Today in 1998: Mark McGwire Hit His 62nd Home Run

Today marks the 25th anniversary of Mark McGwire hitting his 62nd home run and breaking the previous single-season HR record set by Roger Maris in 1961.

A lot has happened in the last 25 years. McGwire finished his 16-season MLB career in 2001 with 583 home runs and just over 1400 RBI. He had just over 1600 hits and 1300 walks. There’s a universe where Mark McGwire joins the Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2007 with Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn. He didn’t get enough votes because of steroids and the testimony before Congress where he didn’t want to talk about the past. Had McGwire been more forthcoming in front of Congress, I don’t think it would have made any difference. He finally opened up when the St. Louis Cardinals hired him as a hitting coach in 2010, followed by an hour-long interview with Bob Costas on the MLB Network.

How do we look back at the 1998 home run chase between McGwire and Sammy Sosa without acknowledging the elephant in the room? The fact that they were on steroids leads me to believe there should be an asterisk by their records. It’s for the same reason that Hank Aaron is the true home run king. Major League Baseball could have and should have done a better job in testing but the MLBPA fought this in bargaining negotiations for a couple of years.

While the chase for 61 allowed fans to get back into baseball in the years following the 1994-95 strike, it’s now tainted. We can’t look at their numbers without an asterisk. Seeing as how Bonds is alleged to have cheated when he broke McGwire’s record a few years later, Roger Maris—in my opinion—was still the rightful single-season home run king until Aaron Judge broke his record in 2022.

McGwire, Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Alex Rodriguez all have the numbers on paper to get into the Hall of Fame. What they don’t meet is the all-important integrity listed in the voting criteria when it comes to how they played the game. Playing the game with integrity is a serious issue. When it comes to Hall of Fame voting, McGwire never got more than 23.7% of the vote. The numbers dropped further after the interview with Costas. As much as I enjoyed watching McGwire smashing all those home runs, I couldn’t vote for him.

There’s a universe where I’m properly celebrating the 25th anniversary of Mark McGwire’s record-breaking 62nd home run but this one isn’t it.