Mark McGwire Hits Three Two-Run Homers at Veterans Stadium

On May 19, 1998, Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals hit three home runs against the Philadelphia Phillies at Veterans Stadium. All three were two-run shots. The Cardinals won 10-8 in a game that left 16,541 Philadelphia fans watching the biggest man in baseball do exactly what everyone expected and no one could stop.

McGwire hit the first off Tyler Green in the third inning to give St. Louis a 3-0 lead. He hit the second off Green again in the fifth, pushing the score to 5-2. He completed the trifecta in the eighth inning with his third two-run homer of the night. It was the second time that season and the fourth time in his career that McGwire had hit three home runs in a single game.

The 1998 season was the summer of McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and by mid-May the home run chase was already consuming baseball. McGwire had entered the year fresh off a 58-homer season split between Oakland and St. Louis. He was hitting 16 home runs in the month of May alone, falling just short of Rudy York's record of 18 in a single month set in August 1937. Every at-bat felt like a potential event. Pitchers who challenged him paid the price. Pitchers who walked him heard boos from fans who had come specifically to watch him swing.

McGwire would finish 1998 with 70 home runs, shattering Roger Maris's single-season record of 61. The steroid revelations that followed years later cast the entire chase in a different light. But on this night in Philadelphia, none of that was part of the conversation. It was just a 6-foot-5, 250-pound first baseman depositing baseballs into the upper deck three times in five innings.