The Fun Is Back

By Joel Stein

The suicide squeeze is cool, and the double steal is all right, but a guy who can smack the bejeezus out of a ball--that's the guy for us. Like most great things American, the home run deconstructs strategy with a beautiful act of aggression. So Mark McGwire, 250 lbs. of muscle in a game full of the fat and unfit, doesn't really shock when he sends the ball more than 500 ft. And Ken Griffey Jr., hat backwards, grin cocksure, seems almost bored as he gently taps homers over the fence. The crowd expects it, the crowd gets it, and the crowd goes home happy. We delight in the obvious. Give us a 6 ft. 5 in. guy named McGwire, and we're going to nickname him "Big Mac." Give us a guy named Ken Griffey Jr., and we'll call him "Junior." We are not a complicated people.

With Big Mac and Junior closing in on the 37-year-old home-run record, baseball has hit itself out of a jam. Just four years ago, baseball was on strike, without a commissioner, canceling a World Series and generally running a brilliant anti-p.r. campaign for a sport that already was too long and too slow. "They've got to address their own house," says Fay Vincent, baseball's last real commissioner, who was fired in 1992 by owners who wanted more control. "They've got to market the game, move it back into the inner city, bring in blacks and Hispanics," he says. "All this is going to take 15 years. The past five years have been basically lost."

But despite all this ineptitude, baseball accidentally saved itself, with a mixture of talent and nostalgia. The geriatric sport has suddenly remembered how to tell its own story. ESPN ads feature not McGwire or the eminently marketable Griffey, but a Ty Cobb impersonator, who is oddly recognizable for a guy who hasn't played a game since 1928.

The old-school names are back because many of those cumbersome numbers that baseball fans love more than the game itself (whisper the statistics 755, 56 or 61 softly enough to their real fans, and eyes will glisten) are in danger of changing. Cal Ripken Jr. sets a new record for consecutive games every time he steps onto the field. Juan Gonzalez may beat the record for RBIs that Hack Wilson set in 1930. The Yankees threaten to win more games this year than the 1906 Cubs, who won 116. Rookie pitcher Kerry Wood tied the record of 20 strikeouts in a game--and did it at age 20. The most famous mark in sports, Roger Maris' single-season home-run record of 61 in 1961 (Can you see why we weep?), is being attacked on three fronts: McGwire, who had 42 homers as of Saturday (only a bit more than halfway through the season), has been joined by Griffey (39) and some guy named Sammy Sosa (36).

Ball parks are selling so well--shooting for an overall attendance record, even discounting the two expansion clubs--that Bud Selig, Brewers owner and "acting" commissioner for nearly six ugly years, crawled back into daylight to crown himself "real" commissioner this month. "The fact that we were doing so well had something to do with it, definitely," he says. When all other business plans fail, find a guy you can compare to Babe Ruth.

McGwire, 34, is the only player in history to rack up 400 home runs in fewer at bats than Ruth. And the home runs are just as big--at well over 500 ft., several ought to count as a homer and a double. His blasts are cathartic in their destruction, and the damage is sanctified giddily: the St. Louis Post-Dispatch sign he cracked with a 545-ft. homer at Busch Stadium proudly wears a giant Band-Aid, and a replacement front-porch handrail outside Wrigley Field goes unpainted to commemorate a stadium-clearing batting practice shot.

Like Ruth, who got his nickname for being so much younger than his teammates, McGwire was a phenom. At eight years old, in his first Little League at bat, against a 12-year-old pitcher, he smacked one over the fence. And like Ruth, who was a dominating pitcher, McGwire was the best righthander on his sophomore U.S.C. team, allowing fewer runs than teammate Randy Johnson, who has since won a Cy Young award.

