Exclusive: 25 years later, Mark McGwire still gets emotional reliving 1998 Home Run Chase

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Exclusive: 25 years later, Mark McGwire still gets emotional reliving 1998 Home Run Chase

Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY · USA TODAY Sports

Fri, Sep 8, 2023 ·

25 min read

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IRVINE, Calif. — Mark McGwire, sitting in the backyard of his sprawling estate overlooking the rolling hills, canyon and a golf course, watches the 2-minute, 28-second video on this visitor's cell phone, studying it as if he's seeing it for the first time.

"Down the left-field line ….is it enough?….Gone! There it is, 62! "

McGwire's eyes slowly start to well with tears as he watches the clip of his historic 62ndhome run, laughing as he runs past St. Louis Cardinals first base coach Dave McKay, missing the first-base bag, and retreating to touch it.

"Touch them all Mark, you are the new single-season home run king. "

McGwire watches himself stroll around the bases on the video as the Cardinals first baseman, a sellout crowd of 43,688 at Busch Stadium going berserk and an entire nation celebrating. He stomps on home plate with his right foot, picks up his 10-year-old son Matt, lifts him high in the air, and kisses him as his teammates mob him at the plate. He hugs and high-fives every teammate and coach pouring in from the dugout and bullpen.

He watches Chicago Cubs right fielder Sammy Sosa, his cohort in the great Home Run Chase, running in from right field. They salute one another, McGwire picks him up, and Sosa pounds his back in exhilaration, rubbing his hair.

The video shows McGwire walking over to the first-base line, waving and acknowledging the crowd. He hurries over to the stands, climbs over the front row, and greets four members of the Roger Maris family with Hall of Famers Stan Musial and Bob Gibson behind them. Maris' widow, Pat, was supposed to be there, too, but was rushed to the St. Louis hospital that afternoon with an irregular heartbeat and accompanied by her son, Kevin.

McGwire hugs them all, but before he retreats to the field, puts his arm around Maris sons Roger, Randy and Richard.

"I held your dad's bat earlier in the day and hugged it," McGwire recalls telling them. "I want to let you know he's here with us today. He's a part of this.' "

Joe Buck, the play-by-play announcer for the Fox-televised game, who has been silent for 90 seconds, speaks again on the broadcast.

"Folks, it could not happen to a better man. You will always know where you were at 8:18 p.m., Sept. 8, 1998. "

At this point, McGwire no longer tries to stop the tears. He starts rubbing his eyes with his left hand, sniffs, looks away, and softy says, "Sorry."

McGwire, now 59 years old, takes a swig of water and collects his emotions.

"Wow, you really got me there," McGwire tells USA TODAY Sports. "I don't even know what to say. But you can tell, 25 years later, you show me that, and I still get emotional about it."

Twenty-five years ago, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 1998, McGwire broke the most revered record in all sports, hitting the his 62ndhome run.

On Sept. 8, 1998, Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris' single season home run record.

It was the year of great Home Run Chase between McGwire and Sosa, when national networks broke into coverage each time they homered, when their home run totals were splashed on the front page of every sports section.

"There is no doubt in my mind they saved the game of baseball," says former Oakland Athletics pitcher Dave Stewart, McGwire's former teammate. "We had the '94 strike. They canceled the World Series. Fans weren't coming out.

"And watching those guys, man, it was really a lift. Back and forth. Who's going to set the record? Who's going to win the home run title?

"It was a lift for all of the guys playing the game. We needed something to believe in. We needed that to restore our values in the game."

'Enjoyed every second of it'

It was a time of glorious innocence, only to later be cloaked in shame as the performance-enhancing drug era was exposed . But for those who remember, nothing can tarnish the magic of 1998.

"Oh, my God, what a year, what a moment," Buck says from his St. Louis home. "I think we were all aware of what was going on at the time. When people say everybody just turned a blind eye to it. That's not true. What were you going to do? No one was admitting anything.

