Mac Chases History, Sosa Pennant

Tuesday evening, Mark McGwire's 62nd home run made two people famous.

The sinking liner which darted over Busch Stadium's left-field wall gave Big Mac a moment of communion with the lofty ghosts of Roger Maris and The Bambino.

But the sought-after prey of collectors and taxmen alike also bought the luckless Steve Trachsel membership in an equally exclusive fraternity--the college of Tracy Stallard and Tom Zachary, fellow victims of the pursuit of baseball immortality.

Trachsel--the Chicago right-hander who bravely buzzed a belt-high fastball at McGwire for the record--was enjoying a breakthrough season in his young career. At 14-8, he had rebounded nicely from a disappointing 8-12 record in the 1997 campaign, and his 4.31 ERA in a hitter-friendly, expanded league is better than it looks.

But pause with me for a moment before reducing Trachsel to a trivia answer or enshrining him along with the Fred Merkles and Bill Buckners of baseball lore.

Even Stallard, the never-would-be who served up Roger Maris's 61st and posted a 6-17 record with the Mets two years later, then lost 20 games in 1964, is unfair company.

Post-season play--which seems like an afterthought to much of the baseball community--will occur without the services of the reigning home run king, but Trachsel's Cubs are in the thick of the National League Wild Card race.

Perhaps that makes Tom Zachary a more appropriate historical analogue. In 19 big-league seasons with six teams, Zachary won 186 games and managed to collect two World Series rings, one with the Washington Senators in 1924 and one with the storied St. Louis Cardinals in 1926. But Zachary's best-known feat remains tossing the hanger Babe Ruth hit for number 60.

Unfair though it may be, Zachary's long, successful big-league career boils down to one fat pitch, much the same way Trachsel's threatens to do.

But Trachsel, like Zachary, has a chance, albeit a slim one, at October glory, something McGwire, for all his individual success, does not. The record's sexiness notwithstanding, every at-bat for every Cubbie still involved in the pennant chase is at least as significant as every one of Big Mac's.

The above has important implications for everybody's favorite also-ran, Cubs rightfielder Sammy Sosa, who famously preceded his baseball tenure with a shoeshine business in the Dominican Republic.

Sosa, enjoying a career year of his own, is hitting .311 with 58 home runs and 140 RBI, numbers which make him the frontrunner in the N.L. MVP balloting. To the informed fan, he is 1998's true home run champ.

Sluggers like McGwire--batters who swing for the fences four times a day and damn the torpedoes--are, pardon the iconoclasm, a dime a dozen. Second-rate ballplayers like Dave Kingman, George Foster and Cecil Fielder have put up roughly comparable numbers with exponentially less hoopla.

What sets Sosa apart is the consideration that every at-bat plays into a larger equation than the glamour of personal excellence. His first, indeed his only concern is Chicago's spot in the playoffs.

Of McGwire's 129 RBI, 80 percent have come on home runs, and the Cardinals have only won 29 times when McGwire has gone yard. St. Louis' sub-.500 record demonstrates that Mac and the rest of the St. Louis baseball family packed in the pennant race some time ago.

Sosa, by contrast, must consider taking a strategic walk, hitting to the opposite field to move runners over, avoiding the strikeout in run-scoring opportunities. For every situation in which good fundamental baseball dictates that trying to homer is unpalatable, Sosa must buy out of the race. McGwire observes no such constraints.

Let no one diminish Mac's achievement. The duration of Maris's record alone speaks to its elusiveness. But come October, Steve Trachsel and Sammy Sosa would do well to remember Tom Zachary--who served up baseball's greatest gopher ball but still reached its pinnacle.

And should Trachsel fear Zachary's fate--footnote to a broken record--maybe he could console himself with a less rare, but no less precious piece of history. Photographer Crimson I LOVE YOU, MAC:MARK MCGWIRE and SAMMY SOSA share a moment.