Man On A Mission

"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.

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