Next month marks the 20th anniversary of a trip I took with Eric Hendrickson, my best friend from high school. Over the course of a week-and-a-half, we attended seven baseball games in six cities, visited the Hall of Fame, saw Niagara Falls and spent a day sight-seeing in New York City. It goes without saying that we had a blast. For the 20th anniversary, I intend to chronicle our daily activities and post pictures that we took on our old cameras (remember film?).
In the meantime, I recently came across this photo which I took on August 5, 1999. Please excuse the poor contrast; unfortunately there was some user error on the part of the photographer. Even so, I thought I'd share it.
I attended the game that night with a group from Enterprise Rent-A-Car (for whom I worked at the time). The 45,106 people in attendance came to the park hoping to see history, and the odds were in our favor. Coming in to that game, Mark McGwire was parked on 499 home runs and Tony Gwynn of the visiting San Diego Padres had 2,998 hits. Gwynn received rousing ovations each time he came to the plate that night, but would only get one hit on the evening. Sadly #3,000 would have to wait for the next night in Montreal, in front of an announced crowd of 13,540.
McGwire, on the other hand, did not disappoint. On the very swing pictured below, eleven months after I had been present for his 62nd home run of the 1998 season, Big Mac launched one into the stands becoming just the 16th player in Major League history with 500 home runs. Are these memories tarnished by subsequent steroid revelations? Sure. But they were still great moments at the time and I remember them fondly.
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| My photo of Big Mac going deep for the 500th time |
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