Power Couple

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 lour 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 out-homered McGwire, 83-81, and driven in more runs, 193-171.