Just A Regular Guy?

"The trouble with Mac is that he wants to be a regular guy. But he's not."

So says ex-Cardinals catcher Tom Lampkin, a Mark McGwire buddy during Mac's epic 1998 season.

Mark McGwire the baseball player is not, as Lampkin said, a regular guy.

Everybody, it seems, in North America knows that.

But Mark McGwire, the person, at least in one small slice of his personna that can be observed in his interactions with the media, is very much a regular guy.

How is McGwire a regular guy?

Despite his substantial physical stature (6'5", 250 lbs), wealth, and baseball accomplishments, the man appears to be genuinely SHY.

That's right.

Shy.

Interviewing Mac: A Possible Solution?

Edmund Morris is an award-winning biographer who has recently authored a long-anticipated biography of former President Ronald Reagan.

Despite reasonably positive comments from Reagan's sons Michael and Ron, Jr., Morris' effort has been panned by a seemingly endless number of critics, including several men who worked in one or both of Reagan's administrations.

A major criticism of Morris' Reagan bio?

Despite what has been described as unprecedented access to President Reagan, both during and after his Presidency, Morris apparently found his subject so inscrutable that he felt it impossible to write a "standard" biography that the world's readers would want to buy.

Morris' solution?

The invention of a character (a kind of narrator), a fictional character, that was "present" at several meetings and important gatherings that involved Reagan.

Needless to say, Morris' inclusion of a fictional character in a (non-fiction) biography has given Reagan's legions of defenders plenty of ammo as they attack the book on all fronts.

The Pecking Order

Credentialed media, especially writers, who cover the St. Louis Cardinals have virtually unlimited access to all things Cardinal.

For one thing, there are only about a half-dozen sportswriters who regularly cover the home team's games at Busch Stadium.

And of that number, it isn't unusual for only one St. Louis-based baseball writer, Post-Dispatch Cardinals beat writer Rick Hummel, to accompany the team on its dozen or so road trips each year.

In part because so many of the current Cardinals have major league experience with other teams, teams that have a much larger contingent of sportswriters, the atmosphere within the Cardinals clubhouse is, for the most part, a receptive one for St. Louis-based sportswriters.

St. Louis Sports Online is a testament to that fact.

With few exceptions, Cardinal ballplayers warm up to a familiar media face-and will sit (or stand) still long enough for conversations that can ably fill air time and/or make for engaging reading.

One of those exceptions is Mark McGwire..

For example, long-time Cardinals broadcaster Jack Buck, during a late-September broadcast, noted that he had not interviewed McGwire during the entire 1999 season.

"That's because I'm afraid of the guy," said a laughing Buck. "He's so big!"

But Buck, in his self-depracating way, was acknowledging the obvious.

The Cardinals slugger is a private person

Bob Ramsey and Rich Gould are two additional St. Louis-based sportscasters who, in addition to other radio and television duties, also serve as part of the team of Cardinals TV and radio broadcasters.

In September of 1999, both Ramsey and Gould noted, during their mid-day radio program on KFNS AM-590 (St. Louis), that they had minimal contact with McGwire during the entire '99 season.

So, try as we might, an interview with Mark McGwire is not one of the many conversations that has appeared on the pages of St. Louis Sports Online.

Those conversations generally take place in a one-on-one format, and McGwire does not generally agree to one-on-one interviews.

McGwire reserves those sorts of interactions for two groups of media: the national types (ESPN, FOX, and Sports Illustrated) and the primary local outlets (the St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

For example, during one week of 1999 spring training, McGwire consented to half-hour sit-downs with a small number of correspondents from several of the above media outlets.

With a few exceptions, Mac's March '99 marathon of one-on-ones constituted his entire output of post-game interviews...for the entire 1999 season.

So, as this article was formulated, the thought of Edmund Morris, and his Ronald Reagan biography, did come to mind.

Some Observations

One variety of interview that McGwire is more-or-less forced to endure is the post-game at-his-locker ritual in which he is asked to talk about that night's home run.

And ritual it is, when you hit a total of 135 homers in two successive seasons.

With dozens of microphones and notebooks, and a TV camera or three, all within two or three feet (and many within a few inches) of the man's face, it's easy to feel sorry a guy whose natural talents and inclinations do not include the ability to engage in easy banter with total (or near-total) strangers.

It's fascinating to watch McGwire, who towers over virtually every one of his questioners, prepare for the post-game sessions.

Sometimes, on his way back to his locker from the team's (off-limits to media) training area, McGwire stops in an open area of the team's clubhouse, and, bottled water in hand, beckons his questioners, who are generally clustered around his locker, to meet him halfway.

As the media begin to get closer and set up the various microphones and cameras, McGwire sometimes creeps forward a half-step or so, in an effort to get the group to move back a bit.

A likely purpose of this manuever?

Because Mac's early move forward gives him a few precious inches of clearance backwards during the interview, inches that McGwire gradually utilizes as he moves back while the media throng increases in size.

