When St. Louis Cardinals' first baseman Mark McGwire launched his 70th home run on the final day of the 1998 season, a young Joe Buck famously asked "How much more can you give us, Big Mac?!"
Apparently, the answer to that question, at least in the mind of McGwire, was nothing.
During Sunday evening's ESPN documentary "Long Gone Summer," legendary Cardinals' manager Tony La Russa admitted that McGwire was so exhausted from the home run chase that he actually asked not to be in the lineup for the final game of the 1998 season. La Russa told McGwire that he couldn't oblige, and while he would monitor him throughout the game, he thought McGwire would go on to regret taking the final game of the season off for the rest of his life if he was granted his request.
La Russa was probably right.
Despite an iconic season from McGwire, the Cardinals didn't enter the final series of the season with a chance to reach the postseason. However, McGwire homered three times over the first two games of the team's season-ending series against the Montreal Expos to move two home runs in front of Chicago Cubs' right fielder Sammy Sosa. With 68 home runs on the season, McGwire was apparently willing to take the risk that Sosa would hit two home runs on the final day of the season and match him for the single-season home run record.
The documentary did a very good job of explaining the pressure that McGwire dealt with on a day-to-day basis in the 1998 season, as he chased, and ultimately broke, Roger Maris' single-season home run record. Even once McGwire passed Maris, Sosa threatened to steal the record.
That didn't ultimately happen, as the 66th home run that Sosa hit on Friday, Sept. 25, the Cubs' fourth-to-last game of the season, proved to be the final home run of his National League MVP campaign. Technically, McGwire could have sat out the final game of the 1998 season and finished with the single-season home run record.
That said, in the four plate appearances that McGwire ultimately got on the final day of the 1998 season, he became the first player in MLB history to reached 70 home runs in a single season:
Though there were nearly 40 years in between Maris breaking Babe Ruth's single-season home run record and McGwire (and Sosa) topping Maris, McGwire's record was short-lived. In 2001, San Francisco Giants' left fielder Barry Bonds wallopped 73 home runs, a record that still stands today and is unlikely to ever be broken.
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