‘The Best in Sports’ is a daily PSO original series showcasing the best highlights, facts, and stories going on in the land of the NFL, NBA, & MLB every day (temporarily suspended). This is a special ‘Long Gone Summer’ Edition for the 1998 Home Run Chase released on June 14, 2020. Get a recap on EVERYTHING that happened in sports on June 14th here.
Here are the best things to know about Mark McGwire & Sammy Sosa during the 1998 Home Run chase:
When looking back at the history of baseball, it’s easy to forget about the mid-90’s dip in interest around the game after the 1994 player’s strike caused the first World Series cancellation since its inception in 1903. The strike caused baseball fans to shift to American football instead of America’s pastime.
Purists of the game didn’t support the players and owners letting greed get in the way of the game itself and refused to consume Major League Baseball programming anymore. MLB owners and players suffered for years because of their economic-driven decisions in 1994. The following season in 1995 had a huge drop in attendance and revenue that carried on throughout the mid-90’s until this sudden peak in MLB popularity.
Nine years before, Mark McGwire set the MLB rookie record with 49 HRs in 1989 as a member of the Oakland A’s (later surpassed by Aaron Judge [52] in 2017 & Pete Alonso [53] in 2019). McGwire wouldn’t top that total until raking 52 bombs in 1996 and then followed that up with 58 in 1997. His close flirtation with the record began to generate some buzz back into baseball, but nothing like the 1998 Home Run chase.
With Roger Maris’ 61 single-season HR record looking as breakable as ever, the back-and-fourth Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa caused fans of all kinds (even the most casual viewers) to check the box scores on a daily basis to see who had the lead.
An underrated aspect relating to why this ’98 season became such a big audience draw was because of the ball collection phenomenon. Fans would pack stadiums, hoping they would be the lucky observer to go home with a historic souvenir. Ball collectors ended up making millions of dollars on some of those balls with the legendary 70th HR ball being sold for a few million dollars.
An interesting part of the documentary shows a member of the Cardinals grounds crew ending up with the record-breaking 62nd HR ball and he presented it to McGwire himself after the game. He did the “right thing” in that situation, passing on potentially millions of dollars, but benefitted in other ways like going on mainstream talk shows.
Related: MLB Suspension
An unavoidable theme to the 1998 Home Run chase was the prevalence of steroids and the impact it had on player’s strength and ability to hit Home Runs. While it took the documentary a while to acknowledge its existence, it did eventually detail the prevalent PED use that went on during that era.
To be clear, a batter must still have excellent hand-eye coordination, be able to read the pitch correctly, develop the proper technique to swing a bat, and get good enough contact to hit a long ball. The impact steroids has is turning those fly-balls that end up near the warning track, and help carry them beyond the fence. More importantly, PEDs helped players recover from injuries quicker and assisted them through the daunting 162-game MLB season.
Back in 1998, performance enhancing supplements were common around the game as there were no rules or regulations about testing players to prevent the use of these recently-developed drugs. ‘Steroids’ were banned in 1991, but many PEDs weren’t necessarily anabolic steroids in the traditional form and regulated league-wide testing didn’t arrive until 2003.
Because of the common use of these supplements around the game, many players in the clubhouse felt that they’re letting everyone else on the team down if they weren’t willing to take performance enhancing drugs to help the team win. The grey area with this issue became evident throughout this documentary as a dark cloud still hangs over that era of baseball.
Reporters noticed McGwire had some android testosterone booster (considered a safe alternative to steroids at the time) right at his locker, not being hid from anybody. Once they noticed the container, McGwire’s use of these drugs quickly became aware to the public during the ’98 season. At the time, he claimed he needed them because of so many injuries he had to endure throughout the year and this helped him recover. The medicine he was using could be prescribed to practically any person at their local pharmacy.
Creatine training (pre-workout supplements) was really a big part of players’ workout routine because they didn’t think consuming the substance was a problem. There were no rules against it. The attitude around the game was “maybe it’s in the game, maybe it’s not, but nobody cares.”
Major League Baseball made steroids illegal soon after that to protect kids from taking them and to ensure players are healthy long-term. Years later in 2003, a whopping 104 “anonymous” players tested positive for PEDs, leading to rampant testing and restrictions going forward. Legendary commentator Bob Costas’ perspective sums up many fans’ views today: “Known juicers are inauthentic” compared to players who hit all of their Home Runs naturally without performance-enhancing drugs throughout the history of the game of baseball.
Related: MLB Throwback
While the 1998 Home Run chase is defined by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s heroics, it was originally a three-man race through 2/3 of the year. McGwire was always at the forefront of the conversation after hitting 58 long balls the year prior and keeping that momentum going into April & May as he was on pace for an unsurmountable 79 HRs & 200 RBI’s after the first third of the season.
