Word: sosa
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...Sosa & McGwire BY THE NUMBERS...
...major-league baseball's 123rd year, are two men--Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs' Sammy Sosa--suddenly destined to cream the home-run record as if it were a pitiful little Rawlings sphere? And, dammit, with so little suspense! Since 1961, hot stovers have debated whether Maris' feat, in a 162-game season, truly equaled Ruth's in a 154-game span. But on Saturday, when McGwire pummeled his 60th homer against Cincinnati, his team was playing only its 141st game. Sosa had a just slightly less preposterous 58 dingers in 142 Cubs games...
...legal in baseball--partly because the mouse men who run the game are unwilling to wrestle over drug policy with a balky and powerful players' union--but banned in other sports; last week the NFL suspended Paul Wiggins of the Pittsburgh Steelers for sampling andro over the summer. (Sosa was recently seen "hiding" a bottle of Flintstones vitamins in his locker.) But how much extra fizz does the 6-ft. 5-in., 250-lb. McGwire need? He's always been a hefty guy, a goateed Gigantor, and his 49 homers in 1987, his first full season, are a rookie record...
...Sosa are likely to stay there, becoming the first non-Yankees to hold the homer record since 1919, when a Red Sox pitcher-outfielder named Ruth hit 29. They won't have diminished the Babe's achievements--partly because he was so much better than the best of his day. (In 1927, when Ruth smacked his 60, only one other player, Lou Gehrig, hit more than half that number.) And partly because baseball fans, the most traditional of mammals, believe deep in their atavistic hearts that then was better than...
...will take some time for the long-ball Luddites to accept that these are the good old days--the days of damn Yankees, of pitching phenoms like El Duque and Kerry Wood, of a glorious Griffey, surely of the mad bombers McGwire and Sosa. We may have to wait 20 years--when, say, Matt McGwire, now 11 and a weekend bat boy for his father's team, threatens to hit 100 homers in a season--for reality to set in. Then the geezers will sigh and say, "Ahhhh, remember the glory...