"While we may be more educated and aware now, it does not take away any of the great memories or fun we all had in '98.

"I refuse to cast too big of a shadow or cloud over it, because I enjoyed every second of it. It was true then, just as it's true now."

McGwire, the father of three boys and 13-year-old triplet daughters, and about to become a grandfather, is turning 60 on Oct. 1.

Still looking like he could hit 40 homers, McGwire can hardly fathom how time has flown by. He played his final season when Barry Bonds broke his record with 73 homers in 2001, and last coached in the big leagues in 2018 with the San Diego Padres .

He teaches hitting lessons for young kids, works with minor leaguers and mentors a few big-leaguers too. He has no appetite to get back in uniform, but if a team wants him to work behind the scenes, he's available.

For now, he and his wife Stephanie stay busy watching their 13-year old girls (Monet, Marlo and Monroe) play volleyball and soccer, son Mason pitching in the Chicago Cubs organization and Max playing baseball for the University of San Diego. Matt, 35, is a vice president of data analysts who with his wife will be expecting their first child in late November.

"It's hard to believe how much time has gone by," McGwire says in a two-hour interview from his home. "It seems like yesterday, but then again, it's been 25 years. The thing I like is that I run into people on the street, people talk about it, and it brings people back to that spot because people know where they were that night.

"I've got so many great, great memories, but that summer of 1998, and that night, what I went through with Sammy, is something I'll cherish forever."

It's a night when baseball stood still.

A night that will live forever in our memory.

"It was almost like it was scripted," says Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa, who was with McGwire all but two years of his career. "It was like a movie, a book, so dramatic the way both players kept responding, kept doing it, and never relented.

"It was so theatrical, something that would be a great movie, only it was real."

Says McGwire: "You know what? I still can't believe I did it."

Mark McGwire celebrates at Busch Stadium after the game on Sept. 8.

'This is the year'

McGwire burst onto the scene in 1987 when he slugged 49 home runs with the Oakland A's, with an insane .618 slugging percentage. He set the rookie record, and could have reached the 50-homer milestone if he didn't miss the final three games to be there for the birth of his first son.

"When Mac first came into camp, he was just this big, tall, lanky red-haired kid with big forearms," Stewart says. "He was a quiet kid, nice respectful kid. Just kind of stayed in the back of the room. He didn't have big presence at that time, but he loved to laugh."

It would be nine years before McGwire would crack the 50-homer barrier, overcoming plantar fasciitis in his feet, and back problems that caused him to miss 242 out of 420 games in 1993-1995.

It was also during this time that McGwire began using performance-enhancing drugs, allowing him to recover from the injuries quicker and stay healthier.

"Back in those days, nobody knew how to cure plantar fasciitis," says McGwire, who had two surgeries, and began using PEDs after the 1993 season. "This was brought to my attention that [steroids and human growth hormone] will help heal injuries and keep you heathy, keep you on the field. That was the mindset I had. I'm like, 'OK, wow, this is something that can help me.'

"I didn't do it to hit homers. I was already hitting homers. I was a born home-run hitter. I led the nation in college in homers. I was hitting homers my whole life.

"It was nothing to feel guilty about because I was doing it for health purposes."

Mark McGwire watches homer number 67 clear the fence against Montreal on Sept. 26, 1998 to reclaim the season record from Chicago's Sammy Sosa.

McGwire, finally healthy, led the American League with 52 home runs in 130 games in 1996. He hit 34 homers in the first 105 games with the Athletics, was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals on July 31, 1997, and then hit another 24 homers in 51 games for a total of 58. He joined Babe Ruth as the only players in history to hit more than 50 homers in consecutive seasons.

"He thought he was going to be there just a couple of months," says third-base coach Rene Lachemann, who was also with McGwire in Oakland. "He said, 'I'm going to come over here, and then play for the Angels.' Well, like a lot of guys. The fans won him over. He wanted to stay there."

