Photo credit: Silent Sensei
Mark McGwire as an Oakland A
Here’s a number to add some perspective to how much baseball we’ve missed this season: By June 22, 1998 Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa had already combined for 63 home runs.
By the time the smoke cleared that season the duo had gone deep 136 times, with McGwire setting a new single-season record with 70 and Sosa posting the second-highest total of all time with 66. ESPN’s recent 30 for 30 documentary “Long Gone Summer” chronicled those events and brought the spotlight back to a year where baseball dominated the national sports conversation.
The Brewers, in their first season as a member of the National League Central, played a big part in the record chase: They faced McGwire and the Cardinals 11 times that year, and Sosa and the Cubs 12 times. JR Radcliffe of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently highlighted their role in that summer’s events.
This was not the only time the Brewers have played a part in a major record chase, however. In fact, it wasn’t even the only time involving McGwire. Here are some other cases where the Brewers were supporting actors in an opposing player’s individual accomplishment:
Mark McGwire, 1987
Before “Big Mac” became a national icon, he was a top prospect. He was the tenth overall pick in the 1984 draft, represented the US in the Olympics and hit 36 home runs in 133 minor league games between the AA and AAA level in 1986 before getting the call to the big leagues, where he hit three more during the stretch run. Before 1987 no major league rookie had ever hit more than 38 home runs in a season, but McGwire blew that record out of the water by going deep 49 times. He broke the record in mid-August and kept going over the season’s final six weeks, a season leading to the birth of the “Bash Brothers” A’s.
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Despite having Teddy Higuera and Dan Plesac on the roster, the 1987 Brewers were not a great team on the mound: Their 4.62 ERA was only the ninth best among 14 American League teams. They did, however, manage to slow down McGwire a bit. He faced the Brewers ten times that season and only hit three home runs, going deep about once every 15 plate appearances. Overall, he homered about once every 13 plate appearances that season en route to the record and the AL Rookie of the Year Award.
That record has since been broken twice and the last time it happened the Brewers played a role again: Mets first baseman Pete Alonso hit 53 in 2019, including two in six games against the Brewers.
Barry Bonds, 2001
A few years after McGwire set the record with 70 home runs, the Brewers also participated in the chase that dethroned him. They were not, however, able to slow Barry Bonds down: Bonds faced the Brewers nine times that season (including eight games as a starter) and went 11-for-27 with ten extra base hits and ten walks, posting a .553 on-base percentage and 1.074 slugging.
Four of the aforementioned extra base hits were home runs, meaning Bonds went deep once every 9.5 plate appearances against the Brewers. Bonds also had a favorite Brewers target: Starting pitcher Jimmy Haynes faced Bonds nine times and was one of 12 pitchers that gave up multiple home runs to him that season.
Ichiro Suzuki, 2004
For the most part the Brewers were poised to watch from afar as the Mariners’ phenom outfielder chased one of the longest standing records in baseball: George Sisler of the St. Louis Browns collected 257 hits in 1920, and when Ichiro had 242 in 2001 he was the closest any player had been to that mark in over 70 years.
The Mariners came to Milwaukee for an interleague series in June of 2004, however, and the Brewers did something almost no one did that year: They kept Ichiro in check for a couple of days. He went 0-for-3 in the first game of the series, then 1-for-3 with a double in the second contest. He finally broke out on the series’ third day, going 3-for-5 to finish his first-ever trip to Miller Park with a 4-for-11 line, still posting a .363 batting average in the series.
The Mariners’ visit to Milwaukee was part of a nine-game road trip where Ichiro batted just .243, putting a damper on his chances of breaking Sisler’s record. From June 26 through the end of the season, however, he batted .415 and collected 163 hits in 90 games to topple a record that had stood for 84 years.