Even more than Ruth, McGwire symbolizes stark simplicity. He is a redhead of the kind we haven't seen in centuries--not a pasty Thomas Jefferson or a cutesy Ron Howard, but a scary Redbeard. In his red Cardinal uniform, with red Oakley sunglasses and his bright red goatee, McGwire is more frightening than Carrot Top. McGwire, more than Ruth, strips the game bare. Cro-Magnon man didn't court the media or haggle over free-agent contracts, and neither does Big Mac. He comes to the plate to the tune of the Guns 'N' Roses war dance Welcome to the Jungle. After a home run, he jogs around the bases with his head down, and he takes a curtain call only when the fans won't let up. He has spent almost his entire pro career working for tactician-manager Tony LaRussa (who makes decisions based on numbers crunched in his dugout Macintosh Powerbook), but McGwire doesn't need the coach's signs. His job is hit rock with stick. He is more elemental than even Ruth or Cobb. He is refusing, for now, to sit down with most media, even charming, likable media who dressed really nicely to meet him last week.

Not that it would really matter if he weren't a nice guy--Mike Tyson captivates--but McGwire happens to be Oprah-fied in all the right ways. He missed the opportunity to hit 50 homers in his rookie season in order to be present at his son's birth. After a batting slump and a divorce from his first wife, who had been a college girlfriend, he started therapy, and he has stayed with it. His three-year, $30 million contract stipulates that that his son Matthew, now 10, who is often the Cardinal bat boy, gets a seat on the team plane.

If you really want to find out what someone is like, you ask their exes. McGwire gets along so well with his ex-wife that he has her over for parties. He's still close with ex-girlfriend Ali Dickson, who helped him build his charitable foundation. Last year, at a press conference announcing he'd be giving $1 million a year to child-abuse charities, he wept: he's got that gentle giant thing down. His vision is so bad (20/500) that his 1990 first baseman's Gold Glove award for defensive play sits in the office of his optometrist. He cried during Driving Miss Daisy. You want to hug this guy. Or at least get your arms as far around him as they'll go.

While Ruth drank staggering amounts, slept around to rival Wilt Chamberlain and smoked his own Babe Ruth brand of cigars, McGwire drinks protein supplements, lifts weights and spends his free time with his son. And though he seems gruff to reporters, he's much looser with his teammates. Looser perhaps, beneath the surface, than the media-friendly Griffey. "I'll guarantee Griffey is no more popular with his teammates than Mark McGwire. Any comedian should put him in the audience. He laughs at anything," says the humorless LaRussa.

In fact, comedians do put him in the audience. Over the years, McGwire has befriended lots of stand-ups, because he loves going to comedy clubs. He brings a towel, which he bites during the show to mute his loud, high-pitched laugh. Last weekend comedian Scott LaRose took him to a gig at St. Louis' Funny Bone and set up a gag by ragging on McGwire while Big Mac crept onstage in back of him, glowering, huge arms crossed.

Part of the reason McGwire avoids the media glare on his individual home-run record is his commitment to the team, even a lousy, losing one like the Cardinals. "Down deep, he's proud of his record and enjoys it, but he doesn't really appreciate the attention," says LaRussa. "Players are raised in a team sport to do whatever it takes to win, and all of a sudden everyone is trying to get him to take four swings at a home run every day. That's not the way the game is played." The attention is so focused on McGwire that the game has been a background to his chase. Opposing fans give him standing ovations when he smacks one out against their team. Fans leave after his last at bat. The local hotels are stocked with fathers and sons who drive in from Arkansas and Wisconsin for weekend games. They are there less to enjoy baseball than to share a piece of history. And to see someone smack the bejeezus out of the ball.

Batting practice has become a sideshow. The third-base-side lower tier and right-field seats are packed two hours before each Cardinal game to roar as McGwire launches balls into the upper decks. And the show, more often than not, is legitimately more exciting than most major league games. He's been doing it since college, when he once broke the window of a BMW in the parking lot; he missed a car in Denver's Coors Field lot by inches this year. McGwire is the only man ever to get standing ovations during batting practice. Michael Jordan doesn't get this attention during pregame shoot-around. People even keep stats of his batting practice. It's like your co-workers crowding your office every morning at 8:45 to calculate how much coffee you drink and how fast you read the paper.