McGwire signed a three-year, $27.5 million contract extension in late September to remain with the Cardinals. When spring training rolled around, and two new expansion teams were added in Arizona and Tampa Bay, McGwire was ambushed with the hype he could be the one to break Maris' record of 61 homers set in 1961.

He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated .

"I remember doing the photoshoot and all of that stuff," McGwire says, "and they were saying, 'This is the year.' They were saying it because it was an expansion year. And the year Maris did it was an expansion year. So they were putting two and two together, saying the pitching will be watered down, and there would be more homers.

"So, from the beginning of spring training, people were talking about it."

McGwire lived up to every bit of the hype. He hit a grand slam off Dodgers ace Ramon Martinez on opening day, and homered in each of the first four games. He had 11 homers by the end of April. Another 16 homers in May. And had 37 homers by the All-Star Game.

"The thing that surprised me the most is that Sammy was the one who pushed me," McGwire says. "I always thought that I was going to be in competition with Ken Griffey [who hit 56 homers in 1997] because we were going against each other all of the time. Sammy was a nice player, but he really came into his own that year."

Sosa had hit 40 homers just once in his career, and was coming off a 36-homer season in 1997. He broke into the big leagues two years after McGwire in 1989, and had made the All-Star team just once. Never was he in the conversation as the one who could potentially break Maris' record.

Sosa hit six homers in April, another seven homers in May, but along came June, and everything changed.

"It wasn't until he hit 20 homers in June," McGwire says, "that all of a sudden, it became, 'Wow! OK, there is somebody else out there besides Griffey.' "

McGwire and Sosa went head-to-head the rest of the summer. Sosa would homer. McGwire would homer. McGwire would edge ahead. Sosa would tie him. The Great Home Run Chase was born.

"It was like a pennant race, only it was between two guys," Lachemann says. "It was something. We'd open the gates for batting practice, and there would be 15,000 people on hand watching the show. ...

"It was amazing. Boy, those two guys were saving the game of baseball before our very eyes."

September 8

McGwire arrived at Busch Stadium from his Clayton, Missouri, apartment the day of Sept. 8, 1998 with 61 homers, three ahead of Sosa. The game was picked up nationally by Fox Sports, gambling this would be the night. McGwire knew the stakes. It would be their last home game before the Cardinals began a five-game road trip the next day in Cincinnati.

"Fox put all of their prime TV programming aside," Buck says, "just for the chance it would break Maris's record. I remember sitting down with Mark and Sammy before the game and doing an interview with them.

"After the interview was over, Sammy walked out of the interview room first.

"Mark looked at me and said, 'You better be ready, I'm breaking the record tonight.'

"I said, 'Geez, he's actually calling his shot.' "

Buck went upstairs to his broadcast booth, looked at his notes, where he had already prepared a line for the record-breaking moment: "McGwire rounds the bases, and he floats into the history books."

La Russa arrived just 15 minutes before game time after attending his mother's funeral in Tampa. He reached out earlier in the day to Bruce Springsteen, who was with his son on their way to the St. Louis airport to catch a flight home, but the manager convinced Springsteen to stay to witness baseball history.

McGwire stepped to the plate in the fourth inning with two outs and the bases empty, with Cubs starter Steve Trachsel on the mound.

"I remember talking to Trachsel before the game," says Seattle Mariners manager Scott Servais, the Cubs' catcher at the time. "He tells me, 'This guy is not going to be hitting a [expletive] home run off me.' "

McGwire, with the crowd on its feet and cameras flashing everywhere as he dug in, McGwire remembers being suddenly overcome with a wave of calmness.

"I felt this eerie quietness come over my body," McGwire says. "It was like something is going to happen. I've only had a few odd feelings like that in my body during a baseball game, and that was one of them."

Trachsel threw a first-pitch sinker, 88-mph, down and in. McGwire swung and sent it screaming towards the left-field corner. McGwire wasn't sure it would stay fair, but if it was, he sprinted out of the box to assure he'd get a double.

