A Fan-tasy Come True

Let me be the next one to write about Mark McGwire--enough cannot be said about him.

But perhaps what I can say cannot be said by all.

Outside of my parents, Mark was my boyhood hero.

And it is also through McGwire that I have one of my most vivid childhood memories.

McGwire became my hero after hitting just 49 homeruns in his first season with the Oakland Athletics, far less than his monstrous 70 this season, but an impressive debut nonetheless.

It is hard to explain McGwire's influence on me while I was growing up. You need to step into the mind of a young boy who poured over the sports section every morning, checking the box scores for McGwire's stat line and who became disappointed to find the words "late game" most of the time.

I am the same kid who woke up at 6 a. m. daily to watch ESPN SportsCenter so that I could see the clips of his towering shots.

When I stepped to the plate in Little League, I pretended to be Mark McGwire. The opposing pitchers were supposed to fear me as I approached the batter's box. Unfortunately, I did not always back up the image with performance.

I also bought every piece of A's merchandise I could get my hands on--T-shirts, hats, pennants and baseball cards.

So it is with that background that my story begins.

I was an eight-and-a-half-year-old boy in the spring of 1988 when my family took a vacation to Arizona.

One of the stops on our trip was in Mesa for a spring training game between the Cubs and my A's.

I wore my A's hat and A's T-shirt and brought my baseball glove with me, hoping for that elusive foul ball--a foul ball from anybody.

Before the game, a group of Cubs players were peppering balls near the dugout while a crowd looked on. Calvin Schiraldi knocked a ball into the stands.

A mad scramble ensued. I was in the middle of it all, on my knees, battling 40-year-old men for a piece of nostalgia.

I came up with the ball--a lifetime dream for any baseball fan. That moment, however, would be eclipsed later that day.

By the middle of the game, the A's were beating up on the hapless Cubs, and I grew restless. I dragged my dad along to the nearby Cubs' bullpen to try for autographs.

While there, McGwire came to bat and drilled a foul ball into the Cubs' bullpen. The Cubs' pitching coach saw my A's shirt and hat and said, "You want this?"

In his hand was McGwire's ball.

A chance of a lifetime.

After that, I was no longer a fan. I was a fanatic.

I collected every Mark McGwire baseball card I could find.

My A's hat never left my head except for when it wore out, and I had to get a new one.

My grandmother gave me a sweatshirt for Christmas one year that had a hand-painted Mark McGwire picture on it. She had it specially made for me by a local artist in Central Illinois.

The years progressed, and I began to realize I was not going to be a major league baseball player.

My interest in baseball waned, and I switched allegiances to the Cardinals, a natural choice given that I live a little more than an hour away from St. Louis. I still paid attention to McGwire's stat lines.

My interest was revived last year, though, when McGwire was traded to St. Louis.

I went to several Cardinal games and even saw McGwire hit a homerun last year.

This year, I was at Busch Stadium the day before coming back to school, hoping to see McGwire hit homerun number 60 against Cincinnati.

The atmosphere was electric, but McGwire did not deliver that day.

It was a treat to watch the highlights of numbers 69 and 70 on Sunday. It brought back a lot of memories.

Unfortunately, I did not know where my McGwire rookie card is anymore. If I had it, I could probably sell it for $1,000.

I do have the ball, however. It is in a protective case on the shelf in my room at home.

I will never sell it.

No one can put a price on what it means to me.