Home Run Heroes, the Sequel, may not have the urgency or the vitality of the original, and that is not the fault of Sammy Sosa or of Mark McGwire. The second kiss is never as unforgettable as the first.
But there is another side to this one, an aspect missing from what so captivated and enchanted the world last summer. And it is this: Sosa could win this one.
Sosa could get major-league baseball’s single-season home run record, a mark not just cherished but sanctified by generations on sandlots and in beer leagues and from grandparents to grandchildren, the one absolute number that elevates its possessor to permanence, a lasting place in the common imagination.
It is the number of Ruth and Maris and now McGwire, names that immediately bring to mind strength and power and authority, names distinct from the routine pile. Strange it is that Sosa has hit the second most home runs in a season and never has won a home run title.
For all of Sosa’s winning cheerfulness, his natural ease and engaging manner, he is not defined as, to use Sosa’s own phrase, The Man. The acceptance of Sosa is made uncomplicated by the fact that he is The Sidekick.
McGwire should be eternally grateful Sosa is there in contrast, to relieve for him the burden of matchless achievement, for Sosa has stayed just close enough to provide McGwire with a cushion against a world that would otherwise overwhelm him.
It is not so much that Sosa inspires McGwire as he completes him, provides for him a better side of the same quest, and Sosa allows the world to enjoy the good temper of the one without being too put off by the awkward moods of the other.
Without Sosa there, for example, with McGwire a dozen to 15 homers ahead of any of the rest–Griffey or Bagwell or Canseco–how much more heat would McGwire have endured over his testosterone supplement? McGwire would have been a chemical freak for sure if Sosa had not proved that nearly as much could be done on chewable vitamins.
Sosa may complete McGwire in the way that Tonto completes the Lone Ranger or as Eleanor completed Franklin, but America never has had to face how it might feel otherwise.
There was never any real conviction last season that Sosa would catch McGwire, although Sosa’s 66th and final home run actually put him ahead for a brief hour before McGwire pounded out a fistful of finishing home runs.
It ended as expected and as preferred with America applauding not only the drama but the order, exalting McGwire for his achievement and Sosa for his challenge, there being no reason to choose one hero over the other.
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This was a remarkable resolution to so involving a rivalry, not just between the participants who seemed to have no animosity toward each other but within the greater society that could have been split between the comfortable and the hungry, between the establishment and the upstart. The big lug from California and the former Caribbean shoeshine kid. What a show. Ain’t America grand?
Will we feel as generous to Sosa, a native Dominican, if he passes 70 home runs as we did to McGwire, a native son, when he got there? Will provincialism and resentment replace tolerance and innocent fancy? The answers to these questions are ahead of us and on Sosa’s mighty bat.
There was a hint of it after McGwire broke Roger Maris’ record to great and widespread applause. Granting that the record was distant, McGwire got there first and the energy of the celebration fed from time and legend, McGwire was anointed that day, and Sosa was deposited into the second chair.
The Hall of Fame had to be nudged to mark Sosa’s baseballs as they were doing with McGwire’s and embarrassed into adding a Sosa display in Cooperstown once Sosa, too, had passed Maris.
The order has remained McGwire and then Sosa as indelibly as their home run sums, 70 and 66. This is as it should be for the record is McGwire’s until it no longer is McGwire’s.
Sosa has to get the record for any of this to be revealed. To merely beat McGwire in a single season without getting McGwire’s record will seem like a consolation prize and hardly worth begrudging.
It will be intriguing to see if McGwire is as generous to Sosa as Sosa was to him, should things go as they are for the next month or so. More interestingly, it will be an examination of America’s sense of fair play and sportsmanship if a foreign-born player claims America’s greatest sports record.
Go, Sammy.