The night sixty-two cleared the wall

13 November 2026 · 3 min read

For a few months in the summer of 1998, the number that mattered was a home run total. Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs were chasing 61, the record Roger Maris of the New York Yankees had set in 1961, one past Babe Ruth's 60 in 1927. Baseball was still living with the players' strike of 1994, the one that took a World Series off the calendar. This was the race you stayed with. If the television was on, you knew the number.

Roger Maris, in a light Yankees uniform with the number 9 on his back, follows through on a swing at Tiger Stadium. A catcher and an umpire are at the right, and a packed double-deck stand fills the background. — Roger Maris at Tiger Stadium in Detroit on 17 September 1961, the swing on his 58th home run of the year, in the 12th inning. Photograph by Tony Spina, Public domain, source page.

Tony Spina's photograph is not the record. It is the 58th, off Detroit's Terry Fox, and the Yankees won that game 6-4. The 61st came on the last day of the season, 1 October, at Yankee Stadium. In the fourth inning Maris hit Tracy Stallard's pitch into the right-field seats, and that was the only run of a 1-0 win over Boston. The number sat there for 37 years.

Sosa was the one who turned a chase into a race. He had 13 home runs when June began and hit 20 that month, breaking the major-league record for home runs in a month. McGwire had been ahead. At the end of August the two of them were tied at 55. The box score at the end of the night was the thing you checked.

Sammy Sosa, number 21 in a grey road uniform and a blue helmet, finishes a swing in daylight with the ball in the air to his left. A catcher and an umpire are behind the plate, and players in white sit in the dugout beyond the infield. — Sammy Sosa in the Cubs' road greys during a day game at Busch Stadium. The Cubs' only day games there in 1998 were 8 and 9 August. The file is stamped 1 June, a day the two clubs were not in St. Louis. Photograph by Jon Gudorf Photography, CC BY-SA 2.0, source page.

On 1 June the Cubs were at home against Florida and the Cardinals were in San Diego, so the date on the file cannot be the day of the swing. What the frame does show is a sunny afternoon, Sosa in number 21, and the home team in white. In 1998 that day game at Busch Stadium was the Saturday or the Sunday of the August series.

A crowd in summer clothes stands on a plaza outside a concrete stadium of tall columns, facing a bronze statue of a batter on a pedestal, with flags on the poles around them. — Outside Busch Memorial Stadium in 1998, by the statue of Stan Musial that had stood on the plaza since 1968. The photograph was scanned on 10 October 2017. Photograph by Jon Gudorf Photography, CC BY-SA 2.0, source page.

The park in these pictures is the old one, Busch Memorial Stadium, the concrete bowl that came down after the 2005 season. The Busch Stadium that stands now opened in 2006. In 1998 the crowd still waited on that plaza, under the columns.

The record moved on a Tuesday night. On Monday, 7 September, McGwire tied Maris with a first-inning home run off the Cubs' Mike Morgan. Sosa had 58. The next night the Cubs were back. First pitch was 7:13. The box score lists 43,688 in the seats. The game was on Fox.

McGwire batted in the bottom of the fourth with two outs and nobody on, and the Cardinals trailing 2-0. He swung at the first pitch from Steve Trachsel and lined it down the left-field line. It went 341 feet, the shortest home run he hit all year, and it just cleared the wall. It never reached the seats. Tim Forneris, of the grounds crew, picked it up. McGwire missed first base on the trot and had to go back and touch it. Sosa came in from right field to meet him. Members of Roger Maris's family were in the stands, and McGwire went up to them. The Cardinals won, 6-3.

Mark McGwire, in a white Cardinals uniform and a red cap, sits on the door of a red Corvette on the field and waves, a baseball in one hand. Cameras and a passenger are beside the car, and fans' hands blur the foreground. — After the game on 8 September 1998, Mark McGwire waves from the red 1962 Corvette the Cardinals gave him for home run number 62. Photograph by Jon Gudorf Photography, CC BY-SA 2.0, source page.

The race did not end that night. Sosa finished the season with 66. McGwire hit his 69th and his 70th on the last day, 27 September, the 70th off Montreal's Carl Pavano, at Busch Stadium again. In January 2010 McGwire said he had used steroids on occasion through the 1990s, including during the 1998 season. What that summer felt like, on a television, was a number that changed after supper, and one Tuesday when it changed for good.