It's this pressure that McGwire is trying to avoid; at one point, he threatened to shut down the batting-practice show. The fanaticism is so intense, and even weird, that a fan wrote to the Cardinals asking for an old McGwire bat so he could use it as a wooden leg. Recently, when getting beer for his buddies, McGwire returned to his car to see people leaving their cars and slowly walking to him with pens outstretched. He described the scene to comedian Mark Pitta as The Night of the Living Dead. So McGwire wants to separate himself from the sideshow, to prevent himself from becoming Roger Maris. In 1961, unhappy that a relatively unimpressive player (Maris' second best year was 39 home runs, his career average was .260) threatened Ruth's place in history, some fans sent him death threats and regularly booed him, even at home games in Yankee Stadium. The stress got so bad, his graying crew cut started to fall out in chunks. He was 26. With the rationale that Maris' season was eight games longer than Ruth's, commissioner Ford Frick, a friend of the Babe's, put an asterisk by Maris' name, which was not removed until 1992, seven years after Maris died. Maris never accepted an invitation to Yankee Stadium, and he moved to Florida, where he sold beer and avoided baseball. He is not in the Hall of Fame.

The older fans, who always viewed Maris as a placeholder until the second Ruth, are rooting for McGwire to erase the imprint of the asterisk. The younger fans are pulling for him too. So the pressure is entirely different from what Maris faced. Still, even the positive pressure can be draining. Paul Molitor, who made a go at Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, says, "I would go home after a game, and it was like an out-of-body experience. My face would be up there [on TV], and everyone would be talking about whether I was going to break DiMaggio's record. When you're away from the game, that's when you feel the effect."

But McGwire, who grew up educated and middle class and is tight with his family, has some built-in advantages over the less-educated Maris. He has the kind of even-tempered nature often found in those who work hard at their craft. "I've seen two or three other kids with the same kind of talent, but it was Mark who went all the way," says Tom Carroll, his coach at Damien, a Roman Catholic high school in suburban Los Angeles. "He really wanted it. He has the work ethic." Even his dentist father, who also sired Dan McGwire, backup quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks, says that his son's baseball success surprises him: "We expected him to get an education and to take care of himself in that way." Though accused of using steroids, McGwire says he hasn't, that his log tosser's body is the result of intensive weight-room work. Rod Dedeaux, who coached McGwire at U.S.C. as well as on the Olympic team of 1984, says, "Mark has power of heart as well as power physically." Of the home-run record, he says, "If anyone can do it, it will be Mark."

Maybe. But you can't hit home runs if you're not pitched to, and managers--to an extent not seen since 1923 when they finally devised a strategy to contain Babe Ruth--are walking McGwire on purpose. At 100 walks so far this year, he may break Ruth's record of 170 for a season. On several occasions McGwire has even been intentionally walked in the ninth inning, in a close game, with a man on first. "If you just make it a point to take the bat out of his hands the whole series, I don't think that's respecting the game," a clearly frustrated LaRussa says.

But it's not helping. Los Angeles Dodgers general manager Tommy Lasorda is amazed that "pitchers keep throwing Mark McGwire fastballs. If I were pitching, the only fastballs he'd see would be between innings when I was warming up." San Francisco Giants pitching coach Ron Perranoski says his strategy toward McGwire is simply to "pitch around him." He adds, "You have to be double-perfect when you pitch to him. There are a lot of people who are tough outs, but you make a mistake with McGwire and he hits it 1,000 miles."

Here is where Griffey, though he doesn't hit home runs as often or as big as McGwire, has a huge advantage. When Maris broke the record, he had Mickey Mantle batting behind him to discourage walks. All McGwire has for protection is the solid but injury-prone Brian Jordan. Griffey has a bodyguard unit bigger than Jerry Springer's: last year the Mariners set the record for home runs by a team. Plus, Griffey is a lefty, which helps him see the pitch when facing righthanded pitchers, who dominate the National League.