Another premier contender for the HR crown was reigning AL MVP Ken Griffey Jr. who was known for the sweetest swing any baseball fan has ever seen. He blasted 56 bombs in 1997 and was looking to take it a step further in ’98. After all, McGwire and Griffey’s HR race in ’97 is what set the stage for the epic 1998 showdown.
In the middle of July, McGwire was on top of the leaderboard with 40, yet Griffey Jr. was right behind him with 39, as they were both on pace to surpass Roger Maris’ record of 61. It was Ken Griffey Jr. that walked away from the All-Star break as the HR derby champ as well. However, the two MVP candidates were soon joined by an unlikely contender that made it a three-man race before Griffey’s second half of the season prevented him from battling it out with McGwire and Sosa.
Related: MLB Awards
While Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey Jr. had already become household names before the 1998 season, many casual baseball fans had never heard of Sammy Sosa.. until June of 1998. McGwire himself said, “I didn’t know anything about [Sosa] until June.”
It wasn’t like Sosa was a complete random who burst on the scene out of nowhere. In fact, he was the first Chicago Cub to register a 30 HR/30 SB season in 1993 before doing it again in 1995. Prior to the 1998 season, Sosa had a 1995 All-Star appearance and three consecutive seasons of MVP votes (finished 8th, 15th, & 19th) to his name as he entered his age-28 season where it all came together.
At the beginning of the season, Chicago wasn’t seen as a playoff contender by any stretch after 10 straight years without October baseball. The media was mostly fixated on rookie phenom SP Kerry Wood, after his record-breaking 20-strikeout game in just his fifth career Major League start. However, it started to become impossible to ignore Sosa taking all kinds of pitches deep: low and away curveballs, off-speed pitches below the strike zone, high fastballs, etc. Wood himself was in awe of Slammin’ Sammy.
The peak of Sammy Sosa’s season, and really his career, came in June of that season when he exploded for 20 dingers over the 30-day period, shattering the previous record of 18. Sosa just kept hitting one after another, with one week from June 15-22 featuring an astounding NINE dingers, including THREE multi-HR games. From that point forward, everybody around the game knew who Sammy Sosa was and paid attention to what he was doing on a nightly basis.
Related: MLB 1990s
An interesting caveat that often gets overlooked when legendary players chase historic records is the overwhelming mental pressure that comes with it. It’s hard enough to deal with the self-pressure, the clubhouse counting on them, and the fans in the street sporadically harassing them about the potential achievement. It reaches a whole new level when masses of media members surround the player EVERY single day with essentially the same old questions as yesterday.
Unlike Sammy Sosa, who was extremely charismatic, McGwire wasn’t as comfortable in the spotlight. The fact that he hadn’t hit a HR over a five-game span made news. It became just as much about the mental pressure of answering questions from the press, day after day. Cardinals security never had to deal with something like this. “This was pretty much how it was hanging out with the Beatles,” one observer claimed. It’s hard to live a life like that and then try to focus on squaring up 95 MPH fastballs and hit them over a 400 foot fence.
Plenty of other players were on pace to beat the record in the past. McGwire himself the season prior reached a few points in the season where it looked like he would do it. Reggie Jackson famously had 37 HR at the All-Star break in 1969. However, once that pressure of beating the record is on, it takes a level of mental strength that truly allows a person to achieve greatness.
Related: MLB Records
The most exciting part about the 1998 Home Run chase other than the sheer fact that a near half-century long record was broken, was that two players made the race so competitive, it couldn’t have been scripted any better. The race that took over the country wasn’t to see who would break the record, but who would break the record first.
An important moment of the story came when Sosa took the lead at 48, and in the same (Cubs vs. Cardinals) game, McGwire responded by tying Sosa for 48, while tying the game simultaneously. McGwire then hit No.49 later that night to take a one-run lead in the 10th inning for the win.
Later on, Slammin’ Sammy tied McGwire at 54 with a monster bomb off of the scoreboard. They continued to go back-and-fourth all the way up until a pivotal September series featuring the Cubs vs. Cardinals. McGwire entered the series sitting at 60 and wasted no time in tying Roger Maris’ record with 61. Sosa was stuck at 58 at the time when McGwire blasted the record-breaking 62nd HR of the season against Chicago and in an iconic scene, Cubs players were shaking his hand as he was rounding the bases.
For that moment, Mark McGwire became the new Home Run champion for the first time in 37 years. Sosa was clapping in the outfield as both teams and the stadium celebrated McGwire as the new Home Run king. Sosa even came up to McGwire and showed him the respect he deserved at the time. McGwire hugged the Maris kids and family in attendance as an unofficial passing of the torch. Between all the back-and-fourth, they tied 12 different times throughout the season, but Sosa never held a lead over McGwire for more than an hour.
