Power of Caring
  presented by CIGNA

The record will fall, the questions won't

Click here for more on this story

Posted: Wednesday September 16, 1998 06:02 PM

ATLANTA (CNN/SI) -- The numbers are all there, stuck on the front of the sports section for the hundredth day in a row. Only now, it's finally clear.

It's over.

Write it down. Close the book. Bring on the playoffs.

With all of September still ahead of us, the mystery is gone from The Great Home Run Chase of 1998. Someone will win this thing, it's clear. Someone will snap Roger Maris' record -- probably more than one guy, it looks like -- as sure as Mark McGwire likes to pop pills.

When you crunch all the numbers, McGwire will end up with around 64 or 65 home runs, sweeping past Maris' 61. And Sammy Sosa, once you do the average at-bats and the home runs per at-bat and the division and the subtraction and all that, ought to get around 64.

There will be a lot of talk about asterisks in the meantime. There always is. And there will be the endless sideshows.

Someone will be accused of grooving a pitch. The memorabilia maniacs will get out of hand. As the month wears on, we'll see every pitch and every swing. Announcers will ceaselessly rehearse their spur-of-the-moment calls, hoping they'll get it just right and become a part of history.

But the record will fall, as sure as a Sosa smile. And that will be that.

Except ... except something is gnawing at this history in the making, something that keeps us from an all-out joyride. It happens all the time. Records are broken and there's always an asterisk out there, lurking around, getting in the way. It's kind of like the short-lived giddiness you had in getting your driver's license, only to find out you're the one who has to pay for the gas.

When Maris set his record in 1961, knocking Babe Ruth off his pedestal, it was an expansion year. The schedule was eight games longer, bumped from 154 to 162 games. A proficient but hardly power-hitting first baseman by the name of Norm Cash won the batting title with a .361 average. He was a lifetime .271 guy.

Denny McLain won 31 games and Bob Gibson had a 1.12 ERA in a weird 1968. Gibson's effort is a record, and no one has won 30 games since McLain. Hitters had it so tough that year that Carl Yastrzemski won the American League batting title with a .301 average. Baseball lowered the pitching mound the next season.

When Joe DiMaggio reached base safely in a record 56 straight games in 1941 -- maybe the one unreachable record in baseball -- Ted Williams hit .406. No one has hit .400 since then, and no one has come within a dozen games of DiMaggio's streak.

McGwire and Sosa have combined for 110 home runs through August -- more than the season totals of five major league teams AP

So in this year of the Great Home Run Chase, the questions are there. Those little pills in McGwire's locker may have something to do with it. But it's more than that.

It's the sheer coincidence of it all.

After 37 seasons of being nearly untouchable, through tries by sluggers like Mays and Aaron and Mantle and Jackson and scores of others, one of the most reverentially whispered-about records in baseball will be broken not once but, in all likelihood, twice.

Something's got to be up.

The so-called baseball purists will tell you all the home runs this season -- they are up around baseball better than 3 percent, even without the expansion teams' homers, and the record of the rabbit-ball year of 1996 is clearly within reach -- are because of bad pitching. That's a direct result of diluted talent that comes from too many teams, the reasoning goes.

But can the pitching be that bad?

There are others who will tell you the homers come with better hitters, stronger hitters.

But can they be that much stronger?

The fact is, no one really knows what has conspired to make it so these two guys, in the same year, will wipe away a record that has been around nearly four decades.

Drugs? Weak fastballs? Juiced baseballs? Big biceps? Small ballparks?

There is no one answer, no more than there is for Maris or McLain or DiMaggio or Norm Cash.

The record will be broken, Maris will fall into second place -- probably third -- and everyone will recall a summer full of McGwire moon shots and Sosa kisses and the crowds in St. Louis and the long-suffering Cubs fans finally having something to cheer about.

But somehow, through all that, they will wonder.

Related information
Multimedia
Click here for the latest audio and video
Search our site	Watch CNN/SI 24 hours a day
	Sports Illustrated and CNN have combined to form a 24 hour sports news and information channel. To receive CNN/SI at your home call 1-888-53-CNNSI.