The Greatest American Hero

The man with the red goatee and the Popeye biceps made athletic and American history Tuesday with one swing of a wooden club, hitting an 88-mph baseball 341 feet into the Midwestern night and breaking a revered record a generation old.

In a nation that forever demands bigger, more, better, faster, Mark David McGwire is now a name - and an event - to be remembered.

With his 62nd home run of 1998, a stinging line drive that broke Roger Maris' 37-year record (which broke the immortal Babe Ruth's mark), the 34-year-old McGwire became the 6-4, 250-pound engine that could. The flashbulbs of a thousand cameras twinkled from the Busch Stadium stands, forming a hometown light show as he circled the bases triumphantly for his shortest home run of the year.

"A shot into the corner! It might make it! There it is 62, folks!" Mike Shannon, Maris' friend, said on KMOX-AM. "And we have a new home run champion - a new Sultan of Swat!"

McGwire's 449th career homer came in his second at-bat of the night at 8:18 p.m. CDT, on a clear evening Chicago Cubs pitcher Steve Trachsel, who threw the pitch, stood still on the mound and watched as a grinning McGwire high-fived all his teammates. Then the slugger climbed into the stands to hug Maris' children, who eyed him as if he had lifted a Chevrolet with one hand.

"The legend of Mark McGwire continues," the scoreboard flashed. Security guards high-fived each other as they chased down the smattering of jubilant fans who rushed the field. Applause and celebration held up the suddenly irrelevant game for 11 full minutes.

Across the stadium, from the most expensive boxes to the hot-dog vendors in the outfield, they all said it: The national pastime, an odd game in which the object is to get back to where you started, is a contender once again.

"Now there's a reason to come back to baseball," said Sherry Irby, a pharmacist from Florence, Ala., who drove all night with her husband and two young sons to see a McGwire at-bat. They set up shop on cardboard mats in the outfield standing-room-only section.

"Good role models are few and far between for kids," said her husband, Ken. "The country's been kind of in the doldrums with the Lewinsky thing. We needed something to cheer."

And cheer they did, for days: St. Louis fans, opposing teams' fans, people who aren't fans at all, entranced with the excitement of the record. They cheered from the bars of St. Louis to the McGwire-mad left-field stands of Busch Stadium and beyond.

The home-run race being run by McGwire and the Cubs' Sammy Sosa, who has a healthy 58, has heralded a resurgence of the nation's pastime, scorned by many since its players went on strike in 1994. Attendance is up 3.3 percent this year and on a steady rise.

"Baseball sort of lost its way. Mark McGwire is doing a great job for the game," said Bob Edmiston, 87, who has been attending ardinals games since 1920. He came to the stadium in a McGwire jersey and scarlet shorts.

But what is it about the home run in particular that has captured the American imagination across the generations? It is dramatic, violent, visual, an expression of power a high-ticket item in a sport that many insist is far too unplugged.

"We're in an age of instant gratification. And a home run is instant gratification," says Melvin Philip Lucas of Cornell College in Iowa, who teaches a course on baseball's role in American history.

Milestones are especially crucial in baseball, a game of statistics with fans who care that so-and-so bats .306 against left-handed pitchers named Frank on partly cloudy Tuesdays in May.

"There's something in the pursuit of records that only baseball can deliver," said Bud Selig, the game's commissioner.

Behind it all has been McGwire, the aw-shucks Californian giant who makes $9.5 million a year and has consistently tried to deflect the attention toward baseball itself. He can't, of course; in a world of 64-ounce Big Gulps, Wal-Mart Supercenters and McDonald's super-size fries, McGwire is bigger-more-faster incarnate.

"He's really the home-run hitter of our era," said Roger Maris Jr., who should know.

Other famous home runs have transcended baseball: Bobby Thomson's, off Ralph Branca, that won the Giants the 1951 pennant; Bill Mazeroski's World Series-winner in 1960; and, of course, Babe Ruth's called shot in the 1932 World Series, in which it's said he pointed his bat into the stands and put the ball right there.

Beyond being the national pastime, baseball deservedly or not crosses over into the fabric of American culture more than most sports, becoming the repository of many an American's metaphors of innocence and timelessness. You don't hear football players talking about "Canton" with the reverence of Cooperstown. And where's the Hockey Hall of Fame, anyway?

"Baseball is associated with legend both sport and American culture," says Bill McGill, co-editor of Spitball, a literary baseball magazine.

It has been a legendary few days in St. Louis, one of the oldest of baseball towns. Fans have dissected each pitch. Words like "prodigious" and "prowess" are weary after weeks of hard work.

Thousands draw breath en masse each time he connects. Batting practice turns into a fireworks show. Random fans catch home-run balls and hold news conferences for the national media minutes later. Opposing pitchers hint they wouldn't mind giving up No. 62.

"This is something phenomenal in our lifetime," said Tony La Russa, McGwire's manager.

But while everyone around town is wearing No. 25 on their backs, in many ways it has been the loneliest number. McGwire has done his best to concentrate at the eye of the scrutiny storm. It hasn't been easy.

"You try to tell yourself to sit back an relax, but it's hard to," he said before No. 62. "I'm a human being. I have emotions like everybody else."

©1998 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed