Home Run Central

Two things made the crowd that assembled at the Cincinnati Reds' spring training complex in Sarasota, Fla., on Feb. 23 unusual. One was its size: 1,845 fans, about a thousand more than the Reds usually get for an early spring training workout, pressed against the fences to watch centerfielder Ken Griffey Jr. lope through drills in his first official appearance in a Cincinnati uniform. The other was the Amish man, clad in traditional garb and sporting a long, gray beard, who joined the horde of sunburned Northerners, leathery retirees, jittery autograph hounds and other Reds fans whose excitement since Junior joined the Reds has reached a near-religious fervor.

In fact, the Feb. 10 trade that delivered Griffey from the Seattle Mariners didn't energize just one franchise. Fans and ticket managers throughout the National League are drooling over a schedule that includes a steady diet of the major leagues' top three home run hitters of 1999—Griffey (48 dingers), St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire (65) and Chicago Cubs rightfielder Sammy Sosa (63). In terms of the ultimate drawing card, the long ball, the National League Central is now the game's glamour division.

Remember the din whenever McGwire and Sosa went head-to-head during the past two seasons? That will probably seem like a whisper this year, when some combination of Griffey, McGwire and Sosa will clash 38 times. Heck, any one of them will boost the gate when he comes to town. "It's going to be fun to watch and to have that excitement all year," says Houston Astros first baseman Jeff Bagwell. "We don't mind playing in front of huge crowds every night."

The division is so loaded with sluggers that Bagwell, a former National League MVP who hit 42 homers last season and averaged 38 over the past four seasons, has become almost an afterthought. Also overshadowed by the Big Three are such Central boppers as Reds leftfielder Dante Bichette, who whacked 34 homers for the Colorado Rockies last year; Milwaukee Brewers rightfielder Jeromy Burnitz, who went deep 33 times and put on a show at the All-Star Game home run hitting contest; plus Pittsburgh Pirates centerfielder Brian Giles (39) and Cardinals third baseman Fernando Tatis (34), both of whom had breakout seasons in '99.

The American League West, which has only four teams, and the six-team National League Central are the only divisions in which every club's spring roster contains at least one player who hit at least 30 homers last year. "I just hope I don't hurt my neck watching balls go out," says Chicago White Sox lefthander Jim Parque, whose American League Central club is scheduled to face the fearsome threesome a total of 12 times in interleague play. Unfortunately for the White Sox, whose home attendance ranked 28th among the majors' 30 teams last year, they can't cash in on Griffey because they play the Reds only in Cincinnati this year.

Elsewhere, Griffey's change of venue is turning into a box-office bonanza. In the two days following the trade, St. Louis fans gobbled up more than 10,000 seats for their team's six home dates against the Reds, who were the league's seventh-worst road draw last year. The Griffey-McGwire showdown at Busch Stadium on the final day of the season is already sold out. "The two games after July 4 are always our hardest dates to sell," says Kevin Wade, the Cardinals' vice president of ticket sales. "This year we have the Reds on those days, and they'll probably sell out." By Monday the Cardinals had already sold 2.4 million tickets, putting them on pace to beat the pre-Opening Day franchise sales record (2.5 million) set a year ago.

Despite a 12-inch snowstorm in the Chicago area on Feb. 18, the day the Cubs put single-game seats on sale, the team sold 235,000 tickets, the second-largest single-day sale in franchise history. Roughly 40% of that rush was for the team's 12 dates with Cincinnati and St. Louis. In Pittsburgh, where fans scooped up 1,000 seats—10 times more than the norm—for games against Cincinnati, the day after the Griffey deal, the Reds are outselling all other opponents 4 to 1. The Philadelphia Phillies sold about 6,000 tickets in three days for their three-game set with the Reds in early May, a series for which they typically sell about 40 seats per day at this time of the year. Three of the Arizona Diamondbacks' six top-selling individual games are for the Reds' visit to Bank One Ballpark in the first week of July. For their three home games with Cincinnati last season the Florida Marlins drew an average of 15,232 (that was 2,325 below their season average), but at week's end three of the Marlins' five top-selling dates for 2000 involved the Reds, who don't hit town until Aug. 25.

" McGwire, Sosa and Griffey will capture the hard-core fan and the casual fan," says Phillies general manager Ed Wade. "A lot of people will come to games and stay nine innings so they can see all four of those guys' at bats. It's good for baseball. It will fulfill the hard-core fan's love of the game, and it could kindle the casual fan's love for it."

On Opening Day 1997 no one could have foreseen the nation's breadbasket becoming baseball's bread and butter. The Astros would go on to win the National League Central with a middling 84-78 record. Four of the five teams then in the division (the Brewers transferred from the American League in '98) would finish with losing records. None of the Central teams were among the top eight in the majors in payroll (the Astros, the Cubs and the Pirates were among the 12 lowest), and only St. Louis was among the top 12 in attendance. But when McGwire was traded from the Oakland As to St. Louis on July 31 of that season—he hit 24 home runs in the 51 games that remained—the transformation was under way.

"We've certainly come a long way from being nicknamed the Comedy Central," says Astros general manager Gerry Hunsicker. "One thing that gets people's attention in this business is superstars, and I don't think any division has superstars like we do."