COLUMN: Sosa, McGwire unite Americans

From Kent Malmros', "Everything Old is New Again," Fall '99 From Kent Malmros', "Everything Old is New Again," Fall '99You know Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa have been deeply ingrained into the American consciousness when news broadcasts show their spring training at bats religiously. For some reason, the media and the American public cannot satiate their collective appetite for this big red-headed, Irish guy with 20-inch biceps and his counterpart, a Dominican with a photo-op smile. And I'll tell you a secret: it has very little to do with the fact that they hit a combined 136 homeruns last season and both broke the 37-year-old single-season home run record set by Roger Maris. McGwire and Sosa have become much more than home run hitters, they have become symbols of our ideal America. It is an America that the common hot-dog-eating fan somehow finds traced by the parabolas of their home runs. And that is why we care that they are both tied for the spring training lead for home runs -- with eight each. It doesn't get more arbitrary than this in the sports world. The home runs don't even count. But somehow, in the psyche of this country, it matters. And so the cameras are turned to previously meaningless at bats. In recent years, it has become even more difficult to find anything that unites all of an increasingly diverse country. As Arthur Schlesinger Jr. writes in The Disuniting of America, "What is even more fatal to identity politics and the cult of ethnicity is the simple fact that many, probably most, Americans are of mixed ancestry." Schlesinger continues, "They do not see themselves as belonging to a single ethnic group. And the mix is growing everyday." But the growth of "the mix" that Schlesinger referred to was stymied for a brief glimmering moment as McGwire and Sosa embraced the home run race, the country and even one another. Baseball was the single ethnic group to which everyone belonged for six months and Sosa and McGwire shared a common identity despite their differences. These two polar opposites were forever attached in history by competition for a record but in the minds of people everywhere they were attached by their humility and love for each other. And in the meantime, an entire country was able to rally around them -- a Dominican and an Irish guy. Undeniably, it took two extraordinary athletes and personalities to fulfill this lofty mission of recapturing the evasive notion of an American identity. McGwire's is the story of an athlete who almost retired in the early '90s but worked his way back to the top. When he was down, he didn't point fingers, and when he reached the top, he was quick to credit others. Better yet, he's America's most famous single father and a champion of charities for abused children. Sosa's is the story of a kid transforming himself from an impoverished 14-year-old stick figure scraping out a living shining shoes in the Dominican Republic into one of the best players in Major League Baseball. They are both archetypal American dream stories. Schlesinger's book begs the question: should we try to build back this foundation of common identity, the melting pot idea of one common vision of America? Sosa and McGwire are answering that question in the forum of athletics. The discarded melting pot has re-emerged on green diamonds all across the country. The old American homogeneity may have disappeared over a century ago. But that's not so important so long as there is a common ideal. But baseball has gradually opened its doors to the concept of being a melting pot -- from the introduction of Jackie Robinson into the Dodgers' starting lineup in 1947 to Hideo Nomo's arrival in Los Angeles in 1995. Societal divisions disappeared on baseball fields more than anywhere else. But the 1994 strike drove fans to abandon the model along with their faith in the game and America's pastime drifted further into America's past. Until McGwire and Sosa. Each man sat in front of press conference microphones like kids awestruck by the Ruthian legend they were chasing, encouraging fans to ignore racial differences and unite in a common race of dreamers. Think about it -- how many "baseball" fans were in the room when you watched both of them hit No. 60? Not too many. But I bet they all believed in America for a minute.