Word: ruth
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...comedian Mark Pitta as The Night of the Living Dead. So McGwire wants to separate himself from the sideshow, to prevent himself from becoming Roger Maris. In 1961, unhappy that a relatively unimpressive player (Maris' second best year was 39 home runs, his career average was .260) threatened Ruth's place in history, some fans sent him death threats and regularly booed him, even at home games in Yankee Stadium. The stress got so bad, his graying crew cut started to fall out in chunks. He was 26. With the rationale that Maris' season was eight games longer than Ruth...
...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...
Even if it is McGwire who, as most people (including Griffey and Sosa) suspect, will set the record this year, it won't last 37 years, as Maris' did, or even 34, as Ruth's. Griffey is young, and the record is most likely to be his someday. He has one of the most perfect swings in baseball history: a long, smooth, straight, upper-body cut that makes McGwire's 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...
...hear it," says LaRussa. Maybe the real reason the fans dig Big Mac is because he's built like a home-run hitter of old. In fact, old home-run hitters didn't look as much like McGwire as they should have. McGwire is who we imagine Babe Ruth to be; he's like a cartoon of Ruth in which he tightens his belt until his paunch rises into bulging pecs...
...marginalized and embittered Hank Aaron--put him in statistics books, used him for a million video clips, but still can't quite forgive his breaking Babe Ruth's record for career home runs. Roger Maris? We killed him. First we made him bald and drove him out of New York, then out of baseball. And soon he was gone. They called it cancer, but we know it was the asterisk...