Thank goodness that Mac is nearly six-and-a-half feet tall, a height which enables him to see over the heads of his questioners.

Sometimes, though, as in Cincinnati on September 26 (the date of his 60th homer of the '99 season), McGwire will do his post-game interviews while sitting at his locker stall.

Here, too, it was impossible not to be aware of McGwire's high level of discomfort with what amounts to total strangers.

As the lights from a couple of Cincinnati-based TV mini-cams were switched on, McGwire apologized for wearing a decorative baseball cap...saying that the bill of the cap shielded his eyes from the brightness.

Then, before the questions began, McGwire cleared his throat, and seemed to nearly stutter as he began to answer the first question.

This was no trickery, gentle reader.

That day, through his unconscious actions, it seemed as if Mark McGwire would have rather been doing anything other than answering questions about yet another momentous home run, a home run that took place in yet another game that his team lost.

But on this day, Mac did not respond to the inevitability of it all with his oft-seen surliness or bossiness.

He did not attempt to limit the scope of each question.

He did not tell the media to go home and take care of their families.

He did not accept genuine compliments and return them, in slightly modified form, as daggers.

Instead, in an even and low-key voice, Mac answered every question (about a dozen or so) posed by the largely Cincinnati-based continent of TV and radio reporters.

But the Cincinnati media group didn't linger around Mac's locker that day. Those workers had bigger fish to fry, as the Reds were still in the hunt for a wild card berth in the playoffs.

So when they left, there were but two reporters left to question McGwire.

Both were St. Louis-based writers, and one of these was Rick Hummel, the face most familiar to McGwire.

After the local Cincinnati radio microphones had left the scene, an interesting thing happened.

McGwire took a deep sigh.

His shoulders sagged.

And the nervousness that had been so obvious moments before seemed to disappear .

The contrast between the two Macs was remarkable-like a before and after picture.

In the presence of the trusted and familiar Rick Hummel, a well-liked beat writer who takes the words that ballplayers say post-game and polishes them up for public consumption in the next day's paper, Mark McGwire was just a regular guy.

The Q&A that follows was abstracted from that day's interview session.

Most of the questions were asked by Hummel and yours truly.

oIs sixty [home runs] a magical number?

"I don't know. I never thought I'd get there again," said McGwire.

"I thought it was capable of being done again by somebody in the game, but to have two people do it, in consecutive years, is pretty amazing.

"All I've ever asked myself, individually, at the beginning of this year, was to have a nice year.

"It's been a nice year but it's probably been one of my most difficult years I've ever had."

oBecause the team hasn't won?

"It's everything that I have to deal with every day.

oHarder than last year?

"Oh yeah. That's why this is amazing, that Sammy and I have repeated what we pretty much did last year.

"A lot of people thought it would never happen again.

"Including myself.

"With the constant pressures of every day, every game, every pitch, to do what we've doneit's quite amazing.

"Ill savor it some day when I retire. I'll look back on it, and really realize how amazing it really was.

"I've got to come back at 12:30 tomorrow and play another game. You don't have time to think about things like this.

"Obviously, [all the records] are very meaningful to me.

"But how much it really means? I'll have to wait until I retire and sit back and look at all of the things that I've accomplished.

oCan you talk about what you've had to deal with over the past couple of seasons?

"No, I'll keep that to myself," said McGwire.

"The public doesn't need to know.

"The amazing thing is to deal with those things, and still go out between the lines, and keep on producing.

"It hasn't been easy."

oWould it be easier if the Cardinals were winning 90 or 95 games every year?

"There wouldn't be so much emphasis on what I do.

"When your team is winning, like Cincinnati is now, you can't point out one guy, or one superstar.

"For them, the whole team's a superstar.

"That's what winning does.

"When you don't really have a good year as a team, you sort of look at the figurehead of the team.

"I would much rather be in [the Reds] clubhouse over there.

"Just the feeling...I've had that feeling before.

"They have destiny on their side.

oYou were looking at [the Reds] celebration as you were walking off the field. What did you think of that?

"It's an awesome feeling.

"You watch it. And you see it.

"I just hope some day that this team can experience what the Reds are experiencing right now.

"It's a fun-filled year [for them]. You go over [to their clubhouse]. They'll tell you that."

oDid you think of anything rounding the bases after you hit number 60?

"Absolutely not," said McGwire, while smiling.

"I was just thinking about how tired, and worn out, I am."

oYou look beat right now

"It's a long season. It's just...it's like they say-'it's time to retire when you're done mentally'.

"I wonder how many more years I can do this."

Could [hitting 60 home runs in one season] be done three times?

"Oh, I don't even want to think about it.

"Don't even talk about it," McGwire pleaded earnestly, while grinning.

oWill you be happy when next Sunday rolls around, and the season is over?

"Yeah. Believe me, you will not see me or hear from me this whole winter."

"I've exhausted a lot of effort.

"I'm very tired."