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Power Couple

In a reunion at Wrigley, Sammy Sosa still had a hot bat and an infectious grin while Mark McGwire tried to find relief from an infected toe and a voracious public

By Tom Verducci
Issue date: June 7, 1999

Mark McGwire wore the uncomfortable look of a man fighting an infection that just would not go away. His brow glistened with sweat inside the artificial cool of the visitors' clubhouse before last Friday's game at Wrigley Field. Finished with a terse, didactic, pregame session with a small cluster of reporters around his locker, he grimaced at the thought of what would come next. "Think there are a few cameras out there?" he asked. McGwire grabbed his mitt and went off to face all over again the harsh light of being the Home Run King.

Industrial-strength antibiotics and a day of bed rest in a hospital on Saturday would begin to subdue an ugly, puss-oozing infection between the two smallest toes on his right foot, an infection so aggressive that it traveled to his groin area. But where was the antidote for all the tired questions plus the new ones that have turned McGwire defensive? One minute he hits 70 home runs, obliterating a mystical record that had stood for 37 years, and the next he has to listen to people question whether his record will outlast a Christmas fruitcake.

More persistent still is Sammy Sosa, whom McGwire cannot shake any more than he can his own shadow. The 70 home runs, the 15 through Sunday McGwire has added in the first two months of this season, the manner in which he answers questions, even a presidential invitation to light the White House Christmas tree (Mac said no, Sammy said yes) -- all of it gets measured against Sosa and his irresistible combination of power and charm.

"We've been...nice...acquaintances," was how McGwire, the St. Louis Cardinals' first baseman, carefully referred to his bond with Sosa, the Chicago Cubs' rightfielder, two hours before the two of them, for better or worse, reunited on the field for the first time since last Sept. 8, when McGwire broke Roger Maris's single-season home run record right under his foil's nose.

Friday marked the first time that the top two single-season home run hitters in modern baseball history played in the same game. It was Sosa who gleefully held a formal pregame press conference; it was Sosa who would jump on every photo op like a thigh-high fastball, reaching out to McGwire during batting practice to a symphony of shutters clicking; and it was Sosa who hogged the stage even more by scalding what seemed a hopelessly errant pitch -- the very kind of ball the selective McGwire never wants to offer at -- into the sun-dappled leftfield bleachers for his 17th home run of the season. All of it came quite naturally to him. The front page of the Saturday edition of the Chicago Tribune, stripping all pretense from the 2,063rd game between the Cardinals and the Cubs, summed it up thusly: "Sammy 1, Mark 0." Except it was never as close as the final score indicated.

The best part of sports as programming is that it is entirely unscripted. You know Gilligan won't be getting off the island at the end of each half hour, but every game, every season, has a unique storyline. The likes of the Mark and Sammy Show might never again happen the way that one did last year. If, however, a reprise does occur (must-see TV: Acquaintances), the three-game weekend series in Chicago, during which the Cubs swept the Cardinals, proved that only one of them would gladly go through it all over again.

"I've told Sammy many times, 'If [the attention] ever gets to be too much, let me know and I'll say no to people -- let me be the bad guy,'" Chicago general manager Ed Lynch says. "Not once has he asked me to do that. What's amazing is, over the last two years not once has he had a bad day. He loves this. He absolutely loves this."

Said Sosa on Saturday morning, "I don't mind. Why should I? It's my job."

The savvy of the Dominican-born Sosa is remarkable, especially the way he has co-opted American colloquialisms to disarm just about any question. He likes to refer to himself as "a good-time Charlie," to begin answers with "I have to say..." and to end them with "I'm not going to lie to you." His locker is open for business longer than Denny's. To Sosa, the truth, like taffy, is meant to be chewed on and stretched for amusement. For instance, he says he plans to open a restaurant that will include a back room to feed the poor. Ask him when it will open, however, and he does not know.

More important, the man who became a household name in the flash of 20 bombs last June has secured his status as one of the best all-around players in the game today. McGwire hit four home runs in St. Louis's first four games last year; Sosa, on his way to 66, hit none in Chicago's first four. Since then -- covering 207 games for the Cardinals and 206 for the Cubs -- Sosa has outhomered McGwire, 83-81, and driven in more runs, 193-171.

Sosa's ferocious line drive dinger on Friday -- his third hit of the game -- helped ice a 6-3 win. The next day he tied the game at 2 in the fifth inning with a two-out, two-strike single on the eighth pitch of a persistent at bat, then preserved the score with the mere threat of his throwing arm on what otherwise would have been a sacrifice fly to medium-depth rightfield. (To validate the threat, he unleashed such an impressive throw to the plate that the crowd gasped.) In the ninth, trailing 3-2 and down to their last two outs with nobody on, the Cubs would rally for two runs for a 4-3 victory.

"He's better this year than he was last year, if you can believe that," says Cubs first baseman Mark Grace.

Sosa hit his home run on Friday off a shoe-top-high pitch from Heathcliff Slocumb that didn't even catch the inside corner. "He won the longest-drive competition today," Cubs infielder Jeff Blauser said of the tee shot. It was Sosa's 13th home run in May, the most for the month in the majors and the most he has hit in any month in his career except for last June and last August (also 13). "I have to say I knew there were almost 40,000 people here who wanted to see what happened today," Sosa said afterward.

