Tom Carroll’s voice cracks and he admits tears are forming when he talks about Mark McGwire, the young giant whom he coached at Damien High School in LaVerne, California, and watched cast a huge shadow over baseball this summer. “Sorry, I get all hyped up and the passion flows. But I hope in time that Mark is remembered more for the human being he is than the home runs he hit.”
That’s a tall order for the 6-foot, 5-inch Big Mac. He concluded the major-league baseball season with four home runs on the final weekend to finish with an otherworldly total of 70. That number stands so high it will tend to dwarf the man.
Carroll, shaper of young boys into men for 26 years at Damien, believes the St. Louis Cardinals slugger worked in sympathetic lockstep with Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs to renew values that have been eroding in professional sports, particularly baseball, and everyday life.
Honesty. Modesty. Integrity. Durability. They defined the huge, red-headed Irish descendant and the lighthearted Dominican slugger in their epic home-run chase. Sosa finished with 66 homers but their sum was even greater for baseball, drawing thousands of fans back to ballparks. “What they have done for sports is just so great. But more important is the example they set. For Mark to acknowledge his ex-wife’s husband when he broke the record, that told you something about him.” Carroll makes no grand claims to influencing McGwire’s character, giving full marks to the star’s parents, but sees the man that McGwire has become as partly a product of the best traditions in sports. “When I was a young man a coach named Bob Kavanaugh, a big, tough Irishman, helped steer me away from making a wrong turn in life. Now I see Mark setting such a fine example for young people and pushing some bad news off the front pages.”
Carroll coached McGwire for two years and recalls him as “a good personality, a fine kid who did everything you asked and worked very hard at his skills. There was no B.S. in him.” Still isn’t, judging by how directly he answers questions. The pale green eyes fix you firmly and the reply is honest and straight, a commodity in short supply in the summer of ’98. “No, not at all,” Mark McGwire says when you ask if he has studied his Irish history as closely as he has studied baseball’s lore. “Maybe,” he adds, “I’ll go back some day when I’m retired.” If McGwire was at all vainglorious, he’d provide a snappy response. Like, “well, I’ve been kind of busy making history.” But the man who took the United States, indeed the continent and much of the world on a delicious ride this summer is not a flip or a dismissive kind. Even as he was subjected to scrutiny few have known, baseball’s new home run king handled it with dignity, even sunnily at times.
In a world desperately needing some grace, McGwire articulated it. As he took pains to explain but often went unreported, he was still a work in progress, a guy who had struggled through physical and mental travails. “If you understood the mountains I’ve climbed, the walls I’ve busted through, you’d know how I feel,” he said after hitting his 50th homer in August.
McGwire had a marriage fall apart, saw his game go south, and struggled to deal with the emotions both reversals wrought. He sought out therapy and learned it was okay to express emotions that had formerly been tightly contained. On the physical side, he overcame chronic foot problems to come back from the baseball dead like no one has before him.
So if he had not traced his roots, just watching him conduct himself across the summer told you that when the time came, when it was right, this was something Mark McGwire would do. When he does trace his genealogy, he’ll find that long before he was the king of swing, the Maguires, McGwires, and MacGuires were lords of County Fermanagh owning virtually all the land in that area. The name was Mag Uidhir in Gaelic and his predecessors and now distant kin heavily populate County Monaghan and County Cavan, too.
When he does his search, it will not be done halfheartedly. This is a man who takes one week off after the baseball season, then begins preparing for the next one. Ironically, the thing he is most famous for, swinging a bat, is something he does not do full out.
The swing is short and economical for levers so long and pulleys so strong, the only flourish in its finish, a one-handed follow-through which releases the bat at right angles to the ground. It hangs for the merest moment like an exclamation mark to the act. The preposterously proportioned batsman leans towards first base, his eyes following the arc of the ball into the stands. This signature bat flip is as close to immodest as the man gets and this sliver of time, in another irony, provides rare peace and solitude at the vortex of howling, appreciative masses.
The first baseman broke, no, crushed Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in 154 major-league games and he calmly passed Roger Maris’ 61 homers in 161 games as if this was foretold.
