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Thoughts on Mark McGwire by guest blogger E.J. Wolborsky
0 Comments | Posted by Bill in Posts by Guests
On July 17, 1998, just past the middle of one of the most magical and captivating seasons in recent baseball memory, I saw one of the two
Mark McGwire '53 (Topps style) ltd ed litho
heroes of that season — the titanic, ginger-haired slugger Mark McGwire — hit two home runs in a home game against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Having grown up a Cardinals fan in Little Rock, Arkansas, and, as such, having made many trips to St. Louis and the friendly confines of the second Busch Stadium, I was naturally very excited to be on hand to witness not just a 4-1 victory for my team, but also a striking individual accomplishment by the season’s main headline-grabber (with all due respect to Sammy Sosa, of course).
It was a hot, dry night at The House That Beer Built, now carpeted with real grass in place of the hard, dangerous AstroTurf of yore. The Dodgers looked a formidable team coming into that four-game series; they had brought up five straight NL Rookies of the Year from 1992 to ’96, and had finished at .500 or better every year from 1993 through that very 1998 season, when they would eventually end up with the same 83-79 record as the Cardinals. In contrast to the Dodgers’ youthful exuberance, the Cards were a team led by power-hitting veterans like McGwire and the outfield trio of Ray Lankford, Brian Jordan, and Ron Gant (though the 1998 season would see them introduce Placido Polanco and the highly-touted J.D. Drew, as well as trade for the promising young third baseman Fernando Tatis).
The Cardinals’ starting pitcher, Juan Acevedo, began the game with a 1-2-3 inning, and Dodgers starter Brian Bohanon looked as though he might do the same when he struck out the first two Cards batters in the bottom of the first. But when the hulking McGwire strode into the batters’ box, he was ready for whatever Bohanon could throw at him; he took Bohanon’s first pitch deep to left field — an absolute moon shot. The ball’s accelerating descent carried it into Big Mac Land, a porch on the third deck of the left-field stands that was specially built prior the 1998 season, after St. Louis’ 1997 trading-deadline deal to acquire McGwire from the Oakland A’s. Big Mac Land was not just a constant corporate tie-in promotion for the ballpark, the fans, McDonald’s (who offered up a free Big Mac to anyone with a ticket stub from that section for any game in which a Cardinals player hit a home run there), and, of course, McGwire. Though he was personally unaffiliated with McDonald’s, “Big Mac” was the redheaded righty’s nickname, and nobody bequeathed more burgers to the citizens of St. Lou that year than McGwire.
McGwire would go on to hit another homer, this time off reliever Antonio Osuna, in the bottom of the eighth. His final line: 2-2 with two walks and two solo home runs — a more or less typical McGwire outing for a season in which he ended up with 70 HR, 147 RBI, 152 hits, 155 strikeouts, and 162 walks in 155 games, all of which contributed to his gargantuan OPS of 1.222. That home run tally, of course, set a new single-season record, shattering Roger Maris’ previous mark of 61 and cementing McGwire’s legend as the greatest slugger of his generation (at least until Barry Bonds bashed 73 dingers in 2001, Mac’s final season in the majors). It also tied McGwire’s name inextricably to that of the St. Louis Cardinals, despite it being his first full season with the ball club. McGwire would retire as a redbird in 2001, after just over four seasons with the team, the final two being blighted by injury. But the relative brevity of his tenure with the team did nothing to diminish the heroic status he enjoyed among the Cards’ fans. Simply by virtue of the fairytale 1998 season — one which reconfirmed baseball’s mantle as America’s Pastime after a decade of labor strife, franchise expansion, and aging ballparks threatened to consign baseball to the lower rungs of the American sporting hierarchy — McGwire will forever be remembered as a Cardinal, in spite of the fact that he played his first 11-plus seasons in Oakland. McGwire walked away from the Cardinals organization, but Big Mac Land remained, even being transported to the third incarnation of Busch Stadium when it opened in 2006, as a constant reminder of McGwire’s deftness with the deep ball.
