The 1998 Home Run Chase: McGwire, Sosa, and the Summer That Saved Baseball.
The 1998 home run chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa reached its defining moment on September 8, 1998, when McGwire hit his 62nd home run of the season against the Chicago Cubs. Sammy Sosa was playing right field for the Cubs that night. He ran in from the outfield and embraced McGwire at home plate. Roger Maris Jr., son of the man whose record had just been broken, came onto the field. The game was delayed for approximately 11 minutes as Busch Stadium erupted in celebration. It was one of the most celebrated single moments in the history of American sports. Everything that came after made it more complicated.
The 1998 home run chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa is one of the defining stories in the history of baseball, and one of the most contested. At the time, it was universally described as the season that saved baseball, a way of framing the summer that brought fans back to a sport still recovering from the strike of 1994, which had canceled the World Series for the first time since 1904. McGwire finished with 70 home runs. Sosa finished with 66. Both broke Roger Maris’ record of 61, set in 1961 and standing untouched for 37 years. It took both of them to do it, and the country watched every step.
For additional context on baseball fandom and culture, the Nine Innings In podcast covers the game from the perspective of those who lived it as players, scouts, and lifelong fans. The ESPN 30 for 30 documentary Long Gone Summer covers the 1998 home run chase in full.
— THE CONTEXT —
Why the 1998 Home Run Chase Mattered: The 1994 Strike and What Baseball Needed
To understand what the 1998 home run chase meant, you need to understand what 1994 did to the sport. The players’ strike that began in August 1994 canceled the rest of the regular season and, for the first time since 1904, the World Series. Fans were furious. Attendance dropped sharply when the game returned in 1995. The relationship between baseball and its audience was damaged in a way that statistics and winning records could not easily repair. The sport needed something that transcended the standings.
What it got was Mark McGwire. McGwire had hit 58 home runs in 1997, split between the Oakland A’s and the St. Louis Cardinals after a mid-season trade. Ken Griffey Jr. had hit 56. Roger Maris’ record of 61, set in 1961, was suddenly not just threatened but clearly vulnerable. Sports Illustrated put McGwire on the cover of its 1998 baseball preview issue with a headline about a coming slugfest. The expectation was already there before the first pitch of the season.
McGwire homered in each of the first four games of the 1998 season, a feat only Willie Mays had previously accomplished. By the All-Star break, he had 37 home runs, matching Reggie Jackson’s record for the most at that point in a season. Then Sammy Sosa happened. The Cubs outfielder had hit 35 home runs the entire previous year. In June 1998, he hit 20. Twenty home runs in a single calendar month. That record still stands today. The chase that everyone expected to be McGwire versus the record became something more interesting: McGwire versus Sosa versus the record, and nobody knew who was going to win.
— THE CHASE —
McGwire vs. Sosa: How the 1998 Home Run Race Unfolded
The summer of lead changes
Sosa and McGwire traded the home run lead multiple times through the summer of 1998. The back-and-forth gave the chase a narrative structure that a solo pursuit could not have produced. Sosa was the underdog, less established nationally than McGwire before 1998, playing for a Cubs team that had not won the World Series since 1908. McGwire was the established slugger, the expected record-breaker, the player everyone had been watching since his rookie season with Oakland in 1987. The combination created two storylines running simultaneously, and fans who had drifted from the sport found themselves checking the box scores again.
September 8: The record falls
McGwire hit his 62nd home run on September 8, 1998, off Cubs pitcher Steve Trachsel. The ball traveled just 341 feet, barely clearing the left field wall at Busch Stadium. It was the shortest home run of McGwire’s career. Sosa, playing right field for the Cubs, ran in from the outfield to embrace McGwire at home plate. Roger Maris Jr. and other members of the Maris family came onto the field. McGwire lifted his twin son, then 10 years old, into the air. The game was delayed roughly 11 minutes as the crowd celebrated. The broadcast paused. For a moment, the sport was exactly what everyone needed it to be.
