Hitting His Mark

OAKLAND —  It was a season that began with family and friends talking Mark McGwire out of retirement. It is winding down with McGwire having attained an improbable goal of 50 homers.

Overcoming the frustration of another injury and the numbing thought that he couldn’t endure the demands of one more rehabilitation, the Oakland Athletics’ first baseman has continued to hit home runs at a pace exceeded only by Babe Ruth.

He is the the 13th player to hit 50. The clock is ticking on 60, but that has never been his objective.

He has never been driven to surpass Ruth’s total of 1927 or the 61 hit by Roger Maris in 1961.

Ruth and Maris can wait. He wanted 50 for Matt McGwire, his 8-year-old son.

“Everything I do in life and baseball is for him,” McGwire said. “He’s totally grounded me.”

Matt was born on the last day of the 1987 season. McGwire had 49 homers and a lock on the American League’s rookie-of-the-year award.

He has been told that the wind was blowing out that day at Comiskey Park in Chicago, where the A’s were playing, but it didn’t matter then and hasn’t mattered since. Fifty lost importance when McGwire learned that wife Kathy was in labor.

He returned to Orange County in time to share in Matt’s delivery.

“I’ve never had any regrets,” McGwire said recently. “There would be other chances for 50, but never another firstborn.”

Injuries and shortened seasons diminished his chances, as injuries did again in 1996, but McGwire has now crossed the threshold.

“First of all, people talk about 60 as if 50 doesn’t exist,” McGwire said. “In all of the years, how many times has it been done?

“I mean, it’s a tremendous feat in itself, and it means that much more to me to be able to do it for Matt. I’ve talked to him about it, and I’m not sure he understands, but I think he will in time.”

McGwire hit his 50th Saturday in Cleveland and retrieved the ball to give to his son. A nine-year bridge. Part of the bond.

The presentation was made in Orange County on Monday, when the Oakland slugger was able to spend a rare off day with his son.

The McGwires were divorced a year after Matt was born.

It was a difficult divorce in a troubled period for McGwire, but a special relationship ensued--to Matt’s benefit.

McGwire and his former wife have no problem communicating, and McGwire is so close to Tom Williamson, Kathy’s new husband, that they often play golf and have dinner together.

McGwire, who grew up in Claremont and attended Damien High and USC, now lives in Huntington Beach and often drops by his former wife’s home in Costa Mesa during the off-season to pick up Matt and his buddies for backyard baseball, football and soccer.

Matt is already developing a competitive edge, playing in age-group golf tournaments.

“People change and grow,” McGwire said. “Kathy is happy with her life and I’m happy with mine. A divorce doesn’t have to be all negative. Matt is a reminder of that, and a reminder to me that there’s more to life than baseball.

“Baseball won’t make or break me.”

In the glory years of “the Bash Brothers,” Jose Canseco was perceived to be the one with problems, but McGwire said there was a period in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when it was difficult looking in the mirror.

He said the divorce was the most public manifestation of problems that prompted him to begin regular visits to a psychologist he continues to see for positive reinforcement.

Although he enjoyed productive seasons in 1988, ’89 and ‘90, when he hit 39 homers and drove in 108 runs, his personal regression reached bottom in 1991, when he hit 22 homers and batted .201.

Doug Rader became the A’s hitting instructor in 1992 and gave McGwire a new approach. More mind games. Think about what the pitcher is allowing you to do and try not to do more. Accept the walk and opposite-field single.

McGwire also began to lift weights year-round and went to a high-protein, low-fat diet.

His reshaped body, along with the counseling on and off the field, regenerated his confidence.

He hit 42 homers and drove in 104 runs in 1992, but then his sculptured body began to betray him.

He sat out 242 of 420 games from 1993 through 1995. If it wasn’t his left heel or his right heel, it was his back.

The main problem is that his arches are too small and his feet too narrow to support a 6-foot-5, 250-pound frame.

McGwire had operations on his left heel in 1993 and ’94.

When his right heel blew in March, putting him on the disabled list for the eighth time with a prognosis he would be out three months, a disheartened McGwire went back to his Claremont roots to discuss retirement with family and friends.

“I was pretty close to it,” McGwire said. “I didn’t think I could go through another rehab. I had done it twice, getting myself back to a competitive level, and then it had happened for a third time with no assurance that I wouldn’t have to do it again next year or even sooner.”

The McGwires are a highly motivated, competitive family--Mark being one of five brothers.

Dan played quarterback at San Diego State, was recently released by the Miami Dolphins and is still hoping to catch on with an NFL team.

Mike is a psychologist, Bob a building contractor and J.J. a body builder and weight trainer.

Ginger, their mother, was a college swimmer. John, their father, is a dentist who had polio as a child and spent seven months bedridden but went on to box and play golf, and, though now wearing a leg brace, recently biked from San Francisco to San Diego. He is a constant reminder to Mark and the McGwire clan of perspective.

