When McGwire was playing with Oakland, I once stood in the left field stands while he had batting practice. Ball after ball came into the stands. I would not have wanted to try to catch one of those bare handed. They came fast. Although I’m sure he had help.
I also saw McGwire play in 1999 a year after he broke the home run record. I was in St. Louis for work and three of us went to the game. St. Louis lost 17-1 and McGwire was the 1. He hit a homerun early in the game. Unfortunately, one of my friends was in the bathroom at the time and missed the homerun. Despite the lopsided score he wanted to stay because he wanted to see the Cardinals score a run. So, we stay through 8 innings when I eventually convinced him we should leave as we had class the next day. Class was kind of boring and I had enough trouble staying awake. So, we walked to the subway.
When we walked to the subway and the line was coming up out of the subway, up the stairs and starting to get long in the sidewalk up above. We didn’t like that situation. However, we had explored the area the night before and remembered there was a stop two blocks in front of the one with the long line. We figured no one would go to that subway stop, so we ran (almost in a straight line) to the earlier stop. There was no line at the stop. All the way down the stairs we bragged about how smart we were. Then two minutes later we saw the train. We were slapping high fives. Then we watched the train go right by us. Our mouths were all wide open in shock. Now we wonder how soon a train would stop. We lucked out as the next one five minutes later did stop for us, so we benefited by out little run. We were even polite and stood up on the ride home letting people on the next stop had the seats. It was a fun night.
