Mark McGwire’s summer of love

[CrimsonWhite]

Outstanding article.

There is no right way to feel about Monday. There was joy. It was justified. There is now sadness. It is justified.

There was appreciation, amazement and fondness, and there is now betrayal, disappointment and fraudulence, and Monday, the 10th anniversary of Mark McGwire scorching his 62nd home run over the left-field fence at Busch Stadium, triggers the emotional gamut because each side is indubitably tied to the other.

The duality will forever exist when looking back on 1998, the happiest time in recent baseball history. It was baseball’s Summer of Love, wondrous and carefree, where drug use was ignored and life celebrated. Everyone, from baseball neophytes to lifers, got caught up in the back-and-forth home run duel between McGwire and Sammy Sosa as they chased Roger Maris’ single-season record.

There were only heroes. For the pursuit to gather the following it did without a foil, a villain off of whom McGwire and Sosa could play, was a testament to its power, to how sports, baseball in particular, can serve as an escape from the vagaries. And it’s one of the ironies looking back, that what was thought to be so pure was, in all likelihood, as dirty as it comes.

The unvarnished truth about that summer will someday emerge. Until then, the principals leave us only to our suppositions. They want to address only the good vibrations, and who can blame them, what with guilt heavier than lead. That summer did change the game, and for the better. It was also the flashpoint of so many regretful moments, ones that tarnished baseball and cannot be swept aside like a pile of dust. They’re heavy, too.

To look back on McGwire and Sosa, then, on the summer of ‘98 and on 62, isn’t so much to decide whether to celebrate or lament. It instead reminds us that innocence is a wonderful thing until it’s there no more.

Mark McGwire's summer of love - MLB - Yahoo! Sports