Home Run Race Helps Bring Fans Back to Baseball

CINCINNATI â€”  As Sammy Sosa jogged back to the Cubs dugout in the ninth inning after making an out, he picked up his broken black bat. It took him only an instant to know what to do with it. Sosa had already made thousands of fans happy earlier in the game with his 52nd home run of the season--a 438-foot monster of a Maris-chase memory. Now, he could make one 10-year-old child ecstatic. With a quick step, Sosa handed his fractured bat to amazed Brad Johnson, sitting in the front row.

“The kid was real happy. He was crying when I gave him the bat,� said Sosa in his soft voice. “That’s why they come to the ballpark.�

These days, when you come to the ballpark, you never know what’s waiting for you. That notion has applied to every fan in America as the old game has reached out and grabbed a nation once again. However, this whole stunning summer--and the power of baseball to catch us young and keep us for a lifetime--may have been capsulized in the experience of that one elementary school child.

“Brad didn’t just get Sosa’s bat. He got two balls during the game,� said Tim Dunn, who coaches young Johnson on the Indian Hill Braves football team. “I think he caught a foul ball and the bat boy flipped one up to him, too.�

Maybe it’s a symbol of baseball’s almost ridiculous desire to please us this season that, on top of everything else, 21-year-old rookie Kerry Wood of the Cubs struck out 16 Cincinnati Reds. Do you think there’s a chance that maybe Brad Johnson will be a baseball fan when he grows up?

We’d have asked him that question--several reporters descended on his seat within minutes--but Reds ushers had, believe it or not, already rousted him and his mother out of their seats. You can’t sit in Marge Schott’s stands with a bat in your hands!

The Johnsons went to the fan relations department to appeal the silly rule and were told: Okay, go back to your seats. But, by then, the Johnsons told Reds personnel that--what the heck--they’d just take that valuable bat and go home. Typical baseball, don’t you think? Find a way to turn a perfect day into a slightly sour experience?

What this season has proved again is that the game itself, and the players on the field, have never been better. Conceivably, they’ve never been as good. As long as those who run the sport, and meddle with it, are kept at bay, baseball goes from strength to strength.

Sosa is a perfect illustration. He’s just a gem. The closer you get to him, the more you sense that his gentle, slightly whimsical smile is genuine. He relishes the spotlight without hogging it. And he’s as dazzled by what’s happening to him as everybody else.

What’s it feel like to have 50-plus home runs with a month still left in the season? “Sometimes I ask the same question myself,� he said.

Was a blast he hit Wednesday one of his longest of the season? “I’ve been hitting so many that I don’t remember,� he said. “Besides, I don’t watch the ball after I hit it. I run. I respect the other team. I don’t want to show up anybody. When I got back in the dugout, I asked my teammates, “Where did the ball go?’ They said, “Left field. By the window up there!’ �

Sosa lets his eyes get larger on the word “window.�

Cal Ripken’s perfect behavior during his pursuit of Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-game record was, at least in part, driven by a natural dutifulness. Mark McGwire is similar. The Cardinal slugger with 54 homers is just too nice a man to say, “No.� But Sosa is the player on center stage in baseball who’s, basically, loving every minute of it. “This is just me,� Sosa said, grinning as he held court.

Sammy, do you think the boy will pay for his college education with the proceeds of that broken Louisville Slugger?

For an instant, Sosa thought. Then, as he often does, Sosa decided to go with honesty and a crooked grin. “I hope so,� he said.

“But I can’t lie to you,� he added, opening the duffel bag full of bats in his locker. “That’s not the bat I hit the homer with.

“I used this white one,� said Sosa, affectionately picking up the Rawlings stick that sent a Brett Tomko fastball high and far over the 375-foot sign in straight left field.

Sosa, you see, has a personal relationship with bats. Mark Fidrych once talked to the balls he was about to pitch. Sosa anthropomorphizes his lumber. “After that homer, I looked at my bat and thought, ‘Wow, he needs a rest.’ So, I used this black one the next time up. But after I struck out twice, I thought, “Now he needs a rest, too.’ �

So, within the same game, the superstitious Sosa switched to a third bat. And that’s the one the kid got.

Ever since Sosa announced himself to the world outside baseball with 20 home runs in June--the most prodigious month in the game’s history--it’s been assumed that, sooner or later, he would fade from this chase. He’s been a fine slugger for years, but a wild swinger who fanned 174 times last season. Sosa has wisely played along with this game, saying, “McGwire is the man. My money is on him.�

Inside the game, however, players are figuring out that Sosa is serious. This normal-size 5-foot-10 human being, not the 250-pound Bunyanesque Cardinal cleanup man, may end up with the record. “He gets better every year,� says Cubs pitcher Kevin Tapini. “He studies the pitchers better, gets more disciplined, doesn’t try to pull the ball too much. Last year, you could get him to chase sliders low and away or fastball above the belt. Not any more.

“What’s amazing is how far the ball carries when he hits it. He’ll golf a low slider down at the ankles and you’ll think, “That can’t get out of the park.’ Then it does.�

As Mark McGwire looks in his rear view window in this season’s final thrilling month, he’ll probably see a high-powered Sammy Sosa right on his bumper. Yes, the Cub is locked in the Cardinal’s draft and enjoying it. Big Mac’s carrying the pressure. Sosa’s just grinning and giving his busted bats to kids. All in all, that just evens things up. And makes this chase all the better.