Posted: Wed September 9, 1998

I knew something unusual was afoot when I got the call from the network business show that wanted to interview me about the home run race. Then "Crossfire" called. Hmmm. I wondered if Pat Buchanan was opposed to sluggers. Is power-is, as they say "going yard"-a liberal or a conservative ideology? Oh well ...

Usually, you see, I only get these kinds of calls from the mainstream media when something perfectly awful happens in sport—Latrell Sprewell choking his coach, Marv Albert or Mike Tyson biting someone, anybody on the Dallas Cowboys acting up. I get called then so that we can discuss, on television, with great gravity, how sports has lost its innocence.

McGwire and Sosa have buoyed the sporting world. (Stephen Green)

But now, incredibly, all anybody wanted to talk about was how warm and wonderful Mark McGwire's home run adventure was. And isn't this Sammy Sosa turning out to be a nice fellow, too? Strange—here we thought all athletes were scum.

Of course, the experts have been sure that much of the interest in the home run race is simply due to escapism. So many terrible things have happened out there in the world in the last month that a safe retreat into the National Pastime makes sense.

But honestly, some sport is always there for us if we need it for diversion—even if it's just to embrace our high school team or the local racetrack. Instead, I think the fascination with McGwire and Sosa, the whole enterprise, is largely incidental to what dreadful stuff is going on out in the world. Rather, I suspect, McGwire is foremost an internal antidote to all the bad things that we have had to endure in sport recently. It was much the same when Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive-games record three years ago. At last, then—as now—we had a chance to feel good about sport, to again be charmed instead of appalled.

Of course, as attractive as McGwire and Sosa have been as stars upon the stage, it certainly helps them that their prop is the home run. No other record in any sport would—could—capture so our interest. For all the marvelous long touchdown passes and goals and aces and knockouts, only the home run actually leaves the field of play—is, effectively, larger than the game itself. It's instructive that the victory of the Toms River, N.J., Little League team was all the more appealing because those little boys won their World Series on account of home runs. Surprising power! Hey, that's the American way of play.

Moreover, nothing is more simple than the home run record, nothing more stark, and no record in any sport can touch this one that the incomparable Babe Ruth autographed into posterity. That the huge and cuddly McGwire is, like the Babe, a sucker for children—besides being downright Ruthian in stature—only captivates us more.

Alas, for all that, just wait till Ken Starr's report comes out and see how quickly interest in Monica Lewinsky overshadows mere home runs.

But be not dismayed. If we must return to the woes of the world, we do it with just a little bit of our faith and joy in sport restored. Simply by their effort and their enthusiasm and their grace of spirit, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa have already triumphed ... and for this, dear friends, you have the thanks of a cynical nation.

These commentaries, which appear each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, are posted weekly by CNN/SI.

 

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