It’s Not Dodgers’ or McGwire’s Day

Sorry, fans, all 53,857 of you who showed up at Dodger Stadium Sunday. My fault.

I know why you came to the ballpark. It’s the same reason I did: to see Mark McGwire hit a home run.

Not only did we miss out on that, we only got two chances to see him try before he left because of an injury.

I think I know why. It’s because I was there. I’m jinxed.

My grandfather saw Babe Ruth hit a home run, and I’d love to be able to tell my grandkids I was there when the greatest home run hitter of this era hit one out.

I’ve been fortunate enough to sit courtside when Michael Jordan went for 55, watched Wayne Gretzky set up camp behind the net and find a teammate for an assist, stood behind Tiger Woods when he crushed balls down the fairway.

But I’ve never seen McGwire hit a home run in person. It’s a missing piece in my sports memories collection.

I have a hard enough time catching him--or Sammy Sosa, for that matter--hitting a home run live on television, which seems almost impossible in this satellite/superstation-era.

Again and again, when I watched, McGwire and Sosa didn’t hit one and when they did hit one, I wasn’t watching. If not for videotape I would have thought the entire great home run race of 1998 was an elaborate illusion, like that faked lunar landing in “Capricorn One.”

After watching on TV when McGwire hit that opening day home run against Ramon Martinez in St. Louis last year, I saw the next 69 on replay.

The closer he got to Roger Maris’ record, the worse my luck turned.

McGwire had 60 home runs when I boarded a plane in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport on Sept. 7. I rushed to the first television I could find when I got off the plane in Chicago. The Mark and Sammy Show was all anybody was talking about that week; I knew they’d have the Cardinals-Cubs game on. I was right. But I was too late. McGwire had hit No. 61.

The next night I made sure I was in my hotel room for the very first pitch. I braced for the historic moment.

I watched McGwire’s first at-bat, a groundout.

Then I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I could tell by the buzz in the crowd that It had already happened. An inning earlier, as it turned out.

A moment 37 years in the making and I snoozed right through it.

My luck wasn’t much better with Sosa, a guy I got to see in person once in San Francisco, once in Chicago and twice in San Diego, thanks to work assignments.

Sosa’s 66 home runs in 159 games last season work out to an average of one every 2.41 games. With four games, the odds say I should have seen him hit at least once. Well, I never was very good with numbers, and in this case the numbers weren’t good to me.

Neither was the Wendy’s in Ruston, La., where I was working on a story about Grambling’s new football coach, Doug Williams. I was rushing back to my hotel room, trying to catch the start of the Cubs-Pirates game on WGN. But a man’s gotta eat, and room service wasn’t an option because the hotel didn’t have any.

The wait for my food took longer than a Tony La Russa-managed game. Oh well, I figured, it’s not like Sosa was going to hit a homer in the first inning.

Sure. I got back to my room, turned on the TV and Sosa was in the dugout, grinning, which could only mean one thing. Home run No. 57.

That’s pretty much the way things went the whole season. I did manage to see Sosa’s No. 66 while standing in a hotel lobby, but that good feeling lasted about as long as Sosa’s lead in the home run race. Forty-five minutes later, McGwire hit his 66th, the first of five more McGwire home runs I would miss.

This year brought a new season, and again I got off to a good start by catching McGwire’s opening-night home run.

After the show he put on during batting practice Sunday, I thought he was primed to break out of his weeklong home run drought--and liberate me from my year-long misfortune. McGwire hit five balls over the roof in left field. He hit two more balls that sailed between the flagpoles beyond center field like extra points splitting the uprights.

I didn’t get my hopes too high for MGwire’s first at-bat. Thanks to the 5 p.m. start, the pitcher’s mound was in sunlight and home plate was covered in shadows during the first inning, which figured to make it hard for hitters to pick up the ball. No wonder McGwire struck out looking.

But when Fernando Tatis smoked a ball off the outfield wall and Eric Davis hit a home run in that same inning, I started to think this wasn’t about visual impairments or batter-pitcher matchups but about bad, bad luck.

In his next at-bat McGwire worked the count to his favor at 3-1. The next pitch would probably be the best one he’d see all night. He hit it far, but it curved down the right field line and landed foul. At least I can say I saw him hit one into the seats.

Between innings came the word that McGwire had left the game because of a tightened left hamstring. That was it, no more Mac. See you May 21.

Go ahead and buy your tickets for that series, but be forewarned that I plan on attending again, bad luck and all. Even though every indication tells me I’ll never see McGwire hit a home run, I’m willing to try again.

It’s going to work out for me one of these days. Probably right after I win the lottery.

J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com