Word: mcgwire
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...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
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...