I didn't see McGwire play live during the 1998 season. Like everyone else on the planet, I tried to watch as many of his at-bats on TV as I could, but I suspected that it was a poor substitute for seeing the man in person. So, in April of 1999 when St. Louis came to town, I headed over to Dodger Stadium with some friends. We arrived early because we suspected that batting practice would probably be as interesting as the game itself.

While the Cardinals were in the cage, I was standing about halfway up the left field bleachers (where else would you want to be in a game that McGwire was in?) and most of the homeruns that the players were hitting were landing in front of and below me, barely clearing the wall and ending up somewhere in the first half dozen rows.

When McGwire came to the plate, I had to look up as the balls went over my head, ignoring gravity. He changed the geometry of baseball. Several of his homeruns cleared the bleachers altogether and landed in the parking lot. McGwire took the term "hitting one out of the park" literally. It was like watching Paul Bunyan playing stickball with midgets. All my friends and I could do was shake our heads and giggle like Little Leaguers.

I'm sorry to see him go. I think the game was better because of him. Here's a guy who, along with Cal Ripken, Jr. (who also hung up his cleats this year), is personally responsible for baseball's recovery after the strike. Had McGwire not built on the groundwork laid by Ripken, baseball would have lost a lot more this season than Selig's $500 million figure. It was no fun watching the big guy batting .187 - and clearly, it was embarrassing to him - but I think a lot of people (myself included) felt that if he could have come back healthy next year, he was certainly capable of some of the old magic.

But in an age when sports figures seem so nakedly venal, spending as much time negotiating endorsement deals as they do in the batting cage, it is hard not to be impressed with McGwire walking away from a multi-million dollar contract because he felt that the fans and the owners would not be getting their money's worth.

I happen to be a Giants fan and so I wasn't distressed - as I know many people were - to see Bonds break McGwire's record. Bonds is a ridiculously talented player and he deserves whatever records he can knock off. But just as Roger Maris hitting 61 homeruns 40 years ago did nothing to dislodge Babe Ruth from the baseball pantheon, it is unlikely that Bonds stunning accomplishment will displace our deep affection for what McGwire gave to the game and to us.

I was recently talking to a friend on my softball team about McGwire's motives for retirement, asking why he would hang it up now when he might still have another good season or two left in him. My friend remarked that maybe he just felt it was time and after all, "he'll probably hold the homerun record for quite awhile." I had to remind him that another guy took it from him this year.

McGwire occupies a unique place in baseball's collective memory. Although he will never again hold the homerun title, it will be a long time before a nation embraces a player in the way he was in the summer of '98. Both he and Bonds broke established homerun records, but the events had eerily dissimilar qualities. McGwire brought a nation together with his quest for 62 while Bonds broke the record in a country that had been torn apart. In 1998, people all over the place were wearing Cardinal hats and baseball jerseys with the number 25 on the back. In 2001, the idolatry reversed itself and baseball players were wearing firemen's caps. Heroism is not immutable.

McGwire was larger than life on a baseball diamond. Seeing him in civilian clothes just won't be the same. There will be times in the future when we will need McGwire. He will be there for us. He has made himself available as a folkloric idol. Paul Bunyan has laid down his axe, but as we all know, that's when the story really begins.

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