On the final weekend of baseball season 1998, St. Louis was supercharged despite no playoff hope for the Cardinals. It was World Series atmosphere over one man: Mark McGwire. I drove my wife and kids into the city on Friday evening, September 25, making family pilgrimage to see a mere baseball player.

Big freakin’ Mac. Who else, right? Personally, I was sick of the guy, an obvious juicer to me. In fact I was shopping a newspaper commentary that alleged McGwire’s season wasn’t so magical, just tainted by muscle dope. Market for the piece was tepid so far.

Meanwhile, a friend had called to offer tickets for Saturday’s game, and we accepted. My 7-year-old son wanted to see Big Mac, and my wife, and, crap, I did, too. This was Missouri, after all, center of the world’s biggest story of the moment: McGwire versus Sammy Sosa of the Cubs in a heartwarming battle over baseball’s new home-run crown, single season. We entered St. Louis at the zenith of Mac mania.

Our timing was in theme, reaching the city’s outskirts as Big Mac strode to the plate at Busch Stadium downtown, fifth inning, to face Expos rookie pitcher Shayne Bennett. Forty minutes before, Sosa belted his homer No.66 in Houston, claiming derby lead of the moment over McGwire, who stood at 65. Cardinals voice Jack Buck had the call on KMOX radio and I turned it up, the ballpark racket taking over inside our little truck. I hit the gas, driving faster, and on first pitch McGwire sent a high drive toward the left-field foul pole, tape-measure distance, stadium roaring.

The ball was far gone, landing upper deck inside Busch, but foul by five feet. The capacity crowd standing in unison, experiencing intense baseball religion, moaned and sighed along with Big Mac, who shrugged near home plate. He was still smarting from a lost homer that week in Milwaukee, when an umpire erroneously ruled a double on a ball that reached the bleachers, and meanwhile Sosa was surging, appearing to be on another hot streak to pass our hero.

Now everyone wondered: Was the hex on Big Mac? The big guy shook his red head, re-gripped his bat and dug in again at the plate, returning his focus to the mound, blinking and squinting to get a bead of aim through contact lenses. McGwire was a homer robot for destroying pitches. Bennett had a new ball, fingering it behind his back on the hill, looking in again to his catcher. The right-hander stretched with a man on base. Fans buzzed but restrained, allowing Mac his precious concentration, although thousands flashed cameras on subsequent pitches by Bennett: a ball outside, a swing and a miss, and another foul off.

I saw everything in mind, scenes throughout the stadium, while driving Highway 40 eastbound into St. Louis. I savored the familiar rhythm of Buck on play-by-play and admittedly loved Cardinals baseball, now with the greatest power hitter in history! I believed McGwire would overtake Sosa in the weekend homer fest, and on next pitch I was positive. Mac swatted Bennett’s 1-2 offering for a homer to left, 375 feet and fair, tying Sosa at 66.

I turned to my wife at the passenger’s side. “You watch, McGwire could hit two dingers tomorrow,” I declared. “And if he does, he’ll slam two more on Sunday to give him 70 for the season.” My prediction wasn’t improbable for McGwire, whom I knew enough about as a player. I’d watched him hit 49 homers as a rookie in 1987, when I covered MLB for feature stories and he anchored my offensive lineup for “rotisserie league,” to be better known as “fantasy” baseball. Mac knocked three homers one Saturday afternoon and I won $125. McGwire loved daylight for batting and I enjoyed cashing in on him, then.

But now I understood more about McGwire, too much. He had synthetic fuel for performance, which I could grasp, but I resented his outright denial of steroids, for the global icon he’d become. McGwire and those close to him were perpetrating a charade of world proportion, and I wrote the slugger a letter saying as much, noting my own juicing past and declaring he could never keep his doping under wraps. He didn’t reply.

The magnitude of denial stunned even me, a seasoned doping critic. I’d observed steroid signs in baseball for years while compiling information on football’s problem. Major leaguers were juicing in the 1980s when I interviewed several suspects, like a scrawny Cardinals star who added 20 pounds of muscle in only months. Later, when La Russa debuted as St. Louis manager, 1996, I spied juicer suspects at spring training like burly hitters, a model-buff older pitcher, and even a coach, rippling and strutting for females.

I also heard about the new and improved McGwire, still with the A’s, during dugout scuttlebutt that March in St. Petersburg. Mac was mentioned for developing ungodly muscle and size, producing power at the plate unmatched in baseball history. I noted McGwire was always a big bopper in baseball. “No, now he’s fuckin’ huge,” declared the dugout source, whose language I understood to mean McGwire had chemical aid. The next season, after his move to St. Louis, I had no doubt. The dude was as big and strong as a Rams defensive end.

