Gentle Giant -- Up Close, Mark Mcgwire Isn't So Fearsome

JUPITER, Fla. - The word "perspective" crops up often in a conversation with Mark McGwire, and it's an appropriate way to get a handle on this burly man who stands, a bit reluctantly, on the threshold of baseball history.

The closer one gets, both in real and emotional distance, the gentler and more vulnerable he becomes. The hard-edged veneer begins to crumble, and his larger-than-life persona is wholly transformed.

From a fan's vantage, McGwire is all muscle and might, a goliath in polyester sending balls flying so far out of the ballpark that one often is left with mouth agape, disbelieving the sheer majesty of the vision.

At 6-foot-5, 250 pounds, with 17-inch forearms and 19-inch biceps, he appears impenetrable by pain, impervious to outside influence. From this detached perspective, it is easy to view him as some sort of home-run machine, more automaton than human. Just program him, punch some buttons and watch him belt out 62 bombs, no sweat.

But then you approach McGwire, talk a bit about his life now, the distance he's come, the real-life problems he's fought and still fights, and you learn exactly what "perspective" has come mean to him, at age 33.

"What people don't understand," he says, "is that we're ballplayers, but we're human, too."

The eyes that look so steely staring out at the pitcher soften in conversation, particularly when the subject turns to abused children, the cause that has become his focus.

They are the eyes that filled with tears last fall when, at a press conference to announce his new, three-year, $30 million contract with the St. Louis Cardinals, he unveiled plans for the Mark McGwire Foundation for Children to help abused youngsters.

It wasn't just P.R. mouthwash, either; McGwire funded the foundation with $3 million out of his own pocket. When he was asked why the cause of abused children had become so passionate for him, he paused a full 33 seconds, the emotion surging through him. Then he began weeping.

"I didn't plan on it, but the emotion came out of a love of children," he said in a recent interview at the Cardinals' new training facility.

And he reached back inside to the same spot deep within him when the discussion turned to abused children. Once again, the tears welled up. Suddenly, he didn't seem nearly so big.

"The sad thing about child abuse is that when children come up to people and start talking about something that's happened to them, most adults turn their head," he said. "They think, `The child's lying,' and they sweep it under the rug. And that child will not flourish and grow to be a normal human being. He or she will always have something in the back of their mind that will haunt them the rest of their lives."

Perspective. The man who goes deep, it turns out, has become a man of depth.

"He is," says McGwire's agent, Robert Cohen, "at peace with himself. He's at the top of his career, from a physical and mental standpoint."

"The right things are important to him," adds pitcher Todd Stottlemyre, McGwire's teammate in both Oakland and St. Louis. "It's almost too good to be true sometimes."

News flash: What's most important to McGwire is not the chase of the home-run record the nation anticipates. No, give him a free afternoon with his 10-year-old son, Matthew, and he is the happiest man in the world.

Like it or not, though, home runs have come to define McGwire, who has evolved into the most prolific power hitter of his generation.

With 52 homers in 1996 and a staggering 58 last year - the most serious assault on Roger Maris' record in the 36 years since he hit 61 in '61 - McGwire became just the second player in history to have consecutive 50-homer seasons.

The other was Babe Ruth, the only player who has homered at a frequency greater than McGwire - and just barely. Ruth hit one every 11.76 at-bats, compared with 11.94 for McGwire. But in the past two seasons, McGwire has left the yard with even more regularity than Ruth at his prime - once every 8.75 at-bats.

"He's the only player that you get the feeling every time he's at the plate he's going to hit one out," said Cardinal reliever Jeff Brantley. "It's scary, and it's intimidating."

What's really intimidating, though, is the way McGwire hits them. To wit: Out of sight. Last year he hit five homers beyond 500 feet (including the unforgettable 538-foot blast off Randy Johnson in June, considered the longest ball ever hit at the Kingdome).

After one memorable shot off the Jacobs Field scoreboard, Cleveland catcher Sandy Alomar said he was glad the trajectory was interrupted - "or else it goes around the world and hits me in the back of the head."

"He makes me look like a 98-pound weakling," Dodger catcher Mike Piazza said after an exhibition game in Vero Beach in which a McGwire homer was estimated at 500 feet.

Those blasts, of course, don't include the dozens of 500-foot-plus homers he hits in batting practice, a daily ritual that became an Event after his trade to St. Louis thrust him upon a new, duly awestruck audience. Even Cardinal teammates joined in the gawking, changing the time of their pregame pitchers meeting so they could all watch McGwire jack them out.

What he projects, from a pitcher's perspective, is awesome power and a single-minded determination to send the ball into orbit. Baltimore ace Mike Mussina once said, when asked his favorite way to pitch McGwire, "low and behind him."

Said A's infielder Jason Giambi: "Mark McGwire could hit 70 home runs this year."

