Word: mcgwires
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...pleasure to read about the resurgence of baseball and home-run hitters Ken Griffey Jr., Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa [SPORT, July 27]. As a lifetime fan of baseball, I have more trouble enjoying this great game as its keepers continue to try to destroy it. I do have one complaint. Your list of the leading Cy Young award winners for best pitcher showed Steve Carlton winning four of them with St. Louis. While Carlton started his career with the Cardinals, his greatest success came with the Philadelphia Phillies. I know because at times he was the only reason...
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...
...shutouts. In other words, he doesn't starve batters--he just serves them table scraps, stuff they can't really smack. Lots of his pitches dribble into the 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...
...that was last year. Fast on the heels of Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey Jr., Sosa is the dark-horse candidate to shatter the single-season record for home runs. Thanks to a spectacular--some might say freaky--June in which he popped 20 home runs, a major league record, the Dominican native showed that he is finally harnessing his impulsiveness. As of Saturday, he had racked up 36 homers, just six behind leader McGwire. Sosa's batting record of .319 this season is a full .57 points higher than his career average...