The monster masher

Wielding his bat like an ax, Mark McGwire is turning fans of all ages into gawking kids with his Bunyanesque feats--and the eye-popping begins long before game time

The kid's eyes light up, as if he has just been given a lifetime pass to Fannie Farmer's warehouse. In fact, he says: "I'm like a kid in a candy store here." Only this is better than candy. This is a chance to watch Mark McGwire up close and personal from a real, honest-to-goodness major league dugout, and the kid is pinching himself over his good fortune.

"I can't wait," the kid says. "When does he hit?"

And when the Cardinal's McGwire finally steps to the plate to take batting practice of Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, the kid presses himself into the railing in the Diamondbacks' dugout and watches, wide-eyed, as baseball after baseball after blasts off

McGwire's bat and into some distant dimension.

"Holy mackerel!" the kid says when it's all over. "Goodness gracious, that was unbelievable. Let me tell you something: He hits balls farther in one swing than I could do it I hit it, walked out to where it landed, picked it up and hit it twice more."

The kid is 24 and a major league ballplayer, one who has hit well enough himself to win an everyday outfield job with Arizona. Nonetheless, David Dellucci, the Diamondbacks' rookie, pinches himself over this chance to watch one of his peers do what every player routinely does before every game of every season.

McGwire, of course, is a peer to other players on paper only. No other player hits the ball the way McGwire hits the ball, which is high, higher and highest and long, longer and longest. Nor does any other player hit those highest, longest home runs as often as McGwire hits them. He had 37 home runs after 85 Cardinals games (through Saturday), which projects to an unheard-of 71 by the time September's song has ended.

And no other player single-handedly takes baseball to peaks of popularity and excitement that were all but forgotten during the recent seasons of work stoppages, price hikes and salary demands and salary dumps. No other player, in short, makes people pay attention like McGwire is doing with his assault-and-battery treatment on Roger Maris' 37-year-old home run record.

"He is a walking show," says White Sox third baseman Robin Ventura, who witnessed McGwire Mania firsthand during a June 8-10 interleague series in Comiskey Park. "Every time he comes to the plate, you can sense the excitement. You don't even have to see him to know when he's batting. The guy two hitters in front of him in the batting order can hit a routine fly ball, and even before it's caught, you can tell that McGwire is stepping out Into the on-deck circle. It's like instant gawking."

When McGwire is at bat, activity at the concession stands and bathrooms stops and all eyes stay on the field, as if someone has pushed a giant pause button on the normal hurly-burly in the stadium concourse. When the at-bat is over, the commotion resumes.

When the at-bat produces a home run, the electricity in the crowd is palpable. "That's my favorite part," Cardinals, manager Tony La Russa says, "When he hits one, you hear the buzz for 10 or 15 or 20 minutes. In St. Louis, it goes on for two or three innings, A bunch of us were, sitting around talking about trying to describe it. You can write about it or talk about it all you want but it's still inadequate."

They're still buzzing in St. Louis over the drive McGwire smoked to straightaway center May 16 in Busch Stadium against the Marlins' Livan Hernandez. The inexact science that estimates home run distances pegged that one at 545 feet. But the ball might still be rising today if it hadn't hit the giant St. Louis Post-Dispatch sign some two stones above the eight-foot outfield fence. Some clever stadium work pasted a gigantic Band-Aid over the wound where the hall did its harm to the sign.

During batting practice June 12 in Phoenix, McGwire became the first player to hit a ball out of the confines of The Bob, which is how Bank One Ball-park is known. It landed on a catwalk 90 feet above the left field fence and bounced out of the yard through a huge sliding panel door that was open for the balmy breeze. The Diamondbacks sent a couple of stadium employees out to Jefferson Street to search for the ball, to no avail. Estimated distance: 510 feet. And it may still be rolling.

As La Russa suggests, McGwire's prodigious home runs stretch the boundaries of descriptive English language. Mark DeJohn, the Cardinals' bullpen coach, recalls an episode of the '60s television sitcom The Munsters, in which Herman plays in a pickup game and knocks a ball three blocks out of the park, hitting it Dodgers scout (played by Leo Durocher) in the head. The scout signs Herman to a contract, but the team can't afford to keep him because his line drives always break the fences and his ground balls always burrow tinder the turf, "That's what I say about McGwire," DeJohn says. "He's got Herman Munster power."