Mark McGwire hit 71!

With the frenzy over Barry Bonds and his chase to break the single-season home run record, I started thinking about that 1998 season. Here’s why I say Mark hit 71, and not 70.

The scene: Milwaukee, County Stadium. Sept. 20, last week of the season. McGwire has already hit number 65 in the first inning. He steps up in the fifth, I think it was, and hits a deep fly ball to center. As the ball crosses the wall, a fan catches it. The ump rules fan interference, and the hit is called a double. A replay of the incident shows that the ball was out of the reach of the center fielder, so this isn’t like the Jeffrey Maier incident. The ball was clearly a home run, and it was five days before he hit another.

So, if Barry Bond$ breaks the record, (which he won’t) will there be any mention of this?

No, because the umpires are always right and what they say is what goes. Are you going to go back into the past and argue balls and strikes and give the strikeout victims some extra swings because of a bad call?

Short answer: NO.

And Roger Maris hit 62 home runs, but one was nullified because the game was rained out before it became official.

Unless you are going to build a time machine and change history, you just have to let it go.

Didn’t Foxx hit 60 one year, only to have two of them discounted because of a rainout? I’m guessing 1932, since the Beisbol Encyclopedia records 58 for The Beast that year.

But as our resident baseball maven, BobT, pointed out, them’s the breaks.

As a St Louis Cardinal fan, I remember very clearly the uproar that went up about this. In the middle of the race, McGwire gets a long-ball called back. I think LaRussa even petitioned the commissioner’s office, but the umpire’s ruling was upheld.

The record is 70.

And I have my Barry Bonds voodoo doll handy, just in case…

I’m not sure if it was the year they had an undefeated season, but that would be my guess. Their runners were: [list]**
[li]Csonka[/li][li]Kick[/li][li]Morris**[/li]
At the end of the year, Csonka and Kick had over 1000 yards, but Morris fell short with only 994 yards. The league went back and watched all of the films until they found a run of Morris’ that was over 6 yards, but had been called back for a penalty. It was ruled that the penalty was called in error and Miami had what was probably the only team with three runners gaining over 1000 yards in a season.