“I basically heard the same thing from everyone, that I was still in my prime and it would be a mistake to quit,” McGwire said.

“Everybody was positive. Everybody left me with the feeling I couldn’t walk away from something I had done my whole life if I was going to regret it for the rest of my life.”

McGwire, who wears supports in his shoes to compensate for the foot problems, missed 18 games at the start of the season because of the heel and five in late July because of his back. He has missed 31 games in all, but still is leading the majors in homers, slugging percentage and on-base percentage, a trifecta accomplished by only nine players.

He also leads the majors with a ratio of 7.8 at-bats per home run, better than his 1995 major league record of 8.1, and his career ratio of 12.41 is second only to Ruth’s 11.76.

“Mark is so strong and his swing is so consistent that he can mis-hit the ball and still hit it out,” A’s Manager Art Howe said.

According to MCI measurements, McGwire has hit six home runs of more than 450 feet this year, one a 488-foot rocket in Toronto’s SkyDome that is the longest in the five years of computer measurements.

“I honestly believe we’re watching the best home-run hitter in the game,” Oakland third baseman Scott Brosius said. “To miss one of his at-bats is a real mistake.”

Only McGwire and Terry Steinbach remain from the A’s championship era. Last winter’s reconstruction almost claimed McGwire.

The A’s had a tentative deal with the San Diego Padres for a package of prospects before the Padres backed out, claiming the price was too high.

“We’re happy with the way it turned out and the other club seems to be doing quite well,” Oakland General Manager Sandy Alderson said.

McGwire has a five-year, $28-million contract that expires after the 1997 season. He has been assured by the A’s that he will remain with the club until then, at least.

McGwire, 33, hopes it’s longer. By all accounts he has blossomed into a leader with a young and anonymous team.

He calls the relaxed season of modest expectations for the A’s his most enjoyable yet.

Said Brosius: “We tend to feed off Mark. He hits one 500 feet and we tell ourselves, ‘All we have to do is hit it 400 feet.’ ” The reconfigured and suddenly hitter-friendly Coliseum has helped the A’s make a run at the major league record for homers.

Geronimo Berroa, batting behind McGwire, has become something of a Bash Brother with 36 homers.

He and McGwire have combined for more in a season than Canseco and McGwire ever did, but Berroa’s undisciplined approach--he has 113 strikeouts--still makes it difficult for McGwire to get more than one or two good pitches a game.

Nevertheless, McGwire has shown a discipline that Rader would approve of. He is among league leaders with 105 walks and a .324 batting average.

In one recent stretch of 162 games over a two-year period, the equivalent of a full season, McGwire hit 68 homers.

He is No. 1 on the A’s all-time list with 327 but would have more than 400 if it hadn’t been for the injuries.

“There’s no sense living in the past or thinking about the what-ifs,” McGwire said. “I’m happy with who I am and where I am.

“I really feel like I’m just getting to my prime, with a lot of good baseball ahead of me.”

Recruited to USC as a pitcher by a Trojan pitching coach named Marcel Lachemann, who would soon leave to become a roving instructor with the Angels, McGwire laughed and insisted he would now be pitching in the majors if Lachemann had stayed at USC as an assistant to Rod Dedeaux.

Instead, Ron Vaughn, another USC assistant who now scouts with the A’s, convinced Dedeaux that McGwire should be playing full-time and not splitting time between the mound and first base.

McGwire still holds the Pacific 10 Conference single-season record with 32 homers and says he understands the fascination with home runs, if not the countdowns that often begin when a hitter is 20 or 30 away from 60.

“Someday somebody is going to break the home run record and it will be an unbelievable feat, but I don’t sit here thinking about it because I realize how difficult it is,” McGwire said.

“I mean, hitting a home run is probably the most difficult thing in sports, and doing it consistently in the second half of a season when teams aren’t pitching to you is mind-boggling.”

Fifty will do for now. McGwire said he is both numbed and thrilled to have attained his primary goal despite another injury-marred season.

Matt McGwire may be too young to understand. On the other hand, maybe not.

He recently told his paternal grandparents that he wished his parents had named him Mark McGwire Jr.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Top Homer Ratios

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PLAYER YEAR RATIO Mark McGwire, A’s* 1996 7.84 Mark McGwire, A’s 1995 8.13 Babe Ruth, Yankees 1920 8.48 Babe Ruth, Yankees 1927 9.00 Babe Ruth, Yankees 1921 9.15 Mickey Mantle, Yankees 1961 9.51 Hank Greenberg, Tigers 1938 9.59 Roger Maris, Yankees 1961 9.67 Hank Aaron, Braves 1973 9.80

*--*

* Through Sept. 15

Homers by Season

McGwire’s totals by season:

Year: HR

1986: 3

1987: 49

1988: 32

1989: 33

1990: 39

1991: 22

1992: 42

1993: 9

1994: 9

1995: 39

1996: 50

Total: 327