Mcgwire Leading The Way In Oakland’s Power Surge
Mark McGwire, a cornerstone of an Oakland Athletics’ renaissance during the late 1980s under Tony La Russa, sees another one beginning under Art Howe.
And McGwire is right in the middle of it - again.
“It’s a pleasure to see the younger players on our team put things together,” said the 11-year veteran, who hit the first of Oakland’s franchise-record eight home runs Thursday night in an 18-2 thrashing of the California Angels. “This team’s got talent.
“It’s just a matter of getting their feet wet and going through the ups and downs. I’d say that in a few years, Oakland will be a tough team.”
The Athletics are last in the A.L. West, but lead the majors with 123 home runs after getting three Friday. They are on a pace that would give them the second-highest home run total in history.
The A’s became the first team to have seven different players homer in one game since the Baltimore Orioles did it on May 17, 1967, against Boston. The A’s also share the record with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who accomplished it on May 25, 1979, against Cincinnati.
“Anytime you see guys swing the bats the way they did tonight, it’s fun to watch,” McGwire said. “I can’t remember ever winning like this.”
McGwire, whose 14 homers this month are one shy of his May 1987 club record, set the tone in the first inning with an opposite-field two-run shot that gave him 302 career home runs and tied the franchise record set by Hall of Famer Jimmie Foxx.
Scott Brosius, in his second game off the disabled list after missing 47 games with a broken arm, hit the first of his two solo homers in the second inning. Geromimo Berroa added his second career grand slam in the fourth, and Jason Giambi made it 12-0 in the fifth with a three-run shot.
“It seemed like every time they made a bad pitch, a guy took advantage and hit it out of the park,” said Brosius. “Mark got the ball rolling, and it was like a snowball that just kept getting bigger and bigger.”
But the A’s weren’t done. They got solo homers from Terry Steinbach, Ernie Young and Jose Herrera in the sixth, and Brosius capped the barrage one inning later with his 10th of the season. It seemed as though everyone was swinging with an uppercut.
“It wasn’t anything like that,” Brosius insisted. “The reason why the guys probably hit so many was because there really weren’t any bad swings. The guys were just putting good swings on the ball and hitting pitches that were up.”
The Angels were so thoroughly embarrassed by the time reliever Brad Pennington walked the first four batters in the ninth inning, the Athletics took it easy.
George Williams didn’t even try to score on Mike Bordick’s fly to center - even though the throw home from rookie Darin Erstad was way up the first-base line. Moments later, shortstop Gary DiSarcina let in the final run on an error, and Brosius mercifully eased up at third with DiSarcina still looking for the ball.
“After a while, it’s like, how many more can we get?” Brosius said. “It was one of those things you want to enjoy, but you realize that this could happen to us sometime. So you don’t want to do anything to embarrass the other team and make a production out of it.”
The season isn’t half over, and Howe already has seen his team hit more home runs than the Astros hit for him in any of Howe’s first four seasons as manager in Houston.
“I don’t know what we ate during that off day, but we’re going to eat some more of it,” Howe said.
The A’s scored in every inning except the eighth, just missing a chance to become the first A.L. team in this century to score in every inning of a nine-inning game. Two N.L. teams have scored in all nine innings of a game - the New York Giants in 1923 against Philadelphia and the St. Louis Cardinals in 1964 against Chicago.
“It was beautiful,” said pitcher Doug Johns, who got double-digit run support for the fourth time this season while recording Oakland’s first complete game. “The way we were swinging the bats, it was like poetry - fluid swings and the ball just jumping off the bats.”