Word: batting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...