JACKS (eBook)

Chapter 1
1998

Have you ever ordered anything from QVC? I have, just once. I bought two 14K gold signature commemorative baseball cards. It was September 8, 1998, just after St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire hit home run number 62 and took the lead with the all-time single-season home run record. It was the obvious thing to do in a summer of baseball heaven and, since I was once a collector as a young man, an easy choice. 

QVC was selling a limited supply of cards with the authentic Major League Baseball (MLB) and Player’s Association logos. The card shows McGwire watching his historic home run sail over the fence on the front and the distances of all 62 on the back. 

In a season of jacking home runs over 500 feet, McGwire hit his shortest, but most significant, one on September 8 in St. Louis off of Steve Trachsel of the Chicago Cubs. In a time when McGwire’s pre-game batting practices became as much of an event on the sports news as the actual games, he hit the 341-foot line drive just over the left field wall at Busch Stadium.

Mike DiGiovanna, reporting for the Los Angeles Times in 2010, interviewed former MLB pitcher Brian Anderson regarding McGwire’s strength and ability to launch massive home runs. “The balls he hit defied reality,” Anderson said. “He was an absolute monster. I saw him hit a ball off the top of the Budweiser sign behind the left-field bleachers at [Cleveland’s] Jacobs Field. He hit one out of [Arizona’s] Bank One Ballpark in batting practice. There was no doubt his strength was off the charts.”1

In 1998, McGwire’s baseball home runs made fans marvel at a level perhaps not witnessed since Babe Ruth. As an amateur baseball player who still enjoyed playing the game while maintaining a full-time professional job, I was amazed at the power of McGwire and some of his fellow MLB contemporaries. It was unheard of in my baseball lifetime. So, I had to have two of these cards from QVC; as a baseball fan, it was a big deal. 

The list on the back of the McGwire card shows that he hit five home runs that traveled 500+ feet leading up to his September 8 blast. On May 12, he jacked one 527 feet. And less than a week later, on May 16, again in St. Louis, he hit one off of Liván Hernández of the Florida Marlins that traveled 550 feet. If you were a baseball fan in 1998, you knew about these home runs; they were fun and amazing to watch.

When McGwire hit his 62nd bomb of the summer, which passed then-leader Roger Maris (more on Maris later), he rounded first base and, in a rare on-field celebratory moment, was acknowledged by Cubs first baseman Mark Grace. Then the rest of the Cubs infield high-fived or hugged McGwire as he rounded the remaining bases. I had never seen this in a baseball game, and yet, it seemed like the right thing for the Cubs to do.

The only infielder on the Cubs who didn’t hug McGwire was Trachsel. Steve Springer’s first line in his column on September 9 was, “For 11 minutes, he was the loneliest man in America.”2 The Good Lord only knew what was going through Trachsel’s head during this surreal celebration.

As the St. Louis Cardinals fans roared, McGwire touched home plate, raised his son Matthew toward the heavens, and his joyous Cardinals teammates greeted him with the ultimate praise. 

Cubs right fielder Sammy Sosa ran in from his position, embraced McGwire, and in front of the Cardinals dugout, went into a celebratory series of home run gestures with each other that still to this day are performed by players of the same team. But only that day, the hugging, chest pounding, and lip kisses with the fingers were done together by two opposing team players, playing against each other in the same game.

Sosa was also a big part of the 1998 MLB story. While he chased McGwire all season, he, too, would later in September pass home run number 62. The home runs, the chase, the records set, and the fun that he and McGwire put on that summer were legendary. Their jacks and the powerful display by other MLB stars in 1998 made that summer so much fun for a baseball fan. It was what baseball needed as the sport still suffered from the 1994-1995 lockout seasons. 

In 1998, four baseball players belted 50 or more home runs. Ken Griffey Jr. of the Seattle Mariners finished the season with 56 long balls, and Greg Vaughn of the San Diego Padres launched 50. In addition, when you calculate the average of the top 10 home run leaders in 1998, you get nearly 52 home runs [Table 1]. 