Thanks to the McGwire show, the incandescent Griffey, long the most popular player in baseball, has been subjected to somewhat less pressure from fans and the media. What pressure he gets, he seems to handle better, knowing how to bend. After it became known that he'd declined to take part in the home-run derby before the All-Star game (he was afraid it would mess with his swing), the fans booed him during batting practice. So he quickly signed on and won the thing, besting even Mark McGwire. Having decreed that he won't talk about hitting home runs for the rest of the season, before a game last week Griffey made like Mike McCurry and treated a klatch of reporters to an hour-long display of amiable evasion and spin. Is it possible that Griffey, in some perverse way, actually enjoys this? "Are you kidding?" says teammate Jay Buhner, a close friend. "Look at him. Of course he enjoys it."

Griffey has been in the spotlight since he was Little Kenny, when his father, outfielder Ken Griffey Sr., used the Cincinnati Reds locker room as a day-care center. Then, at 19, Junior joined the Mariners, where for two seasons he would play alongside his father in the outfield and behind him in the batting order, where they became the only father-son team to hit back-to-back homers. By then Junior had eclipsed his All-Star father, proving that if Oedipus had just played baseball, Freud wouldn't have had a career.

There's no shame in this for Senior, though, because Junior has since eclipsed everyone playing the game, McGwire included. At the age of 28, he has already hit more than 300 homers; only three players in history have done it at a younger age. During one stretch in 1993, he homered in eight consecutive games, tying the major league record. Last season, after hitting .304, leading the American League in runs and RBIs, socking 56 home runs and winning an eighth straight Gold Glove, he was unanimously voted the league's most valuable player. "When you look at what Junior's done and the skills he possesses," says his manager, Lou Piniella, "you have to say that in this era he's as good as anyone who's played. I can't think of any player in the past 30 years to compare with Junior."

Better than his stats is his abandon, which belies the fact that superstardom is his birthright. "I still go out there reckless," Griffey told TIME last week. "That's how I play. I don't know any other way." Which is why so many legions, especially kids, love him: 4.2 million voted him onto the All-Star team this season; 1 million bought a candy bar named after him when it was introduced in 1989--despite the fact that it contained no nougat whatsoever.

His fans can be so overwhelming that at the end of Seattle home games, officials park his black Mercedes (license plate: SWINGMAN) just outside the Mariners' locker room for an Elvis-style getaway. As he gave an interview in front of his locker last week, Griffey affixed his signature to an endless flow of posters, caps and balls. Many were given to him by other players.

Only rarely does his grin crack. He takes the rare criticism directed at him by the press and fans a little too personally, but even then only because, at heart, he wants to be liked. "At the ball park, I understand there are certain obligations," he says. "I just want people to treat me as a human being. When I leave the ball park and go home, I'm just Ken." And some topics are still off limits, no matter who the questioner. Before a game last week, seven-year-old Michael Foster spent an hour with Griffey through the Make-a-Wish Foundation, tossing a ball around and touring the clubhouse. But at one point, when Foster mustered the courage to ask, "Are you going to break the record?" Griffey responded with a shrug. Clearly, his no comments need some work.

Work he understands: Griffey outpractices everyone on his team. "He's the first one here every day," says Mariners' backup catcher John Marzano. "And the better he's hitting, the harder he works." Griffey brushes off such praise. "I've broken both my hands in the last three years--I don't have a choice but to take extra hitting," he says. "A lot of people forget that." Still, he is too proud and aware of his abilities not to believe he can accomplish more. Last year, for instance, a mild slump in June and July cost him a chance at breaking Maris' record. "Most people don't know July was when my mother-in-law died," he says, sighing. "I have a three-year-old son, and I had to tell him he was never going to see his grandmother again. It was tough." No one begrudges Griffey that explanation. But it suggests he believes that but for a death in the family--he would have beaten Maris.