Much information to corroborate McGwire’s doping would surface in the future, including his training associates of juicers and gurus. But in 1998 I was convinced for his appearance, power numbers and the steroid “andro,” along with general pervasiveness of muscle substances in sport and culture. He was peaking in physique and performance beyond natural capabilities, given his personal history.

La Russa claimed McGwire simply ate well and worked hard in the weightroom, on top of games, an absurd assertion with the specimen Mac notwithstanding. Indeed, a regimen of daily weightlifting in professional baseball would dictate synthetic augmentation for the athlete. And McGwire’s leap was ridiculous in power numbers. As a rookie in 1987, he mustered supreme output with one home run every 11.4 at bats, or 49 for the season. His ratio declined markedly into the next decade then skyrocketed back upward, climaxing in 1998 at one homer every 7.3 plate appearances, for a man turning 35.

I tried to go along that season with Cards fans, bite my tongue, ride the merry bandwagon for Big Mac, and it was fun in moments with friends and family. On a July night at Busch I saw him annihilate two pitches, homers, one a 500-footer into upper-deck seats merely in way of the riser, which would’ve gone 600. I certainly understood McGwire’s use of steroids in modern elite sport, and I respected him as a citizen with humble qualities. I loved his genuine disdain for fame and money’s power and laughed at his treatment of sportswriters, the general lot deserving no respect.

But I couldn’t take the baseless excuses for McGwire and his doping, growing daily. I was increasingly insulted by everything I heard, read and saw, particularly in Missouri. By now I was more than a decade into study of documented history of doping in American sport, work spawned by my own user-athlete past, and had discussed the problem with hundreds of eyewitnesses. Yet I was largely alone in public for criticizing Big Mac. Practically everyone ignored my complaints, including journalists I contacted in protest of coverage way overdone, supporting and glorifying the guy.

After McGwire hit No.62 at Busch to break Roger Maris’ record, I watched TV to hopefully enjoy the celebration as a fan. But I became incredulous, seeing masses heap worship, love. That night I put my son to bed, saw his little McGwire jersey laid out for school the next morning, then fell asleep feeling ill. I had a dream Mac confessed to everything, and I woke at dawn to vomit. My morning reality was Missouri’s falling over to kiss Mac’s butt. Incessant media streams praised the guy, with news and opinion pages gushing like sports sections. Infuriatingly, clueless writers proclaimed the slugger as Mr. Natural, but he was also credited for saving children, for preserving baseball, and, no exaggeration, for healing a fractured America.

I tried the happy face a final time at Busch Stadium on September 26, Saturday afternoon, as the Cards hosted the Expos with McGwire and Sosa tied at 66 homers. We had our friends’ great seats behind home at Busch: me, Laurie, Thomas, 7, and Kate, 3. The stadium was electric in the fourth inning, everyone standing as though for a Series win, when McGwire came up for his second at-bat against Montreal pitcher Dustin Hermanson.

First pitch, McGwire strode and swung. Crack! If not looking that instant, I wouldn’t have seen the 400-foot laser slash into the left-field stands for his No. 67. That had to kill somebody, I thought, then we the capacity crow erupted in cheering, red-clad fans covering the stands. Laurie and Thomas hugged, and I was swept up, teary, joyous again over Big Mac, wallowing more in the hypocrisy.

McGwire stroked his second homer of the day in the seventh, No.68, and on Sunday we listened during the drive home to western Missouri, as he bashed two more to end the season with 70. Drugs or no, it was an astounding performance, and I believed Mac’s humble quote when he said he amazed even himself.

The culture was ecstatic over McGwire, but I felt schizophrenic, and by Monday morning I was critic again, with a buyer for my commentary titled “Big Mac Steps Up to The Plate; Steroids Awareness Steps Back.” My piece was rare in chastising the American hero and culture, and several publications had ignored my submission. But opinion-page editor Rich Hood of the Kansas City Star ran it on October 2, with the following lead:

“As St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire rewrote home-run records in baseball, much of America saluted him, but the debate over his feats will not disappear.

“It should not.”

References

Bavley, A., & Rock, S. (1998, August 29). McGwire's pills. Kansas City Star, p. A1.
Canseco, J. (2005). Juiced. ReganBooks: Los Angeles, CA.
Chaney, M. (1998, October 2). Big Mac steps up to the plate; steroids awareness steps back. Kansas City Star, p. C7.
O'Keeffe, M., Red, C., & Quinn, T.J. (2005, March 13). Hitting the Mark. New York Daily News [Online].

E-mail: mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com. For more information on Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football, visit www.fourwallspublishing.com.