Word: mcgwires
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...September, when every game offered the chance for a record, each McGwire at-bat would be accompanied by the gaudy detonation of thousands of flash cameras. "It was blinding," says McKay. "I asked him if it bothered him, and he said, 'I don't see them.'" He didn't see what was on the periphery of his concentration because, says LaRussa, "he knew where he was going." This made it easy for the manager, whose only contribution to McGwire's record, he confesses was "making sure he knew what time the game started...
Unquestionably, McGwire's feats of 1998 were granted a deeper dimension by the presence of his confederate, the ecstatic Sammy Sosa. Here was a joyous, ebullient counterpoint to McGwire's more sedate self. From the moment in midspring that Sosa launched a sudden torrent of home runs like none ever seen in baseball history--he hit 20 in June alone--the two men were flawlessly scripted antagonists cast in the same play. This was rapture vs. gravity, spontaneity vs. self-restraint, Latin brio vs. California cool. Their collision seemed inevitable; yet what ensued was less a crash than...
...enemy collapsed sooner than anyone expected. By Sept. 8, the record was McGwire's. Sosa, trying to lift his team into postseason contention, didn't flag. On Sept. 25, with McGwire stalled at 65 home runs, Sosa hit a pitch out of County Stadium in Milwaukee and pulled ahead...
...Mark McGwire is a total freak. Not because he hits home runs more than 500 ft., or because he has 20-in. biceps. No, he's a freak because he's able to exhale his emotions, making them dissipate before action. He invites his ex-wife and her husband to his Christmas parties. He spoke to reporters even as some of them peeked into his locker and hunted down his ex-wife and past girlfriends. He didn't go after bad pitches, no matter how many pitchers tried to derail his record chase by avoiding the strike zone. Blinded...
...that robot. He looks almost unintimidating, like the metarational man he's become. "The one thing I've learned is the mind controls everything," he says. "Your mind can throw the attention off to the side." Tony LaRussa, his manager at both the A's and the Cardinals, says McGwire has a unique ability to "control his emotions, to stifle them." His best friend on the team, catcher Tom Lampkin, says McGwire "has such control on the mental side. He doesn't let things stew inside him. He puts a cap on it." So as McGwire shattered the most famous...