This Time, Mark McGwire Should Make Way For Roger Maris

Earlier this year, the Mark McGwire Highway in the great state of Missouri got its old name back, the Mark Twain Highway.

The well-traveled stretch of I-70 near Busch Stadium in St. Louis had been dedicated in 1999 to the now-disgraced former Cardinals slugger a year after he dethroned Roger Maris as the single-season home-run king.

No one is questioning the credentials of the renowned author from Hannibal, Mo., but wouldn't it be more fitting if Roger Maris, who finished his career in St. Louis, be the one to replace McGwire on the highway signs just as McGwire replaced him in the record books after pilfering his crown?

In January, the Cardinals’ new batting coach joined the endless parade of red-faced celebrities who have made public apologies by admitting he took steroids for several years, including in 1998 when he smashed 70 home runs to shatter Roger Maris’s record of 61, established in 1961.

He was not prepared for the negative reaction he received.

To both fans and pundits, McGwire’s teary-eyed confession came across as disingenuous, motivated less by a crisis of conscience than a desire to repair his image so that he could make a smooth return to baseball.

His agency, IMG (which has also orchestrated Tiger Woods’s much-controlled press encounters), thought his admission was necessary after his infamous, humiliating televised appearance before a congressional subcommittee in 2005. That’s when he killed off his chances for Hall of Fame induction by refusing to either deny or fess up to steroid use during his career with the Oakland A’s and Cardinals.

The problem this past January was that no one could figure out what he was apologizing for.

Oddly, McGwire said then that he was sorry only for not admitting that he took steroids, not for taking them. He insisted that he took them only to help him overcome career-threatening injuries, not to make Big Mac into Bigger Mac or give him Herculean strength. Indeed, he maintained he was able to hit balls into the stratosphere on checked swings and accumulate a mind-blowing 70 homers because of the ability God gave him.

Like the former A’s teammate he now bashes, Jose Canseco, he seemed to make a pretty good case for steroids being positive performance enablers that allow injured athletes to get back on the field rather than performance enhancers that provide average players or aging stars with the unfair opportunity to become national heroes.

If this is what he was saying, then why did he seem so damn guilty?

Earlier in the day, McGwire had called the Maris family and reported back that Pat Maris, Roger’s widow since the fifty-one-year-old died from lymphoma in 1985, was “hurt and disappointed.”

But it’s doubtful that he apologized to her about anything other than having never before admitted to steroid use, because he had talked himself into believing that his record, broken in 2001 by another steroid suspect, Barry Bonds, was legitimate.

Later that same day, a couple of Maris’s four sons, aware that steroids are enhancers, said their father’s 61 homers should be reinstated as the major league record, yet at the same time they praised McGwire for confessing and emphasized that he was still like a “brother to us.”

The Maris boys have been noble for sticking by McGwire, but they don’t seem to recognize the damage he did to their father’s legacy when on steroids.

While baseball fans and the media have an off-with-his-head attitude toward steroid users now, McGwire has gotten off easy and, surprisingly, there has been no sideshow this season as he visits National League stadiums with the Cardinals. Perhaps no one is jeering during McGwire sightings because so many of us were on his bandwagon during the 1998 season when he hit majestic home runs and bested Sammy Sosa in a thrilling race that made everyone forget the baseball strike of 1994-95.

Even statistics freaks and custodians of the record books were delighted that the possessor of the greatest record in sports was, for the first time since 1961, someone who seemed Hall of Fame-bound.

So while most everyone has the right to be incensed by McGwire’s admission, they still thank him for the memories.

In fact, the one person who didn’t benefit at all was Roger Maris, whose hard-earned record was stricken from the books.

Maris’s family bonded with McGwire because he let them take part in his journey to history and was extremely respectful to Roger as he neared his mark. He praised Maris endlessly for his accomplishment, told everyone that “he is in my heart,” and kissed the bat that Maris had used to crush Tracy Stallard’s fastball for his historic home run on October 1, 1961.