Related: MLB Facts to Know
Besides the Yankees-Red Sox matchup, it’s hard to say any two teams have as historic and entertaining as a rivalry as the Cubs and Cardinals. That’s what made this home run race between NL Central opponents even more exhilarating. The fact that there was two guys both in the same division in the National League and faces of the franchise for two bitter rivals in the same division made it all the more special.
Despite the rivalry between the teams, McGwire and Sosa always seemed to have a good relationship. They did press conferences together and famously embraced after McGwire officially broke the record. “It’s awesome to see that kind of talent,” McGwire said as he always seemed to publicly show respect to his NL Central competitor and Sosa did the same.
Related: MLB Headlines
The historic Home Run race of 1998 came all the way down to the last season series of the year with both sluggers all tied up at 65, both shattering Roger Maris’ previous all-time single-season record. Sammy Sosa went on to take the lead again (momentarily) as he cranked out No. 66 in the first game against the Brewers. However, in typical fashion, Mark McGwire responded with a HR himself to tie it back up.
While Sosa’s 66th HR was his penultimate one of the season, McGwire still had some left in the tank. The former Rookie of the Year and World Series Champion with Oakland finished his first full year in St. Louis with the most HR ever over a final three-game stretch. He mashed five total dingers as he added multi-HR games in each of the final two games to his already legendary season. He wound up collecting a colossal 23 HRs over his final 39 games.
What makes it more interesting is McGwire was going to sit out the last game of the year after being burnt out from the long season and would’ve ended with the new HR record either way. However, thanks to Manager Tony La Rusa’s insistence on keeping him in the lineup, McGwire passed the 70 threshold and set the bar extremely high for any potential challenger. Of course, Barry Bonds ended up beating the record just three years later as highlighted in the section below.
Related: MLB 2000s
Looking back, nobody can think of Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa’s legacy without mentioning steroids. McGwire said he “didn’t know how to answer those questions because [using PEDs] turned out not to be a cool thing to do. So I was like thrown out to the Wolves but it wasn’t like I was the only one that had something in my locker.”
It’s true that it’s unfair to strictly blame Sosa and McGwire for using steroids in an era when it was considered illegal, but wasn’t tested for and “roughly half” of the entire league was using some form of performance enhancer. However, it’s also unfair to consider McGwire’s records authentic compared to the century-plus amount of years with natural hitters, unable to benefit from such substances.
Before McGwire finally admitted using roids in 2010 with the explanation, “There were no regulations, no rules against it. To me it would help with injuries,” any reports of these legendary batters taking PEDs originally lacked credibility as the only proof of their use was a NY Times leaked drug test result. It’s still not fully proven Barry Bonds did steroids, and while there’s still plenty of assumptions around the game, some of them are for good reason (like seeing a man somehow gain 40 lbs in one year).
“All of us have to take responsibility to it, starting with me” MLB Commissioner Bud Selig said when questioned by Congress in 2005. In reality, it was everybody’s fault. The league established a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ type of policy as the owners secretly wanted to do whatever it took to get ratings and revenue back up after the ’94 strike. However, when looking back, the only people that are punished are the players.
Outside of steroids, Sammy Sosa’s charisma defined him. His favorite thing is having fun and joking, and not being so serious. He could be seen blowing kisses to fans and always celebrating his Home Runs with a notorious hop out of the batter’s box. Sosa was an enormously talented player, who was so quick, so athletic, that when combined with the ultimate strength, made him an all-time legend. While Sosa came up short in the HR chase, he did walk away with the MVP award as he led Chicago to their only playoff appearance in the 1990s.
Sosa was beloved by the city of Chicago before it was revealed he cheated the game. The Cubs traded him in 2004, but Sosa still has love for the third most populated city in the country. “Chicago was the city I owed my life,” he said about the city that made him and helped him achieve his goals of getting his family out of the situation he was born into in the Dominican Republic.
Because of helping bring America’s pastime back to the forefront of US culture, President Bill Clinton said Sammy Sosa was a hero in America in addition to his home country Dominican Republic. To this day, neither Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, nor Barry Bonds have been inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Related: MLB Hall of Fame
While McGwire & Sosa put on a show for the ages in 1998, their HR records only lasted three years as Barry Bonds took his game to the next level in 2001. After never reaching the 50-HR plateau, Bonds exploded for a record-breaking 73 HRs over his 153 GP (sporting an absurd 0.48 HR/GP). Barry Bonds’ relation with steroids might warrant an entire documentary of it’s own, but until they put an official asterisk on it, Bonds is not only the single-season HR champ, but also the all-time Home Run king.
Related: MLB Highlights
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