Word: mcgwires
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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...
Griffey and McGwire are moving up to a brutal league. If they are too much jostled, pressed or in pain, they will surely fall short of glory. But if they're seen to care too much for themselves...well, Ty Cobb is in the Hall but not in our hearts. There are no selfish American heroes...
...McGwire and Griffey will be asked about hitting until the subject is like chalk in their mouth; each will be asked about his childhood and diet, race relations and Monica Lewinsky. To hit 62, each man will have to want it so much that he can wall it all away. Yet if he seems to wall us out, we'll fix him with a mortal disdain that will outlast any record he can set. Even so, Griffey and McGwire could make it to the record and beyond, to that Elysian realm where a man seems to stand for something good...
Which is why these guys just might hit. The stars may be lining up just right. McGwire brings to the task a bulky precision that is riveting. He hits moon shots. Griffey has a more modern cool of the stylish synchromesh variety that Michael Jordan brought to hoops. It's about Griffey's joyful acceptance of his personal power...
...baseball connoisseurs who worship him. Listen to this encomium by Serious Baseball Person and Washington Post writer Thomas Boswell: "Mark McGwire, Griffey and the rest are fabulous, but there have been others like them throughout history. It's possible, and becoming more probable with each amazing season of legerdemain, that there has never really been anybody like Greg Maddux." Indeed, Boswell said Maddux may be "the most remarkable and historically important player in baseball." Ever? Yes, ever...