The Willow Glen Resident

Photograph courtesy of Cookie Curci-Wright

Diamond Days: The best the Giants can hope for this year is a wild-card slot, but that doesn't stop diehard fans like our columnist from going out to the ball game.

Boys of Summer have a slugfest that could break all the records

By Cookie Curci-Wright

Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire swings his omnipotent bat, and another low, outside curve ball
is smoked into the stands.

It's late summer, the time of the year when long, lazy days seem to stand still and the only things stirring are the ice cubes in my glass of lemonade; late summer, when baseball's faithful read the sports page and begin their annual speculation.

For those of us who follow baseball, August is the time of the year when we begin to compulsively add up the stats and standings of our favorite teams and players and hypothesize who will be the MVP of the year and which team will make a run for the pennant. More importantly, will this be the year McGwire breaks the longstanding home-run record of 61 set decades ago by Roger Maris?

As of this writing, McGwire, former Oakland A's star, is leading the pack with 53 HRs, with the Chicago Cubs' Sammy Sosa at 51.

Like most fans my age, my interest in baseball began as a kid growing up in the late 1940s and early '50s. I grew up in an era when the game of baseball meant more to kids than just a pastime or something to do, it was an indelible part of our lives. We lived and breathed the game of baseball from early spring to late summer. We played it in the corner lots, in the streets, and in the schoolyards of our neighborhoods.

Kids didn't "invest" in trading cards for monetary value. Baseball cards were packaged inside our Topps wax-packs of bubble gum. And when we found a trading card we liked--a Stan Musial, a Ted Williams or a Jackie Robinson--we grabbed a handful of thumbtacks and promptly pinned it to our bedroom wall. They were called trading cards because most of the time, that's what we did with them: We traded them with friends. Today, in a market saturated with card companies and mercenary collectors, baseball cards are untouched and unplayed with, sadly secured under a half-inch of sterile Plexiglas.

When we talk about baseball (and do we ever this time of year!), we must invariably tip our caps to its storied home-run king, Babe Ruth, who in August 1927 hit an incredible 17 homers. America's love of record-breaking baseball harks back to the great "Bambino" and the New York Yankees. Ruth's heroics led his team to a season finish of 110-44, 19 games ahead of the pack. That year, Ruth's 60 home runs and his .487 on-base hitting average rewrote the record books. Ruth and Lou Gehrig worked in close harmony to become the heart of the Yankees. They finished one-two in every slugging department.

Ruth's incredible home-run record stood for over three decades.

Fans had to wait until 1961 to see Ruth's record fall when the New York Yankees produced another one-two punch known as the M&M boys: Maris and Mickey Mantle. Although most fans were hoping "the Mick" would be the one to beat "the Babe's" home-run record, it was Maris who would ultimately rewrite the record books with 61 home runs.

The league had expanded to 10 teams that season to include the Los Angeles Angels and the Washington Senators and increased the schedule to 162 games. The added eight games enabled Maris to break Ruth's single-season record of 60 home runs. For that reason, commissioner Ford Frick issued a decree declaring, "If Maris didn't shatter Ruth's record during the first 154 games, as did Ruth, the feat would forever have an asterisk assigned to it in the history books." Maris broke the record on the last day of the season at Yankee Stadium with a homer against Boston's Tracy Stallard. For that reason, many baseball traditionalists believe Ruth's record still stands.

Today's major-league players are currently in the middle of a hot and heavy home-run derby campaign, pumping baseballs out of the park at a record rate. Beefed-up players? Juiced-up balls? Whatever the reason, it appears that this season's players have a good chance of besting Ruth's home-run record.

In a statistic that displays baseball's unpredictability, McGwire batted a mere .201 average in 1991, the lowest of a first baseman in 103 years. Like Ruth and Gehrig, McGwire was once part of a one-two punch when he was teamed with Jose Canseco. Together they were known as the Oakland A's awesome "Bash Brothers," forming one of baseball's most potent power combinations.

Bay Area baseball fans know there's an intangible magic that comes with our favorite sport, a certain sanctity about a game played on newly mowed grass. We experienced it as kids when we attended our first major-league ballgame with Dad at San Francisco's Seal's stadium, and later when we watched Willie Mays dash into the outfield at the crack of a bat, searching for a ball in the foggy shadows of Candlestick Park. And we feel it, even today, when we witness our favorite player hit a long, high one out of the park.

The list of today's legendary moments and immortals is long: Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak; Ted Williams' .406 batting average, Musial's incredible five home runs in one game; the sensational arrival of Jackie Robinson to major-league play in 1947; the incomparable exploits of the Yankees' triple-crown winner Mickey Mantle; Nolan "the Express" Ryan's record-breaking seven career no-hitters; and Orioles all-star Cal Ripken, who became baseball's new "Iron Man" by playing in more than 2,000 consecutive games, breaking Gehrig's celebrated record.

What's this baseball hoopla all about? Well, if you were to ask a diehard baseball fan like myself, I'd probably tell you it's myriad statistics and records that come to life every time we fans attend a ballgame, watch it on our TV sets or listen to it on the radio. It's the great and not-so-great players who've burned a lasting niche in our childhood memories, memories that hearten and rally us even as adults. It's the history and folklore of America's favorite pastime and how it continues to intrigue each generation with its timeless magic and mystique.

Will this be the year someone finally breaks Ruth's cherished record? Will the Giants earn a wild card? Who'll be the league's MVP? The questions come fast and furious this time of year, but the answers can only be found in these immortal words from baseball's incomparable Yankee catcher and philosopher Yogi Berra, who once wisely said: "It ain't over till it's over!"

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