The Chris Moeller Archives

McGwire adds to his honors

The Cardinals gave us some wonderful news on Friday. We the Fans have voted Mark McGwire into the team’s Hall of Fame. He will be enshrined in August, along with former World Series heroes Pepper Martin (’30, ’31, and ’34) and Tim McCarver (’64, ’67, and ’68).

The night McGwire broke Roger Maris’ single-season home run record in 1998-- and did so with four weeks still left in the season-- club CEO Bill DeWitt told the gathering at Busch Stadium II that Big Mac’s uniform number 25 would one day be retired by the Cardinals. Almost two decades later, the retired slugger lives in the shadow of a Congressional testimony he was required to give in 2005 regarding steroid use in the game, and number 25 has been worn by both current bench coach David Bell and now outfielder Dexter Fowler.

McGwire, along with Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa, saved baseball in 1998. I was there and I watched it happen. Mac retired after the 2001 season, lived a mostly-private life for a period of almost a decade, then returned to be the Cardinals hitting coach in 2010. In 2011, he earned a World Series ring-- his first with the Cardinals—and that fact was one that made me deliriously happy at the end of that one-of-a-kind season. He has since served as the hitting coach for the Dodgers and now the bench coach for the Padres, both teams closer in physical proximity to his off-season home in Irvine, California, but the Padres will certainly permit him to break away from their club during the first weekend in August for a little soiree back in his wife’s hometown.

Now, in addition to having a ring, he will own one of the Cardinal red sport jackets given by the team to their Hall inductees and will be invited to join, on the field each Opening Day, a fraternity that holds these other living legends: Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Ozzie Smith, Whitey Herzog, Bruce Sutter, Tony LaRussa, Mike Shannon, Willie McGee, Jim Edmonds, Ted Simmons, Chris Carpenter, Joe Torre, and fellow 2017 inductee McCarver.

posted by CM @ 6:16 PM