Homer History: Reconciling McGwire, Sosa and the summer of ’98

In our Homer History series, writers re-tell the stories of memorable home runs from their perspective. In this installment, Kevin Kaduk, the Yahoo Sports blog editor and Big League Stew founder, recalls the summer of 1998 as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s chase at history collided on a summer day at Wrigley Field.

This is a story about things that are fake.

It’s a story about things that were manufactured and artificially inflated for one purpose. It’s about exciting things that achieved their goal and were lauded for their performance, only to soon be sentenced to a spot in history shrouded with a coat of regret and sheepish embarrassment.

It’s a story about Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and the fake ID I acquired in the summer of ‘98.

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Let’s start with the fake ID. It was a cheap California job, one I’d obtained from a midsummer trip to visit a college friend from Los Angeles. She knew that forged documents were available to both underage college students and illegal immigrants for a price off Alvarado Street in MacArthur Park, which is how we found ourselves in a taqueria negotiating the best price for something that would identify me as being of legal drinking age.

We settled on $35 for a fake driver’s license and I was ushered to the back where I wrote down the information I wanted on the card. I took a picture in front of a blue backdrop and was told to wait. I remember watching the third-place match of the 1998 World Cup — Croatia vs. the Netherlands — on Univision with a couple of cooks. It was ready 20 minutes later, the plastic still hot to the touch.

Fast forward one month. The ID had long since cooled and I was back in Chicago still looking to misrepresent myself in the name of mass-produced swill misrepresenting itself as beer for the first time. What better place than Wrigley Field?

After scalping two tickets in the 500-level for a total of $30, we entered the park and strode to a concession stand below the third-base line. I remember expecting butterflies or an increased heart rate, but instead feeling oddly confident as a visiting tourist from California.

“Two Buds” I said, peering into my wallet for both money and identification.

“That’ll be $7.50,” said the woman behind the counter and, yes, that’s actually what two beers cost at Wrigley 17 years ago. 

I handed over $10 and waited for the request to see my ID.

It never came.

“Sammy going to hit one today?” was the woman’s only inquiry as she pushed the beers toward me.

“Sure hope so,” I responded, all the while wondering why I’d bought that ID in the first place.

It was Wednesday, Aug. 19 and the Cardinals were in town to play the Cubs. Big Mac and Sammy were tied at 47 home runs in the chase to break Roger Maris’ single-season record of 61 home runs.

* * * 

I was 19 years old the summer that Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa “saved” baseball. We didn’t know the quotation marks in that sentence would eventually be necessary back in 1998, but I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have cared. Actually, I’m sure we didn’t care. An AP reporter spotted a bottle of andro in McGwire’s locker in early August and while it generated headlines, it sure didn’t slow the story down any. Those few months of frequent and gargantuan home runs were arguably the last time Major League Baseball occupied a bigger spot in the national spotlight than the NFL.

Nineteen is a good time to be a baseball fan. And when you consider all the time you have on your hands to watch games and read about them, maybe it’s the greatest. I spent that summer working in a one-man fastener warehouse in west suburban Addison, taking screws and bolts from a big bag and putting them into smaller bags. I’d do that in the morning and then drive around in an old Nissan Pathfinder with a busted air conditioner and deliver those small bags around an industrial park near O’Hare. There was plenty of down time, which I’d use to listen to sports radio while poring through the still-mighty sports sections of the Tribune and Sun-Times.

Eventually that magical time in the Midwest — 1:20 p.m.— would roll around and I’d tune a dusty old boombox I’d found in the warehouse to listen to Pat Hughes and Ron Santo. On rare occasions I finished my work early, I’d try to head down to the park and get a cheap ticket.

[Previously in Homer History: How the home run I never saw changed my perspective]

That ‘98 Cubs season was memorable for a few reasons even before Sosa ran down McGwire and Ken Griffey Jr. in the home run race with an unreal 20 homers hit in the month of June. Harry Caray had died in February, rookie Kerry Wood threw a 20-strikeout game in May and the Cubs were actually competing for their first playoff spot since 1989. Throw in Sosa’s newfound “approach” at the plate (he’d hit 36 homers with a .779 OPS the year before) and the ninth-inning drama of new closer Rod Beck and there were plenty of reasons for a Cubs fan to look forward to each day’s game.