"You always envisioned one of those tape-measure shots," McGwire says. "But the reason I busted my ass is because I'm like, 'Oh, that's going to be off the wall.' I wanted a double. I didn't think it was enough to get over the fence, and it did.

"I never thought that it was going to be a homer."

The ball cleared the left-field wall by just five feet, caromed off a sign and landed on the field-level concourse, where it was snagged by groundskeeper Tim Forneris.

McGwire reached first base, leaped into McKay's arms, and jumped over the bag. He laughed, retraced his steps, and touched the bag.

"I get a lot of credit for that, with people saying it's great you called him back," says McKay, now a first-base coach with the Arizona Diamondbacks. "But the truth is I didn't do anything. I remember telling myself when he hits this thing, I'm just going to let him enjoy his ride. Nothing dramatic. Just let him hit my hand and that's it.

"Well, he comes in running so hard, jumps in the air, and I'm looking up as he landed, and we kind of hugged. Then, he makes a sound and starts to come back. I'm not looking down. I'm looking up. I didn't see anything. I just said, 'Touch this thing!' "

The home run traveled just 341 feet, the shortest home run McGwire hit the entire season, going out so quickly that Buck never even had time to glance down at the home run call he planned.

"It was such a wall-scraper," Buck says, "my eyes could never get down to the corny script I had written. The thing was hooking into the corner, so I kept my eyes up and not on the script. As I'm watching it, I'm making sure I don't get this historic home run call wrong. If it's foul, or off the wall, it's probably the end of my career.

"It goes over. The camera follows him around the bases... It was as good a scene as any Hollywood script could produce."

McGwire, all 6-foot-5, 245 pounds of him, floated around the bases and is congratulated by Cubs first baseman Mark Grace, who had given him a forearm bash the previous night when McGwire hit his 61sthomer.

"I got crushed in Chicago for doing that," Grace says from his Phoenix-area home. "I said, 'I don't give a [expletive]. That's history. This guy I just shook hands with made history. If you got a problem with that, kiss my ass.

"He was my competitor, it was Cubs-Cardinals and all of that, but what he just did was one of the greatest milestones in all of sports."

Second baseman Mickey Morandini is next. Then, shortstop Jose Hernandez. Third baseman Gary Gaetti, his former teammate with the Cardinals, is greeted by a hug. He does a forearm smash with Lachemann, points to his parents in the stands, taps his heart and points to the heavens.

Just before he reaches home plate, Servais steps in front of him, shakes his hand, and then hugs him. McGwire takes a few more steps and steps on the plate.

"I literally could not feel my body or feet whatsoever," McGwire says. "Wow. It was weird. I had no idea. I'm pointing to the man upstairs, and I never would do something like that.

"It was like the universe had a huge plan for me. Think about it. I hit No. 61 on my dad's birthday. I hit No. 62 the same inning as Roger Maris hit his. And the ball that night is marked with No. 3, Babe Ruth's number. So think about about all of those things that happened."

Servais says he was caught up in the moment. He didn't plan to shake McGwire's hand before he crossed the plate, and certainly not hug him, but the historic achievement overwhelmed him.

"It was one of those games that you know what it means in the history of the game," Servais says. "It was a riveting moment throughout the country. Everybody knew how big it was. When he hit it, the place just went crazy, you had to react. They shut the game down for 10, 11 minutes, which was appropriate because you wanted to appreciate it.

"Playing with Sammy all year, you saw his persona, the smile on his face, but in all of the years I played and managed, I've never seen anybody as focused as McGwire was that year. I have tons of respect for him."

Feeling the love

McGwire instantaneously became the country's biggest hero. The adulation was staggering.

He was flooded with telegrams, letters and telephone calls, even receiving a call in the clubhouse from President Bill Clinton.

