On October 1, 1961, fifty-one year old Roger Maris died of cancer. As fate would
have it, Mark David McGwire was born in a hospital in Southern California two years
later on October 1, 1963. He grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of Claremont, California with four brothers. His father, John, was a dentist and would have been in the business of knocking out teeth instead of fixing them if not for polio. John trained as an amateur boxer but polio left him unable to compete professionally. One of Mark's earliest memories is the sound of John pounding a speed bag in the garage.
McGwire was playing Little League baseball in Claremont one day when he discovered
his only physical imperfection. While pitching he began to cry on the mound after walking
many batters. His father John was coaching the team and moved him to shortstop.
McGwire complained that he couldn't see home plate from shortstop and discovered that
his pitching problem came from poor vision. His eyesight is now twenty over five hundred
but has been corrected by contact lens.
McGwire went on to star at the University of Southern California and also played on
the 1984 United States Olympic team at the age of twenty. After two and a half years in the minor leagues, he exploded onto the major league level playing his first full season with the Oakland Athletics in 1987. He set a rookie record with forty-nine home runs that year and could have had fifty. Instead he was with his wife Kathy on the final day of the season for the birth of their son, Matthew. He and Kathy were divorced one year later. During his time with Oakland he became a perennial All-Star and fan favorite. He built a huge amount of muscle, grew to a height of six feet and five inches, reached a massive weight of two hundred and fifty pounds, and earned the distinction of being the best power hitter in baseball. McGwire's career flourished as he would continue to play with the Athletics until traded to the St. Louis Cardinals to finish the 1997 season. He had recently posted a new career high in home runs with fifty-six in 1996 then followed with fifty-eight in 1997 including some of the longest homers in recent history. The city of St. Louis embraced their new star like none other before him. Many fans requested seats in the upper deck in hope of catching a McGwire home run while other groups always wore hard hats to the games in tribute to his power. McGwire had also grown attached to St. Louis and signed a three-year contract extension with the Cardinals despite the possibility of making more money with another team.
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