4.9 Mark McGwire: From the Bottom to the Top
“I really don’t think you can get to the top unless you actually scratch the bottom floor.” - Mark McGwire Sometimes, you have to touch the bottom to know what you are made of. In the summer of 1998, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa had the baseball and sports world held captive as they had a 2-man race to not only be that year’s homerun champion, but to break the homerun record that was set over 30 years earlier in 1961 by Roger Maris. McGwire broke the record first and won the title by hitting 70 home runs that year, but issues around steroid abuse put a dark cloud over his record and career, and despite a Hall of Fame career, he might not ever make it into the Hall of Fame. In an interview, McGwire said, “I really don’t think you can get to the top unless you actually scratch the bottom floor.” He said that despite being the 10th pick in his draft, he had a tough start in professional baseball and didn’t know if he was going to make it as a pro. He had several injuries in the middle of h...