But bring up Maris' name and some of the hardness returns to McGwire's eyes. To him, this is a violation of proper perspective, worrying six months in advance about a record so dependent on good health, good fortune, good mechanics - qualities that have been so elusive at various points of his career. He feels a vicarious empathy for his fellow Maris pursuer, Ken Griffey Jr., whom he senses is being peppered with the same questions.

"The thing is - and I know it boggles Ken's mind, too - is how much can you talk about it? You can ask the question, `Can it be done?' The answer is yes, it can be done. I think he and I proved that to people last year, when we got very close to it, and we each had really bad Julys.

"He was going through a real tough time with the death of his mother-in-law. I was going through a real tough time dealing with trade rumors, having the trade happen, adjusting to St. Louis. But the fact is, what we did is what we did.

"Can it be done? Yes. I'm not saying I will do it. I'm not saying he will do it. But it can happen. It will have to be a perfect season; an absolutely perfect season. You have to be consistent for six months straight, which is a difficult thing to do. And that's all you can say. You can't say, `Yes, I'm going to do it.' You don't know. There's a guy on the mound trying to get you out every stinking day."

McGwire remembers, too clearly, how often they succeeded in doing just that in the early 1990s. From his breathtaking rookie season of 1987, when he hit 49 homers (and gave up a chance for 50 to be with his wife during childbirth on the last weekend of the season), he went into a sharp decline.

With his marriage breaking up, his body breaking down, his swing breaking apart, he bottomed out in 1991, when he hit .201 with 22 homers and 75 RBI.

He has said of that time in his life, "I was in a deep hole, and I didn't think I could climb out. I was walking on air - in a bad sense, not a good sense. I wasn't grounded in any firm beliefs about how to live my life. I allowed no positive energy into my life."

So he drove from Oakland to Los Angeles after the season, radio turned off, and searched his soul for new perspective. He began seeing a psychiatrist. He changed his hitting approach, returning to his pull-first philosophy after ill-advisedly trying to become an all-fields hitter. He rededicated himself to the weight room to improve his self-esteem.

"It was a turning point in my career, and in my life," he says now. "I'm glad it happened to me. Somewhere, someday, in anyone's life, they're going to have some point where they look at themselves and face the music and realize they have to change. That was the year for me."

In 1992, he became Mark McGwire again, in every sense. He raised his average up to .268, hit 42 homers, knocked in 104 runs. And he became enough at peace with himself that he could cope with the trauma that followed - a series of foot injuries that wiped out most of the next two seasons and had him considering retirement.

He survived, however, and though his body still pains him and his chronic back problems are still a worry, he played 156 games last year, the most since 1990. And his personal growth continued to thrive.

"He's just a beautiful man," said his once and future manager, Tony La Russa. "He was never a wild and crazy guy. He always had a good sense about him. But to me the biggest difference is he's really grown as far as recognizing his responsibilities, whether it's in the clubhouse with his team, or giving something back to the community."

St. Louis was a revelation to McGwire. The fans worshiped him, his teammates accepted him instantly, and after a rough beginning, he feasted upon National League pitching, hitting 24 homers in 51 games. Most important, to him, young Matt fell in love with the place, giving it his unqualified endorsement.

"That was huge," McGwire said.

McGwire remains close not only with his ex-wife, Kathy, but her husband, whom McGwire considers a good friend. He believes the health of their relationship has contributed to the healthy upbringing of Matt, the shining light of his life, who lives in Southern California with his mother. Part of McGwire's contract calls for his son to get a seat on the Cardinal charter during visitation periods.

Although he could have become a free agent after the season and probably broken all salary records, McGwire instructed his agent in August to cut a deal with the Cardinals. He had seen enough to know where he wanted to end his career.

"The Cardinals' objective when they made the trade was to get me here and see if I'd fall in love with the team and the city," he said. "It worked."

So well, in fact, that McGwire agreed to defer $2 million a year in salary so the Cardinals could spend it on improving the team. He has a stake in their success; the contract calls for him to earn $1 for every ticket sold over 2.8 million.

"We felt the best opportunity to sign him long term was to get him here last year and let him feel it," General Manager Walt Jocketty said. "St. Louis is a great baseball town. We thought the fans would embrace him, and they did. And he embraced them right back."

Over the winter, McGwire continued his work with abused children, and sorted through the requests that bombarded his foundation. He became involved in the Stuart House in Santa Monica, Calif., through his friend, Ali Dickson, a volunteer at the center for abused children.

"It was a real eye-opener," he said. "People think abuse happens in the lower part of society. Abuse happens in every walk of life. I think the biggest thing is the acknowledgment this stuff happens. I don't know why we just don't do much more about it. People want to know why children are so messed up today. Well, sexual abuse in the family."

Since his interest in the cause became public, McGwire has had to explain frequently that he was not abused as a child. To him, the issue of working with abused children requires no such pat explanation. The question of "why" is self-evident. He points to a picture of his son in his locker cubicle.

"When child abuse happens so much every day, and when you think about having a 10-year-old myself, how can it not get to your heart?"

Perspective. Think about it the next time you see McGwire hit one that looks headed out of this world.