It’s bad enough that the PED Patrol — Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa — have ruined the record books, rendered them unreadable. They’ve been duly prosecuted for their crimes in the court of public opinion, and their sentences include banishment from Cooperstown and expulsion from the hearts and souls of many baseball fans.
But their offenses actually run deeper than the blood they spilled on the history books.
Aaron Judge’s season has generated a lot of local interest. It has engaged Yankees fans in a way they hadn’t been engaged in years. Among the sport’s romantics, watching him pursue Roger Maris’ mark of 61 homers in a season — the “clean” record, in addition to the American League record — has been a wonderful daily event. Every at-bat is a happening. Every game has possibilities lurking within.
But it’s not the same.
I was lucky enough to have been assigned to the McGwire-Sosa chase back in September 1998. It was a glorious time for baseball, and it was a glorious time for newspapers — still flush, still bursting with revenue, still eager to send correspondents out on the road for a month at a time. I bounced between the players and crisscrossed the country.
So on the one hand, you can lump me in with the rest of the scribes who were blissfully blind to the possibilities of steroids, even after that bottle of androstenedione was found in McGwire’s locker, even as our eyes kept cynically wondering why many baseball players — not just McGwire and Sosa — looked different than they used to.
(In the interests of participatory journalism I, and many of my fellow travelers, dutifully sought out local GNCs, bought some Andro, tried some. I concluded Andro, in accordance with a strict daily workout regimen, was far more effective than Andro used in accordance with a strict daily attack on the Marriott breakfast buffet.)
But this is my overriding memory from September 1998:
The world was caught up in McGwire and Sosa. Networks broke into their every at-bat. Every stop in St. Louis, Chicago and elsewhere was a loud, insane carnival. People were obsessed with their pursuit of the record, and when McGwire got there on Labor Day, they became obsessed with where the number was going to end (70, it turned out). It was a thing.
Judge’s pursuit has electrified Yankees fans, and there are Yankees fans in every port of call, so each of his at-bats in Milwaukee this weekend and at ballparks other than Yankee Stadium will be met loudly. But it is much more muted than it was 24 years ago.
And there are two culprits, in my view.
The lesser one is the present state of the media. There are simply fewer of us who are available to make such a daily pilgrimage. There was a time when it was believed the biggest reason nobody would hit .400 was because no man could sustain the “media barrage” such a pursuit would inspire. But the fact is, there are no media barrages anymore. Not like in ’98, when there were literally hundreds of us following McGwire and Sosa like the Grateful Dead.
(I’d just started my job as baseball columnist in Newark. One day, I had to call my sports editor glumly; he wanted me in Milwaukee the next day and the cheapest flight I could find was for $2,500. I called and said I couldn’t go. He asked why. I told him the price. “Stop being a wimp and book the flight!” he said. What a glorious sentence.)
But the bigger one is the PED Patrol. Look, for better or worse, the record remains 73, and the runner-up is 70. So Judge isn’t really chasing the number that’s on the books. But the steroid era — and those three hitters in particular — drained much of the joy and the wonder from the record itself. It’s hard to generate the kind of buzz that surrounded this pursuit in 1998; it’s impossible to manufacture it.
What Judge is doing is good for baseball and great for him, and it is a terrific thing for Yankees fans who have always been proprietary about Maris’ record. But it’s not the same. I miss the traveling circus. I think Judge would actually thrive if forced to face the daily media barrage Maris did in ’61, that McGwire and Sosa did in ’98. He’ll just never have to. And that’s a shame.
Vac’s Whacks
Let’s put it this way: If I were Coach Saleh, it wouldn’t take very much for me to call Mike White’s number Sunday afternoon in Cleveland.
There’s no way the football gods would allow Saquon Barkley’s game last week to be a tease, and outlier, a fluke, right? That would be both cruel and unusual.
Buddy Harrelson (below) was a player, a coach and a manager for the Mets, and his name is still magic around the team. You probably know he’s been battling Alzheimer’s disease for quite some time now. If you wish to support Team Harrelson in the Walk to End Alzheimer’s at Belmont State Park on Sunday, visit www.act.alz.org.
For a genuinely mild-mannered guy, Aaron Boone rarely gets cheated whenever he decides he’s seen enough from an umpire. He always gets his money’s worth.
Whack Back at Vac
Jack Anez: Nestor Cortes’ funky pitching moves remind me of the master of funky moves: Louis Tiant.
Vac: There wasn’t a kid in my neighborhood growing up who didn’t wind up like El Tiante in stickball or Wiffle ball. I hope contemporary kids pay the same homage to Nestor.
Scott Wolinetz: It feels like the Braves are the Terminator, the Mets are Sarah Connor. They can’t be reasoned with, they don’t feel pity or remorse, and they will not stop, ever, until the Mets are dead.
Vac: He’s not wrong, is he?
@drschnipp: Despite all the years of rancidity (is that a word?) Robert Saleh is still second-worst in winning percentage behind only Rich Kotite. So he’s clearly writing checks for those receipts that he can’t cash.
@MikeVacc: I genuinely don’t think that Saleh was aiming those “receipts” comments at Jets fans. But at this moment it’s hard to find many Jets fans who believe that.
Kevin Bryant: How refreshing to have a coach trying to teach a losing team how to win instead of how not to lose some more.
Vac: Brian Daboll had the kind of debut last Sunday that Edward Norton had in “Primal Fear.”
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