But the man may be better remembered for the uncommon class he showed in the wake of erasing those records, how he shared those moments, and how he inflicted, if only briefly, some kind of selfless virus on people. The 61st and 62nd home runs balls were returned to him for transport to the Baseball Hall of Fame even though they might have fetched $1 million from a collector. And back in Claremont, California, a former Little League teammate says he wants to offer scorecards from McGwire’s early baseball years to the Hall of Fame. “I think that’s where they belong,” says Dan Magee. “It would be good for Little League.”
Magee played both with and against McGwire and remembers his first impression. “He was 5-foot, 10-inches tall at 11. He had bright red hair and wore glasses and he was very quiet. Kid him about the glasses? He was way too big.” McGwire’s legend was starting even then. He hit a home run in his first at-bat and Magee recalls the first time he pitched to the big kid, McGwire knocked one out of the little park. “He hit it into the next field,” Magee still marvels. “It must have gone 300 feet. Remember, he was just 11.” As the legend reached its apex in September, the circumstances surrounding his record clouts had a Disneyesque sense about them. In fact, a cynic would say it was baseball’s spinmeisters who arranged for his son Matthew, 10, to be on hand for the historic clouts, that Maris’ sons were there for No. 61 in another public-relations move.
But it was not unusual for Matthew McGwire to be at home plate on Sept. 7 to be swept up in his dad’s blacksmith arms after spanking No. 61 into the St. Louis night. McGwire has been flying his son in from California throughout the season to act as a bat boy.
And long before he was on the cusp of the record, Big Mac was talking about how poorly Roger Maris had been treated.
“I read a story about his wife and son and I guess it was tough on him. He had two strikes against him. A lot of the writers were Babe Ruth fans and didn’t want him to break the record. A lot of people wanted (teammate) Mickey (Mantle) to do it. The fans didn’t want him to do it. I feel for him because that’s wrong. I hope he’s up there rooting for me and Sammy. This should be a beautiful thing.”
You got the feeling that day, several weeks before he set the record, that he wanted to reflect glory back to Maris, who passed away never getting full recognition for his accomplishment.
So, after he hit No. 61 and went into the seats to embrace Maris’ sons and whispered for the longest time into their ears, it was emotional and unscripted and pure. Later he said he told them that their father was in his heart at that moment.
To all this, add his embrace of Sosa and the season-long applauding he did for the home-run rival who pushed him from behind. Moreover, providence arranged that he would hit his 61st on father John’s 61st birthday as John and his mother Ginger watched in the stands at St. Louis. And later after he hit his 65th, it had a magical quality because it was the number Matthew had whispered in his ear before the season started.
Unbelievably, also, in a time where everything is for sale, McGwire simply declined the millions in endorsement lucre he was offered, dismissing it as a distraction. The greater marvel might be that he even got to a date with destiny at all.
Consider the storm that surrounded him virtually from the first day of spring training way back in February. After clouting 58 home runs in 1997, much of the baseball world and those who chronicle it felt he could surpass Maris’ record of 61 home runs for the New York Yankees in 1961.
In a world desperately needing some grace, McGwire articulated it. As he took pains to explain but often went unreported, he was still a work in progress, a guy who had struggled through physical and mental travails. ‘If you understood the mountains I’ve climbed, the walls I’ve busted through, you’d know how I feel,’ he said.
“The majority of Americans are watching. That’s pressure,” he said the day he hit No. 51.
Throughout he was dogged by the naysayers, critics who claimed his numbers were cheapened by baseball’s expansion and therefore weaker pitching.
Where others might have snorted their disdain, McGwire said he recently learned some of the history of Ruth, who held the mark from 1927 to 1961, and the starcrossed Maris.
“I wish I could go back in time and play with them. That would be fun. But I believe it’s tougher to play the game now because of specialty pitching. In those days pitchers usually went the full nine innings and you might see the same one twice in a three-game series.”
By late August his use of the supplement androstenedione toped up the mix of question marks critics were applying to the credibility of his accomplishment should he surpass Maris’ record.
Irony got no richer than this. His sterling image couldn’t sell his deep resolve on the issue of child sexual abuse, but his perfectly legal venture into the new world of so-called nutriceuticals was all over the news.
Media distaste for the issue of child sexual abuse buried the heartfelt McGwire in trailing paragraphs. No matter that McGwire was an accomplished home run hitter before he started taking the over-the-counter muscle enhancer a year ago: He had 47 in his rookie year, 1987, remember and 52 in 1996.
