The 1998 Home Run Chase Saved Baseball (and Then Destroyed It)

In the summer of 1998, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa chased Roger Maris's single-season home run record of 61, set in 1961. The chase captivated the nation, revived a sport that was still recovering from the 1994 strike, and produced some of the most electrifying moments in baseball history. Within a decade, nearly all of it was tainted by performance-enhancing drugs.

The context is essential. The 1994-95 players' strike had canceled the World Series and driven fans away in historic numbers. Attendance was down. Television ratings were falling. Baseball felt irrelevant. Then McGwire and Sosa started hitting home runs at a rate nobody had ever seen, and the country came back.

McGwire, the Cardinals' first baseman, hit his 62nd home run on September 8, 1998, breaking Maris's record against the Cubs at Busch Stadium. He pointed to the sky, hugged his son (who was a batboy), and embraced the Maris family, who were in attendance. Sosa, the Cubs' right fielder, who was also above 60 at the time, jogged in from right field to hug McGwire at home plate. The moment was broadcast live on every network. McGwire finished with 70. Sosa finished with 66.

The celebration was genuine. Baseball needed heroes, and McGwire and Sosa played the part. They were gracious with each other, generous with the media, and visibly moved by the historical significance of what they were doing. The home run chase was credited with "saving baseball," and the phrase was used without irony at the time.

Then the questions started. A reporter noticed a bottle of androstenedione, a testosterone precursor, in McGwire's locker during the chase. McGwire said it was legal, which it was under baseball's rules at the time. The story faded. But it didn't disappear.

In 2003, Sosa was caught using a corked bat during a game. In 2005, McGwire was called before a congressional committee investigating steroids in baseball and refused to answer questions, repeating, "I'm not here to talk about the past." Sosa, testifying at the same hearing, claimed not to understand English well enough to answer. Both men's reputations were destroyed.

Barry Bonds, who had watched McGwire and Sosa from San Francisco, broke McGwire's record in 2001 with 73 home runs. Bonds's late-career transformation, from a lean, fast outfielder into a massive power hitter, became the most visible symbol of the steroid era. His pursuit of Hank Aaron's career home run record of 755, which Bonds broke in 2007 with his 756th, was greeted with ambivalence rather than celebration. Aaron did not attend the game.

The Mitchell Report, commissioned by MLB and released in December 2007, named 89 players who had allegedly used performance-enhancing drugs. McGwire admitted to steroid use in 2010. Sosa has never admitted to anything. Bonds was convicted of obstruction of justice (later overturned) but never admitted to knowingly using steroids.

As of 2026, none of the three principal figures of the home run era, McGwire, Sosa, or Bonds, has been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. McGwire and Sosa fell off the ballot. Bonds was not elected by the Baseball Writers' Association of America in his 10 years of eligibility and remains eligible only through the Veterans Committee.

The 1998 home run chase remains one of the most conflicted chapters in baseball history. It brought the sport back from the brink. It also turned out to be built on a foundation that the sport now refuses to honor. The home runs were real. The men who hit them were enhanced. And baseball has never fully reconciled the two.