By the time the Cards rolled into a Chicago in late August though, the only story on a national level was Big Mac vs. Sammy. Their numbers look cartoonishly inflated now, but they made for must-see TV then. Sosa came into that two-game series touting a slash line of .314/.384/.646 with 47 homers and 119 RBI.

McGwire, meanwhile, sported a .288/.471/.699 line with 47 homers and 106 RBI. For the first half of the season, it seemed like McGwire would make a run at Maris by himself. He hit 27 home runs through May to Griffey’s 19 and Sosa’s 13. But a power surge by the two other men in June — Sosa hit 20, Griffey 14 — narrowed the gap.

By the end of July, the standings looked like this: McGwire 45, Sosa 42, Griffey 41. There was little question that Maris’ record would be soundly broken by late September.

The only question was which man would get there first.

* * *

 The underrated thing about any weekday afternoon game at Wrigley Field is that it can make you feel like you’re at the center of the universe. And from a baseball standpoint, that’s often true. On some days, there’s only one score being updated on the old green scoreboard in left — the one you’re at — while N I T E G A M E in big capital letters denotes that the rest of the listed games won’t get underway for several more hours.

On that clear and sunny August afternoon, though, we really were at the center of the sporting universe. The press box was packed with reporters ready to break into radio shows and issue bulletins on the wire should either man draw one home run closer to No. 61. Scalpers on the street drew a premium from both Cubs fans and the many red-clad Cardinals fans that had driven five hours north for the game. My friend and I took our seats along the third-base line thanks to a regular fan who didn’t want any hassles and just unloaded two extra tickets to us at face. We saw him when we reached our seats and saluted him with our Buds. When a vendor came along a few innings later, I bought him a beer of his own as a way to say thanks.  Once again, I wasn’t asked for ID.

The view from the upper-deck seats was great. We could see past the right field wall and the apartment buildings on Sheffield behind it, all the way to the blue, sailboat-spotted horizon of Lake Michigan. When Sosa came sprinting out of the dugout at the top of the first, we saw the right-field bleachers rise as one to greet him as he ran the length of the warning track.

“Saaaam-meeee!” the standing-room only crowd screamed.

Sosa cupped his hand to his ears, imploring the fans to shout his name louder.

Remember: This was a time long before Sosa was discovered to be playing with a corked bat. It was before he left the clubhouse during the final game of the flushed 2004 season and before he climbed Capitol Hill and conveniently forgot English. It was before he was reported to have tested positive for steroids, before his skin started turning a strange white and before he and the Cubs started an long estrangement that lasts until this day.

[Related: Donald Trump vs. the Cubs has become baseball’s newest rivalry]

On that afternoon and for many summer afternoons on the North Side in the years after, he was still “The Man,” the protagonist of the day’s events and a damn good reason to make sure you stayed in your seat lest you miss another blast from the black barrel of his bat.

That, of course, made McGwire the day’s antagonist, though it was hard for any fan to dislike him in the days before he wasn’t here to talk about the past. Big Mac had been portrayed all season as the noble lumberjack, the titan who drew a crowd of thousands for batting practice and melted the hearts of everyone when his young son greeted him at home plate after a homer during the game. Indeed, one of my other fond memories from ‘98 was going to see McGwire take batting practice at Comiskey Park before a game with the White Sox. It seemed as if the large billboards past the outfield concourse were in play that day. I’ve still never seen anything like it.

* * *

The Cubs and Cardinals had played the night before and neither McGwire nor Sosa had homered. They hadn’t done much of anything, really, combining for six strikeouts and no hits in nine plate appearances. There was hope this game would be different.

We would have to wait, though. McGwire flied out to left in the top of the first off Mark Clark while Sosa struck out looking to Kent Bottenfield in the bottom of the inning.

The third inning also brought two mehs: McGwire popped out to third while Sosa tried to stretch a single into a double and was thrown out at second.

Then came the bottom of the fifth, a frame the Cubs entered leading 4-2 on the strength of homers from Jose Hernandez and Henry Rodriguez. After a two-out single by Mickey Morandini, Sosa hammered Bottenfield’s first pitch into the left field bleachers for a 6-2 lead.

Wrigley Field went unhinged. Sosa had surged into the home run lead with his 48th of the season, the first slugger to supplant McGwire in the home run standings since early April. Sosa had outhomered McGwire 35-21 since June 1 and there was a feeling in that moment that this might serve as turning point in the historic chase.