And no matter that he played by the rules, even if they were at odds with Olympic, NFL and NBA standards. Indeed, the major leagues announced a probe of its use, though too late to head off some negative spin imparted on McGwire’s run at the record. How McGwire responds to this will be another measure of the man, though fans only seem to care about how many home runs and how long. His dosage of andro doesn’t seem to register. “Hey, it’s legal and you can get it over the counter,” said Billy White of Columbus, Ohio as he left Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh following McGwire’s 53rd dinger. “As far as I’m concerned Mark McGwire is just a great guy. Everybody wants him to beat the record and I want to be there when it happens.” That 53rd homer, by the way, sparked the first curtain call for McGwire, who responded reluctantly. In the protocol of baseball, you don’t show up the home team but Pittsburgh fans were so into his quest they were booing their own pitchers for throwing balls to McGwire. “Everybody kept telling me to go out,” said McGwire. “Finally I did. It was absolutely amazing.” White, by the way, really took the pursuit of the record seriously, arranging to follow McGwire for the remainder of the season. “Here’s the kind of guy Mark McGwire is,” said White. “How many ballplayers do you hear about donating a million dollars for three years for sexually abused children?” Just one, and though his donation has been publicized, McGwire’s strong commitment to the cause of child sexual abuse is often downplayed or ignored.
In fact, the president of a U.S. group helping abuse victims was stunned and pleased to hear about the slugger’s deep sense of purpose. “That’s just terrific,” said Randy Fitzgerald of the National Organization on Male Sexual Victimization. “I probably haven’t heard about it because in this country sexual abuse stories are often seen as too hot to handle. But for someone of his stature to stand up, considering the record he was going for, is just extraordinary.”
The response by media is less than ordinary, though. When McGwire spoke powerfully on the matter to about 30 people in a pre-game media conference one day, you could almost feel the scribblers and tape jockeys stiffen as he looked around and talked about the high numbers of victims, which is estimated at close to one in four women and one in eight men. He has started a foundation which funds child abuse centers in St. Louis and Los Angeles and taped a public service announcement early to push the cause. “It’s going to be a very, very strong message and hopefully the networks will pick it up and it will go national,” said McGwire. “There has never been a PSA done on sexual abuse.
“Child abuse is a very sad thing and it is very, very common today in every walk of life. These young kids aren’t allowed to be the teenagers and adults they want to be because of the scars they’re going to have deep down for the rest of their lives. If they look at me and say, `Look, Mark McGwire is supporting us,’ if something happens which shouldn’t happen, they should stand up and go tell a policeman, a teacher, a coach, do something so they can get help and be the people they want to be in life.
“That makes me feel really good. And I think you’ll see a trend of players helping causes. There’s a lot who do already, they’re just not publicized.” McGwire’s next project for child sexual abuse is a documentary on the issue and he hopes to involve former National Hockey League player Sheldon Kennedy (profiled in Irish America, Sept./Oct issue). Kennedy is in-line skating across Canada to raise money for a ranch for sexually abused children he wants to build in British Columbia. He has raised about three million dollars to date.
“He’s one of the guys who came to mind,” said McGwire, speaking of Kennedy. “The level of abuse is very high and the more awareness you have, the better the country will be. Children are our future and if we get them on the right track, things will be better for us.” Reached in British Columbia on his cross-country skate, Kennedy was surprised by McGwire’s initiative. “The biggest thing is to create awareness, and for him to take a stand like that is just great. I would love to talk to him. It would be awesome if we could work on something together.”
When McGwire attended a media conference announcing his three-year, $10-million-a-year contract and his donation, he was asked about his interest in sexually abused children. He sat silent for 33 seconds before he could speak, and even then haltingly. Children have a special place in his heart, he said. They’re God’s gift to us. Then he cried.
“We had never seen the depth of the personal side until then,” said St. Louis manager Tony LaRussa. “He showed us a better way to be.” But that better way is still a secret to many Americans. McGwire says he is changed man since the day last year when his former girlfriend, Ali Dickson, took him to Stuart House in Santa Monica, a center for recovering sexually abused children. He saw apparently happy children but learned about the scars under the smiles, the moments of remembered terror in the night. Shortly afterward he announced the foundation and the $3 million in donations and from his commitment it was clear this was not image-polishing, not for a fellow considered one of the stand-up guys in sports. You have to like Mark McGwire, ballplayer. But you like the man better.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the November/December 1998 issue of Irish America. ⬥
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