Word: batting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey Jr.--are they ready to hit? I don't mean ready to meet the fastball with the fat of the bat. We know they can do that. I mean, are they ready to hit and land their feet as American icons? Can they live forever in the records of the game--and survive this year? Can they bulldoze into the Hall of Fame and worm their way into our hearts? What price will they pay for their place in our small pantheon of power heroes...
...Lloyd Webber's most inspired choice is his new lyricist, Jim Steinman, the veteran rock composer (Bat Out of Hell; Total Eclipse of the Heart), whose fevered, hyperbolic lyrics have unlocked Lloyd Webber's long-dormant rock tendencies. To be sure, Whistle has its share of elevator-music ballads (though you can pipe No Matter What into my elevator anytime), and the upbeat kids' number When Children Rule the World is easy to make fun of (yet still darn catchy). But the Steinmanesque angst in songs like A Kiss Is a Terrible Thing to Waste, or the yearning, over...
...infield. Almost none fly out of the park (only five this year and none in his five face-offs against McGwire). Jim Palmer, a Hall of Fame pitcher, calls Maddux "a master at late movement," a baseballese way of saying his pitches dance away at the end, eluding the bat when it's already flying forward. He connives to throw, from the same unhurried motion, at a wide variety of speeds. Wade Boggs once called Maddux "the David Copperfield of pitchers"--and he was thinking magic, not Dickens...
...most of his career, nobody thought of Sammy Sosa as a legend chaser. The amiable but erratic Chicago Cubs outfielder was better known for throwing to the wrong bases and stealing at impractical times. Same thing at bat: flailing wildly, the power hitter seemed to go for the fences with every swing. Result: last year he struck out more than anyone in the National League...
...crazy about Sosa," says Ron Stampley, manager of the Cubby Bear, a popular sports bar near Wrigley Field. "They cheer for him as loudly as they cheer for Jordan." Indeed, Sosa's slugging streak, along with wunderkind pitcher Kerry Wood's arm and first baseman Mark Grace's hot bat, is helping to make the long-hapless Cubs into contenders for the first time in a decade. Having played well over .500 ball all season, by last Saturday the team was just 5 games out of first place in the central division...