Griffey professes modesty, and is admired by teammates for his selflessness, but he also has the swagger that seems required of men who would do what no one else can. "I just go out there and do what I'm supposed to do," he says. "If we need a home run to tie it up late, I've got to do it." Want proof? Before an at bat against Texas last week he revealed to a teammate that he was about to hit one out. He took two pitches and then sent the ball into the second deck. But there's also steel behind that swagger: even when he fractured his wrist in 1995 after crashing into the centerfield wall on a dead run, he managed to make the catch.

And if somehow he doesn't get the next thing he's going for--well, he says, his life is still pretty good. His father still lets him call collect. Junior has a son and daughter of his own, and the family spends off-season in Windermere, Fla., near his friend Tiger Woods. When you're hanging with your All-Star Cafe partners, who notices another record?

Even if it is McGwire who, as most people (including Griffey and Sosa) suspect, will set the record this year, it won't last 37 years, as Maris' did, or even 34, as Ruth's. Griffey is young, and the record is most likely to be his someday. He has one of the most perfect swings in baseball history: a long, smooth, straight, upper-body cut that makes McGwire's short, compact, hip-driven swing look like a shot put. Griffey's swing is the learned, refined movement of someone who grew up in major league dugouts. "Junior's never lifted a weight that I can remember," his father says. His power, instead, is generated in his blinding bat speed, which Senior estimates to be as high as 110 m.p.h.

While Griffey has the potential to hit 62 (he hit 56 last year), the fans haven't been pulling for him in the home-run race the way they have for McGwire. Which is odd, since Griffey is more popular. Even this year he got more All-Star votes from fans than McGwire. He's a better all-around player, more affable, more telegenic, more starlike, younger, hipper and more street than McGwire (though even Dan Quayle is more street than McGwire). Three of McGwire's black teammates refused to comment as to whether the attention to McGwire over Griffey is racial. "I think you can answer that question yourself," was as close as Ray Lankford was going to come. "I don't think it has anything to do with black-white, and it irritates the hell out of me when I hear it," says LaRussa. Maybe the real reason the fans dig Big Mac is because he's built like a home-run hitter of old. In fact, old home-run hitters didn't look as much like McGwire as they should have. McGwire is who we imagine Babe Ruth to be; he's like a cartoon of Ruth in which he tightens his belt until his paunch rises into bulging pecs.

Even more than his World Wrestling Federation looks, the reason McGwire gets the crowds is because his home runs are so incomprehensibly long, while Griffey's are really just perfectly hit line drives. "McGwire hardly ever hits a home run that's under 400 ft. How isn't that going to capture your imagination more than anybody else out there?" asks LaRussa. Explains Cubs manager Jim Riggleman: "The American public loves to see power. If the ball scrapes the wall on the way down, they aren't that excited. If it goes 500 ft., they're doing flips. You know, we love the dunk in basketball. Guys can score 25 points a game, but if somebody slam dunks over somebody, that's what gets people fired up."

There have been plenty of home runs to fire people up. But don't think you're seeing the epic resurgence of baseball. What you're seeing is an amazing confluence of talent that is not likely to be duplicated. Commissioner Selig can't afford just to collect his nickel from this freak show and wait for the next one. He and the other custodians of the game need to speed up play, lower ticket prices, market to women and minorities and get inner-city kids playing the game. More than anything, baseball should learn from the record chase that it needs to peddle nostalgia. That includes the real nostalgia--Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, Lou Gehrig's farewell speech, the first appearance of the San Diego Chicken--but more important, the fake stuff. Because baseball, after all, is built on a yearning for a false past. It's a game created for industrial-age cities to remind them of the easy life of the farm. So build more beautiful retro parks based on some Disney idea of what an old park should have looked like. Give us more reckless acrobats like Ken Griffey Jr., more courteous musclemen like Mark McGwire. Let us bask in the never-was.

--With reporting by Dan Cray/Los Angeles, Maureen Harrington/Denver, Staci D. Kramer/St. Louis and Romesh Ratnesar/Seattle

With reporting by Dan Cray/Los Angeles, Maureen Harrington/Denver, Staci D. Kramer/St. Louis and Romesh Ratnesar/Seattle