After McGwire stroked his 62nd homer in St. Louis on September 8, 1998, he climbed into the stands to embrace the Maris kids and whisper something personal in their ears. Yet at the same time he was winning over the kids with his kindness, he was taking steroids as he attempted to replace their father in the record books.

Think about those silly costume movies in which a kind king’s trusted son or chief adviser is always flattering him while secretly breaking laws and engineering a coup so he can wear the crown—after which he exiles the former ruler and forbids his name to be spoken in the kingdom again. McGwire considers himself too nice to be so underhanded, yet he pulled the same kind of sinister trick on the home-run king’s family, winning them over while using any sneaky means necessary to erase Roger Maris’s name from baseball history.

In 1961, when the baseball season expanded from 154 to 162 games, Roger Maris became the man who broke Babe Ruth’s seemingly unbreakable single-season home run record, equaling 60 homers in three fewer plate appearances than Ruth and reaching 61 homers in only seven more plate appearances (including being hit by pitches seven times).

He did this despite enduring the most pressure any athlete has had over a sustained period of time other than Jackie Robinson in 1947—and even Robinson was at least cheered in his home park. Almost everyone rooted against him: fans, reporters, his own Yankee organization, and even baseball commissioner Ford Frick, who wanted to put a mark (the infamous asterisk that was never implemented) by Maris’s homer total if he passed Ruth in more than 154 games. 

No wonder “Against All Odds” is written on both his plaque at Yankee Stadium and his tombstone in Fargo, North Dakota.

A complete and clutch player, Maris—who made his debut with the New York Yankees 50 years ago this past spring—has many other accomplishments as well that should have assured him of serious Hall of Fame consideration, including winning back-to-back American League MVPs, playing in seven All-Star games, matching Mickey Mantle's stats in their seven seasons as Yankee teammates and coming to the third-place Yankees in 1960 and third-place Cardinals in 1967 and leading both teams to seven pennants and three world titles in nine years.

However, reporters so detested Maris for besting the immortal Ruth, beating out their hero Mickey Mantle in the home-run chase, having the integrity to not exchange personal quotes for favorable coverage, and eventually boycotting them, that they denigrated his achievements and character to such a degree that he never came close on the Hall of Fame ballot and is the only two-time MVP who is frequently called a one-year-wonder by a younger generation of sports fans. Still the spiteful reporters could do nothing about the 61 home runs in the record book that kept Roger Maris’s name alive and made the curious investigate his full career to see whether he is Hall of Fame worthy after all.

But Mark McGwire took care of that.

Surely when McGwire whispered into the ears of the Maris family members who saw him clout his 62nd homer, he did not say, “I am sorry to say that I have been injecting myself with steroids and your father should still be the record holder.”

It’s not too late.

That’s the apology we all want from Mark McGwire (and Barry Bonds).

And that’s the apology that Roger Maris, his one true victim, deserves and needs to have his identity restored.

There are Maris fans who believe that if Major League Baseball shocks the world and erases the names McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds from the record books and again makes Maris the single-season home-run champion, that will get him into Cooperstown, which in turn will guarantee that his identity will be restored forever. However, that thinking implies that he deserves induction only because of the record and would no longer be qualified if someone hits 62 or more homers down the road.

Maris, who remains the AL home-run champion, deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, whether he holds the record or not, because he was one of the greatest players of his era and had tremendous impact on his sport.

His chances will improve on July 25, when former Cardinals and Royals manager Whitey Herzog will be inducted.

Roger’s dear friend, who was his teammate, neighbor, and hunting buddy, has stated that he considers Maris the best player not in the Hall.

The hope here is that he (and perhaps 2008 inductee Dick Williams, another close friend) will spearhead a campaign to get Maris elected over the flimsy objections of the powerful writers who have kept him out all these years.

All Maris ever wanted was fair treatment and finally justice might prevail.

Having his name on a Hall of Fame plaque would be even better than his name on a highway.

 Tom Clavin and Danny Peary are the authors of “Roger Maris: Baseball’s Reluctant Hero,” published recently by Touchstone/Simon and Schuster.