That feeling, however, lasted about as long as the day’s beer budget for someone who was making $7 an hour to shlep sheet metal screws in Bensenville. The Cubs bullpen started to falter and McGwire tied the game at 6 with an 8th-inning blast onto Waveland Avenue off Matt Karchner. Sosa and McGwire were again tied at 48 homers and a Cubs victory for their wild-card race against the Mets and Giants was no longer assured.

The game stretched into extra innings and it was there that McGwire decided he’d had enough. Terry Mullholland hung a 2-0 slider in the top of the 10th, which McGwire easily turned into a laser that barely rose above a line drive before slamming into the center field shrubs. The Cardinals fans in attendance went nuts while even some Cubs fans — myself included — privately admitted they been treated to a show they’d talk about for decades. A solo shot by Ray Lankford later in the inning ran the score to 8-6 and while the Cubs had their chances in the 10th, they couldn’t even the score. Sosa’s final at-bat of the day was a weak groundout to the pitcher.

“I feel it can be done,” McGwire told the media after being asked of his chances of hitting 14 home runs in the final 38 games of the season.

To which the crowd of 39,689 would’ve responded, “Duh.”

* * *

There was still plenty of baseball to be played that season, even as I went back to school at the University of Wisconsin and followed the chase on television and through a special student subscription to the Tribune. McGwire and Sosa would find themselves tied again at 55 homers, but McGwire surged to 62 first in a home game against the Cubs on Sept. 8. Sosa ran in from right field to join the celebration, helping further a “hey, these guys are good chums!” narrative that was probably never all that true to begin with.

You know the rest: McGwire finished the season with 70 homers while Sosa had 66. The Cubs won the wild card in a one-game playoff against the Giants on the strength of a home run by, of all people, an aging Gary Gaetti. The Cubs were then promptly swept in the playoffs by the Braves.

The offseason brought a bevy of honors for McGwire and Sosa: SI Sportsmen of the Year awards and bungled Congressional proclamations (Mike McGwire! Sammy Sooser!) among them. The pair had swung together to help baseball rise above the bad feelings generated from the strike of 1994 and helped jump start an era of unparalleled financial growth in the sport.

Meanwhile, I began writing for The Badger Herald, my goals of becoming a radio host unexpectedly derailed by the interest I took in reading the work of the Tribune’s Paul Sullivan and others the summer before. Nights were spent introducing myself to Madison’s various bars with my newsroom colleagues via that same cheap California ID that dozens of other underage kids were probably running around the capital of Wisconsin with.

But all good things must come to an end. The following year I tried to walk into a Chicago nightclub assuming the bouncer wouldn’t ask for my ID. He did and I watched helplessly as his more-discerning eye looked at it. He quickly passed it to a colleague and told me to get lost. Despite my protestations and then begging, I didn’t get it back. I was sent off in shame looking for a cab as the rest of my party went inside.

The jig eventually came up for Mac and Sammy too, though on a much bigger stage. Steroid allegations felled the sport in the mid-2000s with the legacies of McGwire, Sosa and Barry Bonds suffering the most damage. None of them are in the Hall of Fame, something I would’ve found unthinkable on that August day.

Almost 20 years later, I still struggle with where to place that summer among my memories. On one hand, it made for some of the most enjoyable and exciting months I’ve ever spent following baseball and put me on a path that eventually led to writing my own book about the Cubs and establishing Big League Stew here on Yahoo Sports a few years after that.

 [Elsewhere: Check out the Dunk History series on Yahoo Sports]

On the other, I’ve seen the controversy over performance-enhancing drugs hijack the narrative of my favorite sport for almost two decades now and really wish it wasn’t this way. How can I romanticize any part of that era’s biggest story? Can I really remember it fondly?

And yet I somehow do. Just as I can still feel that simultaneous rush of dread and excitement when I think about being let into a bar at 19, I can still feel the anticipation of turning on the television to see if Sosa would homer that night and if McGwire would do the same. I didn’t need a fake ID to complete my middle college years, just like I didn’t need two artificially-powered ballplayers who took their own shortcuts to pass Maris to make me any more of a baseball fan. And yes, admitting to both of these memories in a public forum as a 37-year-old in 2016 does open me to some deserved ridicule.

Yet what I’ve learned from both is that sometimes it’s OK to live in the past and extract value from past experiences and memories, no matter what perspective added time has saddled it with.

At least when it comes to cheap beer and baseball.

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