Somebody's Gotta Do It

Pitchers who give up historic home runs have their ways of dealing with infamy

By Jack McCallum

On the fourth of April, Mark McGwire took the San Diego Padres' Don Wengert yard, but no one contacted Tracy Stallard. Big Mac finished the month with 11 homers, and America started to whisper the magic words Roger Maris, but the names Al Downing and Ralph Branca stayed out of the headlines. However, as Sammy Sosa entered the chase and the dinger totals grew and the record became a case of who and when, not if, I started to wonder: What unfortunate would enter the exclusive club of Epic Home Run Victims?

The club's charter member is Branca, who on Oct. 3, 1951, threw a Polo Grounds gopher ball that hurled him and his Brooklyn Dodgers into infamy, Bobby Thomson into immortality and the New York Giants into the World Series. A decade later it was Stallard of the Boston Red Sox, who dished out Maris's 61st at Yankee Stadium, and 13 years after that it was the Los Angeles Dodgers' Downing, who was on the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium hill when Hank Aaron passed the Babe with his 715th. Now 24 years had passed. Would the club's doors open again?

June. July. Branca's name surfaced from time to time in newspaper stories. That was typical, because for years Branca has traded on the notoriety he acquired on that fateful autumn afternoon. He and Thomson have chatted their way through scores of rubber-chicken benefits, old-timers' dinners and celebrity golf tournaments, each recounting ad nauseam—albeit with considerably more nauseam for Branca—the Shot Heard Round the World. "I see more of Bobby than I do of my wife," says Branca. One could criticize him for overexposure, I suppose, but I kind of like the good-natured, old-school, see-it-happened-this-way life that the Dodger has made for himself out of his moment of infamy.

August. September. Efforts to reach Stallard were mostly futile, and that was typical too. Stallard, who turned the magic age of 61 on Aug. 31, is no J.D. Salinger, but neither has he made a second career out of the happenstance that put him on the mound against Maris. He lives quietly in Wise, Va., working in construction, and in the weeks leading up to number 62, he not only refused most interview requests but also declined the St. Louis Cardinals' invitation to participate in the traveling loveathon that began to surround McGwire. When The New York Times finally reached him by phone, Stallard said he'd never felt ashamed of giving up number 61, but neither did he feel particularly like celebrating it. I kind of like that attitude too.

Downing was not too much in evidence during the chase either, but he surfaced in July, along with Aaron, at a card show in Raleigh, N.C. He was compensated for the appearance (he wouldn't say how much) and said that it was the first time he had earned a dime on ushering the Hammer into the record books. I kind of like that, too.

On Sept. 8, McGwire deposited a fourth-inning pitch a few feet over the leftfield wall of Busch Stadium for the Maris-breaking 62nd. Steve Trachsel of the Chicago Cubs—come on down and join the club! The passwords, as he probably knew when he threw that shin-high fastball, are ignominy and
bad timing. But, hey, we're in the Era of Crassness, when people would hawk their gallbladder on QVC for the right price, and there's a buck to be made on, well, ignominy and bad timing. Trachsel, evidently, will look for his price; he will not, unlike Downing, take a quarter of a century to cash in. "Steve's teammates were saying that giving up the homer was like getting a $10,000-a-year annuity for the rest of his life," said Alan Meersand, Trachsel's agent. "Steve's waiting to find out what endorsement opportunities might be available."

Well, who am I to stand in judgment? Maybe Trachsel, history's loser, should get his. But I'd like to gently remind him that there are such things as dignity and restraint. Don't find yourself at age 50 signing official replica number 62 balls at card shows. Don't put your name on a bunch of tacky commercials. Take your place in history with humor and grace and, what the heck, play a little golf with Big Mac. From what I understand, he hits it a long way.

Issue date: October 7, 1998