DOC SHOWS LOVE TO SOSA, MCGWIRE
McGwire-Sosa HR battle became infamous, but it was a hell of a ride
Baseball fans know what happened after the great home-run race of 1998. They remember the revelations of the rampant use of performance-enhancing drugs and the shameful congressional hearing. They remember the black eye the sport suffered just after taking a shot to the jaw from the 1994-95 strike.
But they might not recall, or more likely they chose to forget, how the ’98 season gripped the nation as millions watched the Cardinals’ Mark McGwire and the Cubs’ Sammy Sosa slug it out for the most revered record in sports.
Director AJ Schnack wants to jog fans’ memories with “Long Gone Summer,” the latest in ESPN’s run of “30 for 30” documentaries, which will premiere at 8 p.m. Sunday.
“For me, it was important to put the audience back in that moment and say, this wasn’t just a baseball story,” Schnack said. “This was a cultural moment in the country where everybody came together and got excited about baseball and about these two guys and which one was going to be the one to break [Roger] Maris’ record.
“There’s such a cloud around that year because we know it took place in the steroid era, and I think a lot of people view it only through that lens.”
The two-hour film addresses the fallout of the home-run race, but not before meeting Schnack’s goal of transporting viewers to old Busch Stadium and Wrigley Field through highlights from game broadcasts and MLB’s archives. Baseball had the foresight to send a camera crew to each team’s last visit to the other’s ballpark to film the events for posterity. Schnack said most of the footage hasn’t been seen before.
But fans will pay particular attention to what McGwire and Sosa told Schnack, who interviewed both twice for a total of over five hours each. McGwire already admitted to taking steroids that season in 2010, and Sosa continued to deny it, but both still revealed plenty. McGwire shared a story that even his manager at the time, Tony La Russa, didn’t know.
“I had done a bunch of research before going into those interviews,” Schnack said. “I think with Mark, about 25 minutes in, he was telling me stuff that I had never heard before. I felt like from the beginning, he came to tell his story and to tell things he never talked about.
“With Sammy, he was that excited, joyful self, but I also thought he was owning his legacy in a way that I hadn’t seen him do a lot. To talk about not just what he did in ’98, but the fact that he had been a 30-30 player [home runs and stolen bases] and he had been a top home-run hitter in the National League before ’98.”
Schnack hopes viewers come away with a new perspective of not just the season but the era. He said it was important to him to show how the gym culture had taken over baseball, infusing the game with supplements as well as steroids.
“We were in the middle of something where a lot of players were using a lot of different kinds of substances to help them bulk up and to get through the season, overcome injuries,” he said. “And a lot of it, the supplement part for sure, was right out in the open.”
It might leave the audience conflicted. Here was this captivating, historic home-run chase that picked baseball up off the mat, only to be overshadowed by the tumult that followed. Schnack’s film celebrates the sluggers while exploring what might have helped make them sluggers.
So how does the director feel about a season that rekindled the country’s passion for the game yet later left it reeling?
“I think I’m gonna let this film speak for itself in terms of that,” he said. “Certainly, my feelings about it have run the gamut, but . . . I think I’m just gonna let the film speak for that.”