still hit 52 home runs, the first of his back-to-back 50-homer seasons — something accomplished only by Ruth and this 250-pound strongman who gets teary watching Jessica Tandy being driven around by a chauffeur.

"He's the best home run hitter in baseball — and the most regular kind of a guy you can imagine," says Toronto Blue Jays second baseman Pat Kelly, one of his closest friends in baseball. "He makes you feel good about the game and its people."

In December, McGwire traveled with Kelly on a South African safari. "We were there about 17 days, and he really didn't talk much about [the home run record]," Kelly says. "When he did, it was only because I brought it up."

Near the end of the trip Kelly and McGwire stopped in a gift shop. McGwire stood for minutes examining a hand-carved mahogany elephant. Finally he said, "It's $300. What do you think?"

Says Kelly, "Here's this guy making millions. He can buy the whole place, and he's agonizing over a $300 elephant. I call him a tightwad. He likes to say he's sensible." (You know that silver special-edition Porsche? Bought it used, of course, from a guy in Chicago who put 500 miles on it and decided he didn't like it. "Saved a bundle on luxury taxes," McGwire says.)

At last McGwire decided to buy the elephant. But then the clerk set him fretting again with a simple question: "Would you like that shipped by air or boat?"

"PK, what should I do? You get it three months earlier by air. But it's a hundred dollars more."

His 2,200-square-foot home is as quiet as it is neat; he renovated the master bedroom suite on the second floor. The bathroom includes two sinks. One is raised four inches above standard height to better accommodate him; he doesn't have a girlfriend at present, so the other goes unused.

In the middle of the master bedroom, between his bed and a sitting area, is a great wooden desk from which McGwire E-mails his friends. Next to his computer is another framed picture, blown up to 8-by-10. "This is my favorite," he says.

Mark and Matthew are shoulder deep in a swimming pool in Mexico, where Mark took his son for his 10th birthday. They have their bare backs to the camera, their forearms resting on the pool's edge with their elbows out in exactly the same position. For all but the boy's first year of life, over too many miles and too many phone calls, Mark has been a divorced father. Now another man has stepped in to share the great and small responsibilities of fatherhood. But Mark can look at this picture and believe the serendipity of the image reaffirms an essential truth about him and his son--the same truth he sees in the fact that Matthew finishes his sentences, reads his thoughts, rips the low pitch and scuffles to catch up to the high hard one. Exactly like Dad. The photograph of Mark and Matthew was taken at midday, when the shadow we cast is a version of ourselves writ small.