The final totals
McGwire finished the 1998 season with 70 home runs. Sosa finished with 66. Both numbers were staggering by any standard. For context: Greg Vaughn of the San Diego Padres hit 50 home runs that season, finishing second in the National League behind Sosa. The 1998 season was so inflated that 50 home runs was not even a top-three performance in one league. The Yankees won 114 regular season games and the World Series. The Atlanta Braves won 106 games and did not have the best record in baseball. The Florida Marlins, defending World Series champions, lost 108 games. It was one of the most unusual seasons in baseball history by nearly every measure.
“What followed was an exhilarating summer that saw Maris’ record not just broken but shattered, with a surprise combatant battling McGwire and Griffey for home run supremacy. McGwire appeared on the covers of not just Sports Illustrated and ESPN The Magazine but also Newsweek and Time.”
ESPN | The McGwire-Sosa Home Run Chase Helped Make 1998 One of MLB’s Wildest Seasons Ever |
— THE AFTERMATH —
What Came After: Steroids, the Hall of Fame, and How History Judged the Summer of 1998
The andro moment
During the 1998 season, an Associated Press reporter noticed a bottle of androstenedione, a testosterone precursor, in McGwire’s locker. McGwire acknowledged using it. Androstenedione was legal under baseball’s rules at the time, banned in the NFL and Olympics but not MLB. The revelation did not significantly damage the summer’s narrative in the moment. Baseball had no steroid testing policy in 1998, leaving the sport without a formal system for detecting PED use.
The admissions and allegations
In 2010, McGwire admitted in a statement that he had used steroids on and off for nearly a decade, including during the 1998 season. He said he wished he had never touched them, and that he believed he would have broken the record without them because of his natural ability. Sosa has never publicly admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs, although a 2009 New York Times report said he was among players who tested positive in 2003. Barry Bonds broke McGwire’s record in 2001 with 73 home runs, also under steroid allegations that later became the subject of a federal investigation.
The Hall of Fame question
Neither McGwire nor Sosa has been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. McGwire received votes for 10 years on the BBWAA ballot without reaching the required 75 percent threshold and has since fallen off the main ballot. Neither player has been elected to the Hall of Fame. The 1998 home run chase contributed to a meaningful rise in baseball attendance and interest during the post-strike years. It also produced two players who will likely never be in Cooperstown. That contradiction is the fullest summary of what 1998 was.
— WHAT IT MEANT —
The 1998 Home Run Chase in Baseball History: What It Saved and What It Cost
The 1998 home run chase worked as a cultural event because it gave baseball something the sport had not had since the 1994 strike: a single, ongoing story that a non-fan could follow without understanding the standings. You did not need to care about the Cardinals or the Cubs to check how many home runs McGwire and Sosa had hit. The simplicity of the chase, one number going up against another number, was accessible in a way that pennant races and pitching rotations are not.
Columnist Mike Lupica titled his book about the season: Summer of ’98: When Homers Flew, Records Fell, and Baseball Reclaimed America. Todd McFarlane, creator of the Spawn comics, paid more than three million dollars for McGwire’s 70th home run ball. Sports Illustrated called it one of the great sports stories of the century. The framing was complete. The narrative of baseball’s return was fully formed.
What the sport was buying with that narrative, it turned out, was time. MLB recognizes Barry Bonds’ 73 home runs in 2001 as the official single-season record, followed by McGwire’s 70 and Sosa’s 66. The numbers are in the record books. What has been debated since is what they mean. Roger Maris Jr. and many fans consider 61 a symbolic benchmark for those who discount the PED-era totals, but that is a widely held position rather than an official one. The sport has never formally removed or asterisked any of the totals from the PED era. The summer of 1998 was widely described as having saved baseball. It also introduced a question about what the sport was willing to look away from in order to do so.
McGwire: 70. Sosa: 66. Maris: 61, still the number many fans consider the real record. September 8, 1998. An 11-minute celebration that stopped the game. Sosa running in from right field to embrace McGwire at home plate. Roger Maris Jr. on the field. A sport that had been broken four years earlier, briefly whole again.
The summer of 1998 was the best thing that happened to baseball in a decade. Depending on how you count, it was also the worst.
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