The chase provided the perfect antidote to the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal that unfolded simultaneously. It landed McGwire and Sosa on the cover of Sports Illustrated, wearing togas and laurel wreaths. It led to a book titled The Perfect Season: Why 1998 Was Baseball’s Greatest Year.
But how should that season be remembered now? Griffey, whose home run total that year was the highest of his career and matched his total from 1997, declined a request to talk about 1998. So did the Mets’ Carlos Delgado, who hit 38 home runs in 1998 as he began to emerge as one the sport’s premier sluggers.
Perhaps the general disillusionment with 1998 made them uneasy. Still, there are fans like McFarlane, historians like Vincent and authors like Ezra who have no trouble accepting 1998 for what they believe it was.
“It should be viewed as one of the great home run chases,” Vincent said. “People can go back and try to rewrite history and say it wasn’t really that big of a deal. But it was.”
He noted the issues of other eras: the white players inducted into the Hall of Fame who never faced African-Americans, the players who freely took amphetamines, the pitchers who rubbed foreign substances on baseballs. He pointed to other factors — narrower strike zones and smaller ballparks — that had nothing to do with drugs but also contributed to the power surge.
Vincent said players eligible for Cooperstown should ultimately be judged by how they performed against their peers.
“I always come back to one thing,” he said. “It’s not the Hall of Angels. It’s the Hall of Great Ballplayers.”
Actually, the majority of those involved in the 1998 home run onslaught are not yet eligible for the Hall of Fame, although the meager vote totals McGwire has drawn so far are not a promising omen. At the same time, the love of the home run remains, drugs or no drugs.
After all, Vincent’s research indicates that of the roughly 17,000 people who have played in the major leagues, only about 7,000 have hit at least one home run. It is just not that easy to put a baseball over the wall.
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