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It's this pressure that McGwire is trying to avoid; at one point, he threatened to shut down the batting-practice show. The fanaticism is so intense, and even weird, that a fan wrote to the Cardinals asking for an old McGwire bat so he could use it as a wooden leg. Recently, when getting beer for his buddies, McGwire returned to his car to see people leaving their cars and slowly walking to him with pens outstretched. He described the scene to comedian Mark Pitta as The Night of the Living Dead. So McGwire wants to separate himself from the sideshow, to prevent himself from becoming Roger Maris. In 1961, unhappy that a relatively unimpressive player (Maris' second best year was 39 home runs, his career average was .260) threatened Ruth's place in history, some fans sent him death threats and regularly booed him, even at home games in Yankee Stadium. The stress got so bad, his graying crew cut started to fall out in chunks. He was 26. With the rationale that Maris' season was eight games longer than Ruth's, commissioner Ford Frick, a friend of the Babe's, put an asterisk by Maris' name, which was not removed until 1992, seven years after Maris died. Maris never accepted an invitation to Yankee Stadium, and he moved to Florida, where he sold beer and avoided baseball. He is not in the Hall of Fame.
The older fans, who always viewed Maris as a placeholder until the second Ruth, are rooting for McGwire to erase the imprint of the asterisk. The younger fans are pulling for him too. So the pressure is entirely different from what Maris faced. Still, even the positive pressure can be draining. Paul Molitor, who made a go at Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, says, "I would go home after a game, and it was like an out-of-body experience. My face would be up there [on TV], and everyone would be talking about whether I was going to break DiMaggio's record. When you're away from the game, that's when you feel the effect."
But McGwire, who grew up educated and middle class and is tight with his family, has some built-in advantages over the less-educated Maris. He has the kind of even-tempered nature often found in those who work hard at their craft. "I've seen two or three other kids with the same kind of talent, but it was Mark who went all the way," says Tom Carroll, his coach at Damien, a Roman Catholic high school in suburban Los Angeles. "He really wanted it. He has the work ethic." Even his dentist father, who also sired Dan McGwire, backup quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks, says that his son's baseball success surprises him: "We expected him to get an education and to take care of himself in that way." Though accused of using steroids, McGwire says he hasn't, that his log tosser's body is the result of intensive weight-room work. Rod Dedeaux, who coached McGwire at U.S.C. as well as on the Olympic team of 1984, says, "Mark has power of heart as well as power physically." Of the home-run record, he says, "If anyone can do it, it will be Mark."