Table 1. 1998 Top 10 Home Run Leaders

As a kid growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, who intensely followed baseball, that was unreal. Hitting 50 was a big deal; 60 was superhuman, and never in my lifetime. So, yes, Sosa’s embrace with McGwire in front of the Cardinals dugout may seem odd or out of place on any other day in baseball. However, for this day, it wasn’t. And it wasn’t just incredible when Sosa ran in from right field to hug McGwire. It was perfect.

Their 1998 season highlighted what looked like a new era in baseball. And while many of us will always believe that baseball still is our national pastime, 1998 felt like baseball was back, even to the general sports fan. The national pastime wasn’t football; it was, again, baseball.

After McGwire finished his celebration with Sosa, he jumped into the stands to acknowledge the family of the late Roger Maris, sitting just a few rows deep in the stadium. He hugged Patricia Maris, Roger’s widow, and Roger’s sons—Roger Jr., Kevin, Randy, and Rich—and returned to the field. The legendary baseball announcer Joe Buck, calling the game for FOX in prime time, said, “Folks, it couldn’t happen to a better man, and you will always know where you were at 8:18 p.m. Central time, September 8, 1998.”

I sure remember where I was: I was getting ready to call QVC to purchase two Mark McGwire baseball cards. If given the opportunity, I was so pumped up about baseball that I might have become a partner in buying the St. Louis Gateway Arch or the Brooklyn Bridge if you told me McGwire and Sosa were co-partners. 

However, it would be 12 years later, in 2010, that McGwire would call Mrs. Maris and apologize to her and the family of Roger Maris. After a decade-plus of the baseball world being turned upside down by a scandal that nearly ruined the sport, McGwire’s admission didn’t surprise anyone. 

By 2010, baseball players had shrunk. Home run leaders were hitting less than 60 in a season-later in 2014, Nelson Cruz would lead MLB with just 40 jacks. They were scrutinized and tested constantly by MLB for substances that an honor system had once tried to manage. Fans were hurt by what had transpired, and they forced the United States Congress to investigate the great game. And why, you may ask? 

Four terms that sum up it: steroids, human growth hormones, performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), and cheating.

Around 1998, I remember listening to a New York Yankees game and the great pitcher and now color commentator Jim Kaat talking about the weight training, top-notch facilities, team trainers, etc., that MLB teams used. I believed it. After all, these guys were rich, playing at the highest level, with the best support system. They didn’t have to go to work. They only had to wake up and prepare themselves to play baseball. Good for them, I thought; I was happy about the status of our game. 

In 1998, as fans, we didn’t suspect the level of PEDs used in baseball. We were too excited about how much fun the game was to follow and the rebound after the 1994-1995 strike. Some fans also bought into the rhetoric that the ball itself was juiced. Nevertheless, if you followed the game and were like me, also in your baseball prime years, you were just amazed at the condition of these players. I didn’t think MLB was tinkering with the ball. And yet, looking back, we should have known better. No, it wasn’t the baseball taking the juice. It was the players. 

There was at least one peek behind the curtain in 1998 that fans like me ignored because the summer was too much fun. And I remember when it happened. I watched ESPN’s SportsCenter and all the baseball highlights every night after work. 

On August 22, 1998, Associated Press reporter Steve Wilstein, while waiting for McGwire after that day’s game, noticed a bottle in his locker with the word “Androstenedione.” It is a steroid hormone. It increases the production of the hormone testosterone to enhance athletic performance, build muscle, reduce body fat, increase energy, and keep red blood cells healthy.3 McGwire was using this substance and others to enhance his performance above his peers. 

By 2004, MLB would specifically identify and ban that substance as it is one of the juice mixes that helps enhance a baseball player’s performance. In 1998, MLB was using an honor system supported by a weak and poorly-enforced policy that players would take it upon themselves not to use these substances.4

However, in August 1998, the summer of baseball love, nobody wanted to hear this snooping reporter make this story public. Our heroes were McGwire, Sosa, and the rest of the gang who just did more situps, pushups, and burpees than anyone else. We didn’t want to hear anything that could derail the baseball journey we were all on. And now, thank you, Steve Wilstein. Your reporting helps tell the story of the 1998 season. You did your job well.