The A’s Canseco, McGwire brought the ‘bash’ to baseball on Opening Day ’88
With each passing year baseball’s old muscle-bound duo of Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, once triumphantly joined at the forearm as “Bash Brothers” with the A’s, fades further and further away from the sport’s relevancy.
Some point out it’s the price to be paid for cheating the game during its worst scandal in nearly a century.
Canseco’s tell-all book in 2005 detailing his own steroid usage and implicating other players, including his buddy McGwire, had dire circumstances for many in baseball. It also had a devastating effect on the two sluggers’ relationship. It’s been 15 years and counting since Canseco has had any contact with McGwire, who has blocked any attempts at reconciliation.
“I don’t care to ever speak to him again,” McGwire told ESPN. “What he did was wrong.”
But, 32 years after Canseco and McGwire first officially introduced the “bash” to celebrate their home runs on the A’s Opening Day on April 4, 1988, it’s still difficult to separate the two.
The negativity surrounding the exposure of McGwire’s performance-enhancing drug usage, and Canseco’s continued salacious revelations and missteps in life keeps them uncomfortably attached.
Only they’ve gone from
“Bash Brothers’ to “Backlash Brothers.”
Not that Canseco doesn’t keep finding a way to remind people of the good old days, when he and McGwire terrorized pitchers while launching home runs deep into never-before-reached places around the American League.
With the anniversary of his bash approaching, the 55-year-old Canseco recently used an old bash for a new PSA in the new age of COVID-19.
“Remember don’t shake hands, Bash instead!” Canseco wrote on Twitter, including #CoronaVirus and #WashYourHands.
No pandering was needed back in the spring of 1988 when the young sluggers decided to come up with their own version of the high-five. After testing it out in spring training, Canseco got the first opportunity to show it off when he blasted a solo home run in the A’s 4-1 season-opening win over Seattle at the Coliseum.
Canseco, after depositing a Mark Langston fastball over the fence, greeted McGwire at the plate and they emphatically slammed their forearms together to form an “x” in what would become an exhilarating celebration around the game for years.
In fact, current A’s Khris Davis and Mark Canha still pay homage to McGwire and Canseco by executing their own bash.
McGwire, who hit 363 home runs with the A’s, and Canseco, who clubbed 254 over his two stints with the club, enjoyed several bashing celebrations together.
If you asked Canseco now he’d probably trade a couple of them for one more chance to bash forearms or even exchange a hug with McGwire.
“Mark, to me, when I played with him, I looked up to him,” Canseco once said. “I idolized him for a lot of reasons — the guy he was on the field (and) off the field.
“It haunts me till this day that I said those things about him, even though obviously they were true. I could have gone about it a different way and gotten my point across.”
Also on this date ...
2019: The Sharks’ Joe Thornton passed his childhood idol, Steve Yzerman, with an assist on Marcus Sorensen’s goal in San Jose’s 3-2victory over the Oilers in Edmonton, Alberta. Thornton’s 1,064th career assist moved him past Yzerman and into eighth place on the NHL’s all-time assist leaders list.
2017: In the final season of his 40-year head coaching career at Stanford, Mark Marquess became just the third coach in NCAA Division I baseball history to win 1,600 games with the same program. Marquess beat rival Cal at home 8-4for his 1,600th win. He would finish with 1,627, although his top-seeded Cardinal was upset by Fullerton State in the first round of the NCAA Regional in Long Beach. 2015: The Warriors help first-year coach Steve Kerr set an NBA record for most wins by a rookie coach by beating the Suns 123-110in Phoenix for their 63rd victory. Kerr broke Paul Westphal’s previous record of 62 with the Suns in 1992-93. Kerr and the Warriors would go on to win 67 regularseason games before finishing things off with an NBA title by beating LeBron James and the Cavaliers.