McGwire laughs at how times have changed, with Western Union sending out its last telegram in 2006, and excuses himself from his chair. He retreats to his office, returns with a huge brown binder of all of the telegrams and letters he received from dignitaries and celebrities at the time.

There are congratulatory messages from Hall of Famers Musial, Gibson, Lou Brock, Joe Torre and two from Reggie Jackson; talk-show host David Letterman; broadcast legend Barbara Walters, comedian Rosie O'Donnell; NFL star John Elway; university presidents and political dignitaries from President George H.W. Bush to Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson and New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Pete Rose sent a message saying, "Thank you for making baseball fun again."

Bonds' congratulatory message read: "Hey, where's my jersey?"

The truth is that every single thing McGwire wore that night, from his jersey to his cleats to his cap to his wristbands were all sent to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. McGwire doesn't have a single thing from that night or even the season, with the 62ndhome run ball going to the Hall of Fame.

"I didn't keep one piece of memorabilia from myself the whole season," McGwire says. "I gave everything away to players, front office, other managers, other players and other clubhouse guys. I don't have one thing. I wanted everybody else to have it, enjoy it, and keep it.

"And I wanted all of the historical things to be in the Hall of Fame where it should be."

Really, virtually every piece of baseball memorabilia, artifact and apparel that McGwire owned during his historic run is all in Cooperstown.

The only thing missing is McGwire himself.

'There was no testing'

McGwire, who finished his career with 583 home runs, and a record 10.6 at-bats per home run, never came close to being voted into the Hall of Fame. He peaked at 23.7% in 2010, not even one-third of the votes needed for entrance, just before sitting down with Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Costas and admitting that he used performance-enhancing drugs in the '90s and during his record-setting year.

If he never confessed before joining the Cardinals as a hitting coach, would he be in the Hall of Fame today?

"It's a great question. I don't know," McGwire quietly says. "I just don't know. I'll just say that everybody does what they feel is right. If it turns out that I'm one of the very few that have admitted to it, I know that I can look myself in the mirror and feel good about my decision to apologize."

McGwire was never ashamed of taking PEDs. It wasn't as if he needed them to become the preeminent power hitter. He just knew they helped him stay healthy, improved his recovery time, and enabled him to maintain his strength the entire season.

Besides, there was no steroid testing in baseball. Steroid use was rampant in the game. It wasn't until 2003 that MLB was able to implement a drug-testing policy. MLB agreed to perform anonymous drug tests in spring training in 2003, and if more than 5% of the players tested positive, drug testing would go into effect in 2004. Despite the players having advance notice of the testing, there were 104 players who tested positive, and MLB's drug-testing program was launched, three years after McGwire retired.

THE ADMISSION: Teammates, coaches admire McGwire despite steroid admission

"That's the thing, there was nothing illegal about it," McGwire says. "There was no testing at that time. It was a widespread thing in the game. It wasn't like you're feeling guilty. The mentality was to keep yourself healthy on the field.

"Looking back now, yeah, I feel horrible about that. I wish there were testing. I wish there were some regulations. If there was rules and regulations, that would have never even crossed my mind to do something like that. But there was nothing back in the day.

"Believe me, if there was, this never would have happened."

Mark and Sammy

No one will ever know the exact impact of PEDs on the home-run race, and everyone can have different perspectives on the 1998 Home Run Chase now that the truth is out.

But it was a time that may never be replicated. Here was a Southern California kid who grew up in a middle-class neighborhood and another who grew up having to shine shoes in his hometown of San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic, to help support his family, bonding together in front of the world to create a magical summer.

The two became friends on the field, but it has been more than 20 years since McGwire has seen or spoken with Sosa. Sosa lives in Miami and the Dominican, and few of his teammates have kept in touch. He has yet to be welcomed back by the Cubs, while McGwire remains idolized in St. Louis and Oakland, and is in frequent contact with former teammates and coaches.

"I'm asked this a lot. 'How's Sammy doing?'" McGwire says, "Unfortunately, I don't know Sammy personally. I just know Sammy as the baseball player when I played against him. So the truth is, I don't know.