"Sammy and Mac" ltd ed litho
Unlike so many recently retired star athletes, who either move into punditry or otherwise attempt to parlay their fame into a second career in the public eye (Jim Bunning, anyone?), McGwire has spent the past eight years in relative seclusion, demanding a high degree of privacy and thereby adding to the mystique and intrigue surrounding his accomplishments. Next season, though, Cards fans won’t have to look toward left field for a memento of McGwire; in fact, they won’t have to look past the dugout, where Big Mac will be sitting with his mentor, Tony La Russa, serving as the team’s new hitting coach. Despite having been hired for the position nearly two months ago, McGwire has yet to be formally introduced by St. Louis, nor has he addressed the media in any capacity. This conspicuous silence and lack of fanfare at the prospect of bringing a Cardinals legend back into the fold smacks of “something to hide,” just like McGwire’s 2005 appearance at a Congressional hearing on steroid abuse in Major League Baseball — a televised hearing in which McGwire told members of the U.S. House of Representatives that he was “not here to talk about the past.” (What, pray tell, did Mac think they wanted to speak with him about? Golf? Foreign policy?)
Interviewed last week at MLB’s winter meetings, La Russa weighed in rather unofficially on McGwire’s reticence, saying that his former player had not yet spoken on the record because he didn’t want to interfere with or overshadow the World Series or baseball’s end-of-season awards. If that’s true, then we can applaud McGwire’s class and reluctance to steal anyone’s spotlight. But La Russa was quick to deflect any question of a date for McGwire’s official introduction to the press, opting instead to tout McGwire’s skills as a hitting instructor and the seriousness with which he’s taking the job. La Russa also claimed that, once spring training begins, whatever McGwire does say to the media is “going to be about coaching.” That’s an unlikely scenario, to be sure, and one which would do nothing to dampen the suspicions that McGwire’s impressive hitting accomplishments were the result of steroid use.
While it is unclear where public opinion comes down on the did-he-or-didn’t-he questions surrounding McGwire’s use of performance-enhancing drugs, the Baseball Writers Association of America has made their stance apparent in light of McGwire’s paltry tally of Hall of Fame votes. While it is unlikely that disgraced sluggers Rafael Palmeiro and Jose Canseco will ever be seriously considered for Hall of Fame induction, it is perhaps even less likely that McGwire will be forgiven for any transgressions — even those which are unconfirmed suspicions — until he publicly addresses them. Big Mac should take a lesson from players like Jason Giambi and Alex Rodriguez, who, having been exposed ex post facto as cheaters, accepted the blame for their actions, lending further credence to the public perception that PED use has been so widespread in professional baseball in recent decades that it’s hardly even a competitive advantage, but rather more of a status quo practice. Giambi, A-Rod, and other active Major Leaguers who have admitted to PED use have more or less enjoyed the public’s forgiveness in light of their confessions, and there is no reason to believe that the same forgiveness shouldn’t be extended to the likes of McGwire and Sosa, whose magnetic personalities and nice-guy public images imparted the magic on that 1998 season every bit as much as their bats did.
Finally, all the hub-bub over McGwire’s hire begs the question: where is MLB in all this? If there is any lingering suspicion that a former player used steroids, and that player refuses to cooperate in any investigation or probe into that topic, why would the commissioner’s office, the owners, or the player’s union want to allow that player to return as a coach? Is the potential perpetuation of PED use not clear to everyone in that scenario? Coaches should be required to prove they are clean and drug-free just like players, in an ongoing effort to keep PEDs out of clubhouses and out of the sport as a whole. Anything MLB does short of that would only be paying lip service to the problem, and McGwire’s attempts to avoid the questions should be scrutinized more heavily by a league looking to restore its image. -E.J. Wolborsky
About 10 years ago, there he was, wearing his signature white suit, standing in the paddock of Churchill Downs. LeRoy Neiman. Sports art icon from the ABC Sports Olympic broadcast in 1976 in Montreal. The creator of Playboy’s femlin. I hadn’t seen him in 15 years or so. I walked right up to him and said, “Hi, LeRoy” He responded “Hi, Bill, nice to see you again.” I asked him how he was and he replied, “I’m quite famous you know!” That was LeRoy, artist as art object. Andy Warhol got it right.
