Further Reading
Keel, Beverly. “Reba McIntire.” InPopular Musi-
cians, edited by Steve Hochman. Vol. 3. Pasadena,
Calif.: Salem Press, 1999.
McEntire, Reba.Comfort from the Quilt. New York:
Bantam Books, 2000.
McEntire, Reba, and Tom Carter.Reba: My Stor y. New
York: Bantam Books, 1994.
Bernadette Zbicki Heiney
See also Brooks, Garth; Country music; Lang, K. D.;
Music.
McGwire, Mark
Identification American baseball player
Born October 1, 1963; Pomona, California
McGwire broke the single-season home run record in 1998
and helped rejuvenate interest in Major League Baseball.
Mark McGwire was one of the best power hitters of
the 1980’s and 1990’s. Over the course of sixteen sea-
sons, McGwire hit 583 home runs, drove in 1,414
runs, and was a twelve-time all-star. In 1987, his first
full year in the major leagues,
McGwire hit forty-nine home runs,
a rookie record, and won the Ameri-
can League Rookie of the Year
Award as first baseman for the Oak-
land Athletics. In 1997, after he had
spent nine seasons in Oakland, the
Athletics traded McGwire to the St.
Louis Cardinals, where he became a
national sports icon.
After finishing the 1997 season
with fifty-eight home runs, McGwire
began the 1998 season by hitting
home runs in each of his first four
games. Despite McGwire’s hot start,
by June, Chicago Cubs outfielder
Sammy Sosa and McGwire were
neck and neck for the league lead in
home runs. For the rest of the sea-
son, McGwire and Sosa pursued the
single-season home run record set
by Roger Maris with sixty-one home
runs in 1961. On September 8,
McGwire hit his sixty-second home
run, and after hitting five home
runs in his last three games, he finished the season
with seventy home runs to Sosa’s sixty-six. For his
achievements, McGwire won the Silver Slugger
Award and finished second to Sosa in the voting for
National League Most Valuable Player.
Impact The home run chase between McGwire
and Sosa in 1998 was one of the events that attracted
widespread interest and helped repair baseball’s
image after the damage it suffered in the wake of
the 1994-1995 baseball strike. Fans returned to
games in droves, and attendance rose by seven mil-
lion fans between the 1997 and 1998 seasons. Indic-
ative of the cultural significance of the home run
race, McGwire’s seventieth home run ball sold for
over $3 million.
However, McGwire’s accolades were short-lived.
During the 1998 season, an Associated Press story
revealed that McGwire’s locker contained andro-
stenedione, a muscle-building substance legal for
use in Major League Baseball but banned by most
other sports organizations.
Subsequent Events Despite the furor over the sup-
plement, McGwire’s reputation remained mostly in-
tact until 2005, when José Canseco alleged that he538 McGwire, Mark The Nineties in America
Mark McGwire hits his sixty-first home run of the 1998 season, tying Roger Maris’s
single-season record.(AP/Wide World Photos)