"But he was good for me. He just had that vivacious, happy attitude. He just thew it out there. Everybody thought I was really serious but when I saw him, it's like, 'How can you not be like Sammy? Because he's so fun?' "

McGwire relaxed the more he was around Sosa. He began to realize how happy the race made everyone else. He still wanted to deflect the attention after victories, wanting the media horde to talk to his teammates instead of him, but he also understood the magnitude of the homer race.

"I was sort of embarrassed because this is a team sport, and they're singling you out," McGwire says. "So many days, they wanted to talk to me about the individual record more than a teammate that deserved the credit. I told them you needed to talk to my teammates, it's not about me. Sometimes, the press misread that and they thought I was being ornery when I was just being truthful."

McGwire and Sosa forever became intertwined in history, making it impossible to talk about one and not the other, with the two adorning the cover of the Sports Illustrated Sportsmen of the Year issue together.

"They both handled it very differently," Grace says. "Sammy really absorbed all of the attention and really did well with it. Mac, you could tell it was making him uncomfortable. He was almost apologetic for being so damn good, embarrassed for how great of a season he was having."

Sosa, who rarely appears in public, did not respond to a request for an interview.

The race to 70

McGwire was finally able to relax after breaking Maris' record. The trouble was there were still 17 games left in the season. And a home run race to win.

McGwire went the next week without hitting a home run, and for the first time all season, on Sept. 15, Sosa finally caught him with 62 homers apiece.

They were tied again a week later on Sept. 23, and when Sosa homered off Jose Lima Sept. 25, he took the home run lead for the first time.

"I remember hearing about it," McGwire says. "I didn't want to come this far and not be the record-holder. It was important to me."

McGwire wasted no time tying Sosa, hitting a fifth-inning homer that evening off Montreal Expos pitcher Shayne Bennett. He entered the final two games of the regular season tied with Sosa at 66 homers apiece.

McGwire suddenly regained his mojo. He told hitting coach Carney Lansford that he felt completely locked in again, and if any pitch is coming over the plate, it's going out of the park.

McGwire hit two homers Saturday off Dustin Hermanson and Carl Pavano, and planned to take the final game off, telling La Russa during a steak dinner that night he wasn't sure he could play in the season finale. La Russa realized that McGwire looked exhausted and pale. Still, he persuaded McGwire to at least start the game and see what happens, giving himself at least a shot at 70 homers.

McGwire went out and put on an encore for the ages with two more homers on Sunday against Mike Thurman and Pavano.

Seventy home runs.

The race was over, with Sosa finishing at 66 homers.

"I would put that as equal to any clutch performance you've ever seen in any sport," La Russa says. "It was just an amazing pressure performance at the end of the season. For him to do it, rise to the occasion with the whole world watching, and all of the pressure and intensity, it was historic."

Twenty-five years later, it still resonates throughout baseball, one of the greatest spectacles in the history of the sport.

McGwire, getting hungry this day as the late morning turned to the afternoon, drives his Mercedes to his favorite sandwich shop. He passes one electronic gate, then a guarded gate, looking out into the Canyon neighborhood.

This is where Lakers legend Kobe Bryant lived, just 10 minutes from McGwire's home. He always wanted to meet Bryant and talk about their experiences, but never got the opportunity.

"It was a total mindset that summer I didn't want Sammy to finish ahead of me," McGwire says. "I always thought it would be cool to be the first one to break the record, but whoever ended up with the most homers, that was the record that would be remembered forever.

"I wanted to share that with Kobe."

McGwire's voice trails off, stares ahead, and for a moment, looks as if he's permitting the moment to sink in, appreciating every sense of the Summer of '98.

"It sure was something, wasn't it?" he says.

Follow Nightengale on X, formerly Twitter: @Bnightengale

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mark McGwire exclusive: 25 years after 1998 MLB Home Run Chase

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