COLUMN: Homeruns and foul balls

From Michael Pereira's, "Vox," Fall '98 From Michael Pereira's, "Vox," Fall '98I feel for the guy when he's under fire. One immobile camera trained unflatteringly on his large seated torso. Voices barking questions that he inevitably avoids. To answer certain things would somehow undermine what he's done, his profession and those who support him. All I do, he says, is swing the bat. The rest is out of my control. Yet based on the uniqueness of his achievement, McGwire is required to talk. They sit him presidentially behind a table and slight his aura with thoughtless questions. He spreads glory selflessly, to Roger Maris and Babe Ruth, to Sammy Sosa, to his father, his team and his 10-year-old son. Men cannot tell the truth when forced to speak. They answer on other people's terms, and unwillingly distort their intentions. That's why modesty is becoming to heroes. It maintains a mystique around great deeds. Yet America is baseball country once again, and McGwire is its head of state. We love him because his dingers provide a sense of history. But why McGwire? Why not Sammy Sosa, whose numbers are fast behind, and just as unbelievable? Again, because McGwire provides a sense of history, an enviable archetype, though with an unsavory accumulation of historical doubt and silences. McGwire is strong and soft spoken and eminently pale. Sosa, by his own admission, is a bit more Rico Suave. Baseball is a hitter's game. It dramatizes a tradition of individual effort, the culture of the self-made man, the myth of conquered continent. It's a sport that allows us to remember an overweight drunk for his athletic achievement. As someone said, the duty of the American author is not to describe the mixed melancholy of an adulterous woman looking out the window on a rainy Sunday, but rather to capture the sway of the stadium crowd as a home run lands in the stands. That's where you'll find the national spirit, all avarice and confusion, illusion; hope in disproportion. Baseball is big in St. Louis. They don't have a hip basketball team. The NFL hasn't played in postseason there since 1982. And in Busch Stadium, where McGwire tied Roger Maris' 37-year-old record of 61 homers (on his father's 61st birthday), sagging men still like to drink beer in the stands, shirtless. A picture in Sports Illustrated captures homerun number 61 seconds before landing. It shows Midwesterners wearing well-oiled mitts. Three fans with the letters M-A-C painted red on their chests. An elderly man, slow to excitement, looking on wistfully from under a straw pith helmet. A few fans glance away from the action, but the general gaze is focused on the spectacle, an imminence that moves the crowd like one body. The marked balls glow under infrared light. At Busch Stadium a bat autographed by McGwire was auctioned off for $1,825. People are willing to pay for a piece of history. But that swelling tide of the moment, that sense of being there, also evoked a latent selflessness. People were willing to sacrifice for the Idea. Number 61 fell into the possession of Mike Davidson, 28, of St. Louis. He fought valiantly for the historic ball -- blood and bruises filled the stands -- then turned it over to the Swat King rather than cashing in for inevitable thousands. In my hands, said Davidson, it felt like a million bucks. Who cares if McGwire is pumped up on creatine and androstenedione? The 6'5", 245-lb. man fills a void, a deeper need. Something national -- a primal function in the swinging motion. His hams are resolute and dependable. Sosa regularly celebrates his adopted country. He recently said "God bless America" for the 1,689th time, breaking the record held by Kate Smith. America clings to the McGwire-Sosa home run derby as a sure thing, an instance of unmitigated goodness. Their competition in a camaraderie. Sosa clapped from right field as McGwire rounded the bases for 61. They can be seen joking together, and both have said it doesn't matter who winds up with more homers when the season ends. What matters is that they did it, which is good for the sport, the cities and the fans. We need people like that, bulwarks against waning moral purpose, spilling from its ostensible locus in the nation's capital like water from a punctured dike. The baseball craze is not a craze at all. It's a manifestation on a grand scale of sentiments which undergird the American idea and a reaction to the testing of those elements in our recent political culture. It's about novelty, but also, somehow, about stasis, things changing according to past patterns. To give an example: On a walk back to campus some nights ago from Center City, I witnessed an altercation outside of the recently renovated Katz Fitness Center. Two men yelled at each other while a police officer watched nearby, her side arm drawn and impotent. Voices and tempers rose, and within moments the situation had elevated to fisticuffs. They rolled around for a second, then broke apart. One stumbled to his car, and I thought, this could get ugly. Then he brandished something. Too long and thick to be a gun. And the taper was all off. No stock or barrel, no trigger or sight to be seen. What he pulled out was much simpler, a yard or so of hard polished wood, the grain running lengthwise, the Louisiana Slugger imprint dark and foreboding on the pulpy column. A man of our times. He stepped back and planted his back foot firmly in the pavement. He raised the bat and waited for his moment. He swung. Strike. Ten police cars showed up. We all want to break records.