62

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of Mark McGuire hitting his 62nd home run in 1998.

That's crazy, isn't it? I was in the seventh grade for that. It is almost impossible to record how big of a deal that was. My entire family was nuts during the last third of that season. My entire school was nuts. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing about the home run Mark McGuire or Sammy Sosa hit last night.What made that race really awesome, really worthy of remembering forever, was how wholesome it was. Or as it turns out, how wholesome it seemed.

Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa were not enemies. They sang each others praises in interviews, they hugged after McGuire was the first to reach 62. They had no ill-will toward each other and no ill-will toward Roger Maris, the man who's record they were attempting to beat. It was race with nothing but good will and sportsmanship attached to it. It was an achievement we could all believe in. The way everyone got this last summer about Michael Phelps, was nothing compared to how America felt about Mark and Sammy. That summer and fall of '98 is probably the most consistent good news about one particular subject I've been subjected to. It was a good time to be a kid. And a good time to be a baseball fan.

It's sad that we now know about the steroids. It figures, I guess. That was such an awesome, pure thing that I guess it couldn't have been real.