I had known LeRoy briefly in the late 70′s, after I had opened what I believe to be the world’s first sports art gallery on Manhattan’s 57th Street Gallery Row and I invited LeRoy to participate in some of my sports themed group exhibitions. I didn’t care much for his paintings or serigraphs (except the marketing of them), but I loved his caricatures. Frank Gifford once asked LeRoy if a pizza factory exploded in his studio.
Let’s go back to the 1976 Montreal Olympics for a minute. I was a Pop Art print dealer and my wife was a lawyer at ABC Sports (the first female sports executive ever at any network). She was working the Olympics and I was a guest. We had all access passes and were running free in the studio. And there it was: the painting that LeRoy was painting live, on air representing his impressions of the Games. By the way, to watch Roone Arledge line-produce an Olympics from the production truck (which I did) was an unparalleled treat of seeing the inner machinations of a genius at work.
I had an epiphany there. I knew on the spot that I was forever to be a sports art dealer, gallery owner and publisher. Roone made it clear, by having this painting painted on live TV, that sports art is on its way. Popular culture propagated by TV (sound familiar?) And serendipity would soon have its way with me. Shortly after the Olympics we were having dinner in NYC with Jay Michaels (Al’s father) and Howard Katz (later of ESPN and now NFL Films). Jay was President of IMG Mark McCormack’s TWI which held the rights to Wimbledon. Howard was his lieutenant.
Jay had this crazy idea about engaging some of the world’s best known artists to create a tennis art portfolio of limited edition prints celebrating 100 years of Wimbledon. He needed someone in the art business to spearhead the project. Was I interested? Was I interested! I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was all I wanted to do.
When I later presented Jay with my proposal he said the numbers didn’t work and he immediately lost interest. On to the next for him. But not me. When I soon came to the realization that I couldn’t privately finance the project, I looked at my the results of my efforts to date- a file full of extant tennis art- and thought to myself, “I have enough work here to stage an exhibition.”
Not everybody has a mother with an art gallery in the Hamptons, but I did. I approached her with my idea of having a tennis art exhibition in season, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of Wimbledon using the art of some really good, well-respect artists. Game on. That’s when the fun began. As I reached out to the art community digging for tennis art for my show, all sorts of other sports art surfaced. It was viral. “Hey, there is this guy (me) looking for sports art. Got anything in your studio relating to sports?” Things started coming out of the woodwork. I built a file of art on many different sports. And that is when I realized I had to rent a gallery space and start staging exhibitions. It would be 2 years later that I would begin publishing.
I used to be a runner. About 30 miles a week in NYC’s Central Park. 8 minute miles. Around the reservoir. Park Drive. It didn’t matter. 18 years ago we moved from the friendly confines of New York City to the rural hills of Northwest Connecticut. That was it for my running career.
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Then came golf. My friend Jim said you have to do this. I said I didn’t want to. But he persisted and I tried it- and caught the bug. Now I play over 100 rounds a year, often at sunrise, always walking the 6 or 7 miles of the hilly Torrington Country Club course. I think it is about 6 miles if I play well, 7 if I don’t. Some years I calculate I walk over 1000 miles.
I was lucky enough to have a hole in one on May 22, 1999 on the 188 yard 17th at TCC. Didn’t see it go in as the sun was behind it and the glare killed any clear view. But there is a plaque on my locker declaring it was so.
I almost played the Pebble Beach par 3 course, but I got sick the day we were scheduled. For years my mother had an art gallery in
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Bridgehampton, NY and I was always in and around Shinnecock, but never played it. I have become a great fan of the PGA Tour and never miss the Masters at Augusta National.
My favorite thing about golf is the friends I’ve made on the course and at the club. That is irreplaceable.
