Twenty-eight years later, the shortest home run of Mark McGwire’s monster summer is still the one that changed baseball.
On September 8, 1998, with two outs in the fourth inning at Busch Stadium, McGwire jumped on the first pitch from Chicago Cubs right-hander Steve Trachsel and lined a 341-foot shot just over the left-field wall. It was his 62nd home run of the season, breaking Roger Maris’ 37-year-old record of 61. The Cardinals won 6-3. The celebration lasted more than 10 minutes. Sammy Sosa ran in from right field and embraced him. McGwire hugged the Maris family in the stands, then took a microphone and dedicated the homer to St. Louis.
“I really and truly wanted to do it here,” McGwire said that night. After tying Maris a day earlier — on his father’s 61st birthday — he wanted the record-breaker in front of the home crowd before the Cardinals left town. He got it. He also missed first base in the excitement and had to go back and touch it.
That swing did not end the chase. It only opened the last act. McGwire finished the season with 70 home runs. Sosa finished with 66. The duel pulled fans back to baseball after the 1994–95 strike canceled a World Series and emptied seats. Networks cut in live. Front pages led with the totals. For a few months, two sluggers made the sport feel essential again.
McGwire has never walked away from the work that produced that year. He has also never walked away from the apology that followed it.
In January 2010, preparing to return to St. Louis as the Cardinals’ hitting coach, he admitted he used steroids on and off through the 1990s, including 1998. “I wish I had never touched steroids. It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize,” he said. He later told Bob Costas it was the most regrettable thing he had ever done, and that he called Pat Maris to say he was sorry. He has also said, consistently, that he believes he could have hit 70 without the drugs — that he was a home-run hitter from the start and used PEDs to recover from injuries, not to invent power. Twenty years after the fact, he still answered that question with a flat “Yep.”
That is the split the record still lives in.
One side remembers the summer: packed batting-practice crowds, Sosa’s sportsmanship, a city that packed Busch beyond capacity in late-summer heat, and a game that suddenly mattered again. The other side sees an era without testing, numbers that no longer sit cleanly next to Ruth and Maris, and a Hall of Fame ballot that never opened for McGwire. He peaked at 23.7 percent of the vote. Bonds later hit 73. The single-season mark moved on. The argument did not.
McGwire has, in later interviews, allowed the emotion of that night to surface again. Shown footage around the 25th anniversary, he still got quiet. Time had passed. The clip had not. He has also spoken as a former player watching the next generation, saying records are meant to be broken and that a healthy Aaron Judge is built to chase them. The man who once owned the number no longer pretends it is frozen.
What remains in St. Louis is the image more than the asterisk debate: a line drive that barely cleared the wall, a first baseman who forgot to touch the bag, a rival who ran in to hug him, and a crowd that treated a 341-foot homer like a cathedral moment. McGwire has owned both the swing and the apology. Fans still choose which one they hear first.
On the anniversary, that is the reflection he leaves: the work was real, the night was unforgettable, and the era that produced it will never be simple.
Josh Chambers on X (formerly Twitter): “Mark McGwire says the final weekend of the 1998 home run race changed when Sammy Sosa hit number 66 and moved ahead of him 66-65, and says he went to a Tiger Woods/Kobe Bryant place mentally and hit 5 home runs in the next 3 days to finish with 70″That Friday night, Sammy’s… pic.twitter.com/gWgGUTND27 / X”
Mark McGwire says the final weekend of the 1998 home run race changed when Sammy Sosa hit number 66 and moved ahead of him 66-65, and says he went to a Tiger Woods/Kobe Bryant place mentally and hit 5 home runs in the next 3 days to finish with 70″That Friday night, Sammy’s…
