Jamey Wright saw Sammy Sosa’s power firsthand. Well, maybe not so much saw it as heard it.
“He hit a ball once and it went right by my ear,” the former Rockies pitcher told The Post recently. “I heard it go by my head. Then I turned around. It looked like a 2-iron that just kept climbing and climbing and climbing.
“I saw when it went over that (wall) in center, I thought, ‘If that ball would have hit me, it would’ve killed me.’ I heard it. I never saw it. It had to be 190 (mph) off the bat. It was a low pitch, like a 2-iron (swing). I was like, ‘Wow these guys are strong.’”
Close shaves aside, Wright’s memories of Colorado in 1998 are fond ones. Then again, few seasons were as unabashedly fun, gripping or seductive as the one that played out in the last summer that saw Denver host Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game.
Record home runs. Record attendance. Record viewing figures. Record interest.
Less than five years after a work stoppage canceled the World Series and took a crowbar to MLB’s goodwill with the public, the home run race between Sosa and Mark McGwire captivated fans, casual or otherwise, and cradled them back into the fold.
Then 23 years old and in his third full season in The Show, Wright set career highs with the Rockies that summer in starts (34) and innings pitched (206 1/3). He even stayed in Denver over the All-Star break and entertained family and friends at the 1998 mid-summer classic at Coors Field. The 6-foot-6 righty knew, early on, that he was sitting shotgun during one of the most epic rides in baseball history — and not just for the tater he’d surrendered to Sosa on July 31, a first-inning shot that was the Cubs star’s 42nd of a landmark season.
“For me, being in the clubhouse with TVs on, I was watching other guys’ games,” said Wright, now the pitching coach with the Oklahoma City Dodgers, the Triple-A affiliate of the Rockies’ Los Angeles rivals. “I was just such a fan, that I wanted to see what these guys were doing.”
But dinger paradise came at a cost. Those same stars were soon dogged by accusations of using steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, a retroactive crackdown that led to revisionist history, Congressional testimony and a public black eye unseen for America’s pastime since the Black Sox of 1919.
All of which begs the question, still:
Was it worth it?
“It brought the game back from 1994,” Rockies manager Bud Black said of the 1998 campaign, a summer he spent as the pitching coach with the Buffalo Bisons, then Cleveland’s Triple-A affiliate. “I think there was a resurgence, because of 1998.
“I think the legacy is more positive than negative. (But) I think, when you think back, there is, for me, a mental asterisk there.”
“A great show”
Major League Baseball needed a shot in the arm. What it got was shots in the backside. Allegedly.
“You had two guys who absolutely put on a great show during the summer,” noted Hall of Fame slugger Jim Thome, an all-star with Cleveland that season who finished second at the ’98 Home Run Derby on Blake Street. “And then eventually finding out what happened was a moment where it brought people back (to reality).”
On the field, records fell like dominoes.
The New York Yankees won 125 games, combined, between the regular season and playoffs. Rockies outfielder Ellis Burks became the first MLB player to hit a home run in 33 different stadiums. Chicago Cubs fireballer Kerry Wood struck out 20 Houston Astros in one game and fanned 33, combined, over two consecutive starts.
San Diego’s Trevor Hoffman tied the NL mark for single-season saves (53); Pittsburgh’s Jason Kendall set a new league standard for steals recorded by a catcher (26).
But the biggest domino, one of the game’s most sacred records, fell the hardest.
Roger Maris’ single-season home run mark of 61, a standard chased for decades, wasn’t just caught — it was demolished. McGwire was first over the line, launching No. 62 on Sept. 7 and finishing with 70, four ahead of Sosa’s 66. Seattle’s Ken Griffey Jr. made it a three-man race early, only to fall off the pace and land at 56. San Diego’s Greg Vaughn recorded 50 dingers as well, making 1998 the first season in MLB history in which four players recorded at least 50 home runs during the same season.
“It got people who said they weren’t going to come to a baseball game anymore interested in the McGwire-Sosa race,” offered Bob Gebhard, the Rockies general manager that season. “And (interested in) the tremendous athlete Griffey Jr. was. I think it was a good year for baseball, overall.”
“It bothered me”
Especially at the gate. Buoyed by the mashing and the addition of expansion teams in Arizona and Tampa Bay, MLB attendance shot up from 63.2 million in 1997 to 70.6 million the next season, with the per-game totals up almost 1,200 fans per contest (27,877 in 1997; 29,030 in ’98).
When the long ball came back, so did the spectators. MLB’s average per-game attendance dropped below 28,000 just once — 27,831 in 2003 — from 1999-2010.
The buzz was back. Baseball rode a sugar high of popularity and relevance again.
The problem? Sugar highs don’t last. And the crash, in this case, proved painful.
Then-MLB commissioner Fay Vincent had issued a memo in July 1991 declaring the use of steroids and PEDs as “strictly forbidden,” but player testing with penalties didn’t begin until 2004.
A year later, ex-MLB slugger Jose Canseco released a book that accused several former teammates, including McGwire, of using steroids. Tales that had been rumors and hearsay gained witnesses and evidence. Whispers got louder.
In March 2005, McGwire, Sosa, Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro were among the current or former players called to testify before Congress regarding PEDs in baseball. Palmeiro denied using steroids. McGwire responded repeatedly, with the phrase “I’m not here to talk about the past,” even though that was the primary purpose for his summons.
In August 2005, reports surfaced that Palmeiro had tested positive for anabolic steroid stanozolol. In January 2010, McGwire admitted to Sports Illustrated that he had used steroids throughout his 16 seasons in MLB.
“Yeah, it bothered me,” Gebhard said. “The steroids do whatever they do — you add strength or whatever, but you still have to hit the damn baseball. You have to hit a round ball with a round bat, whether you’re a 120-pound weakling or a 240-pound steroid hitter, you’ve still got to hit the ball. And I think that’s lost sometimes, in this whole steroids thing.
“It was not good for baseball. It happened. Baseball made it through. We hope we have.”
But was it worth it?
“You think about the trials and tribulations baseball went through with the strike (in 1994),” Gebhard replied. “I think the McGwire-Sosa home run race, not only did it break Roger Maris’ record — but all the records (that fell), I think that really brought a lot of fans back to the ballpark who’d said, after the strike, that they were never going to come back.”