Wrigley Field was filled with the colors of the Cubs and the Cardinals, who drew a sizable flock of fans from down I-55 last weekend. Two young truants sat side-by-side in field-level seats on Friday, sporting the two best reasons to cut school: One wore a red McGwire jersey and the other a blue Sosa jersey. Who do you like? It's a beauty contest, of course, with no wrong answer. You can favor one but easily like both, leaving the McGwire-or-Sosa dilemma in the same category as boxers or briefs and Betty or Veronica.

The reunion attracted 250 members of the media (about three times the usual turnout for a May game), some of whom learned that McGwire wished they hadn't bothered stopping by his locker. If you really wanted to put a jolt into McGwire, the mention of only two words had a greater impact than planting a rubber snake inside his spikes: last year.

"I don't relive anything," he said on Friday. "This is a new year. Last year is historical. It's over with." He later added, "Why do you want to write about the same people year in and year out? People around America want to hear about new players. There's nothing new to talk about [with me]."

When a reporter mentioned players such as Jose Canseco and Ken Griffey Jr. (tied with a major-league-high 19 homers through Sunday) taking a shot at the home run record -- his record -- a vein opened in McGwire. "They're hitting a lot of home runs," he said, "but there's a long way to go. Even if they get a chance to do it, the pressure would be a thousand times greater than what I went through. They'd have to hit 10 more homers than I did" -- the way McGwire hit nine more than Maris's 61.

He later declared, "From the replays I've seen, they're hitting home runs on pitches in the strike zone. They're getting pitches to hit. They've got 19. Fifty-two more to go. Think about that."

Think about this: Sosa hit 57 in the Cubs' final 114 games last year. Says Cubs righthander Kevin Tapani, "He's got 17 already, and that's after he's made it through the toughest part of the season here [at Wrigley]. Now it's warming up, and we have a lot of home games [45 of 75] after the All-Star break. Anything is possible with Sammy."

Encores can be ugly affairs, which is nothing new to anybody who ever tuned in to the new Love Boat series. McGwire, Sosa, Griffey and Greg Vaughn, all of whom hit at least 50 home runs last year, are fighting the gravitational pull of history. Before them, the 50-dinger barrier had been cracked 23 times. Only three times did a player improve upon his total the following season: Babe Ruth (59 in 1921) and McGwire (58 in '97 and, of course, last year's 70). The 20 other follow-up acts suffered an average drop-off of 16 home runs. After McGwire smacked his 15th -- a relatively harmless two-run blast off righthanded reliever Terry Adams in the ninth inning of the Cardinals' 7-4 loss on Sunday -- his total through St. Louis's first 48 games was nine fewer than he had hit at the same point last year. Still, it put him on course to hit 50.

"I think he's been pressing a little bit," Cardinals swingman Kent Mercker says. "It's only natural. People expect him to do it all over again, and I think that's why he was pressing early on. He was trying to live up to the expectations. He's on a pace for what, 50 home runs? What's wrong with that? Is that a bad year? Come on."

Says Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, who noted that McGwire hit six home runs in eight games before the infection worsened on Friday, "I think [early in the season] he was pressing -- and when he does that, he expands his zone and chases pitches -- but he was pressing because Ray Lankford wasn't playing." Leftfielder Lankford, the only strong lefthanded bat in the St. Louis lineup, has batted fourth, behind McGwire, only 20 times this season because of a sore left knee.

"I don't see that they're pitching Mark any differently," Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan says. "The way they're pitching him right now, they think they can get him out."

On Friday, for instance, Tapani and righthanded reliever Scott Sanders threw McGwire 11 strikes out of 16 pitches while holding him hitless in four at bats. McGwire fouled or swung through four high fastballs from Tapani and didn't swing at a hanging changeup. "I'm glad he didn't," Tapani said afterward. "I was trying to pound him inside and get him out low and away. I got a few pitches up that I didn't want to, but I guess I had enough life on them. He probably missed a few pitches he usually hits."

McGwire batted each time in Friday's game without a runner on, which allowed Cubs manager Jim Riggleman to deploy a four-man outfield. Riggleman discovered during spring training that McGwire never had grounded out to second base against the Cubs in Riggleman's four seasons as Chicago's manager. So he decided to leave that position uncovered while defending more ground in the outfield. "If he hits a ground ball to second base, I'll give up the single," Riggleman reasoned. He did just that on Sunday, when McGwire dribbled a first-inning hit through the vacated spot. "There's only a few guys you'd do it with," Riggleman said. "You couldn't do it with Sammy because he's such a great base runner. If you put him on, he can score from first on a double, or he can steal a base."

Other than his Sunday-night homer, McGwire did have moments of obvious enjoyment, including Sosa's pregame hug on Friday (McGwire inquired about Sosa's restaurant and told Sosa he looked more muscular than last season) and that day's sixth-inning meeting with Grace after the longtime Cub reached first on a leadoff single. "Isn't it great that all these people showed up to see two big first basemen slug it out?" cracked Grace, who has never banged more than 17 homers in a season. McGwire broke up laughing.

Otherwise, the love fest we remember from 1998 never materialized. That seemed just fine with McGwire. Sosa, meanwhile, gave off no such vibes while entertaining the conga line of baseball writers, Latin American investors, Dominican TV reporters and assorted other glad-handers and hangers-on who seemed to stream by his happy locker without end. "He once said," recalled Tapani on Sunday night, "'I want to be recognized everywhere I go.' That about sums him up."

Issue date: June 7, 1999

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