Even Americans who don’t know a forkball from a fork at least dimly understood that forces bigger than baseball were at work–forces of national pride and identity. From the beginning, when Sammy Sosa emerged as a legitimate contender in June, it was clear that more than the home-run record of Roger Maris was at stake. Maris was a one-season wonder, a footnote to the real drama of succession: who will be the next Sultan of Swat, the next Babe Ruth? So beloved was the late American icon that previous pretenders (including Maris and Hank Aaron) had been mercilessly harassed, even threatened with death a half century after Ruth’s halcyon 60-home-run year, 1927. Now, the choice of successors could not have been more sharp: Would it be the son of a California dentist, or a Dominican immigrant? White or black? Rich roots or poor? English or Spanish speaking?
Only a month ago it looked like things might turn tense. For many Americans, particularly white Americans, McGwire was the rightful heir to Ruth. Moon-faced and massive, he was not only a cartoon caricature of Ruth, he was the only man ever to hit a baseball with anything near the consistent power of The Babe. Polls showed overwhelming white support for McGwire. On sports talk shows and hot lines, white fans voiced a wariness of Sosa as a Spanish upstart, an unwelcome harbinger of the Latinization of America and its game. (By 2010, if census projections are right, whites will fall from a narrow majority to the largest of many minorities in America.) ““Allow me to point out, sir,’’ said one caller to The Arizona Republic’s sports desk, ““The most-home runs-in-a-season title has always been a white man’s title. From Ruth to Maris to McGwire. You can forget about Sammy Sosa.’’ It’s sad, said Prof. Melvin Lucas, who teaches ““Baseball: the American Game’’ at Cornell College in Iowa, ““but I don’t think America is ready to accept a black Latino as the national hero of its national game.''
Yet America is also the most adaptable of nations, and Sosa quickly began winning over the country. He defused emerging tensions by referring to McGwire as ““the man,’’ and saying he expected Americans to root for Americans. He smiled, laughed, hugged McGwire, said he loved America. By last week, those Americans with a preference still favored McGwire by 2 to 1–but the largest number are now rooting for a tie. ““Everyone knows that the future of America is increasingly Hispanic, and we will continue to struggle to find our place, our identity,’’ says Jose Masso, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of Sports in Society at Northeastern University in Boston. ““But when I went out to see Sosa at Fenway, I saw North Americans–Irishmen–wearing Sosa T shirts and waving the Dominican flag. It’s great.''
Sosa is a pathbreaker, already perhaps the most recognizable Latino star America has known. Long before Jackie Robinson’s struggle to break the major-league color barrier in 1947, black Cubans like Armando Marsans and Rafael Almeida had played in the U.S. majors–passed off as ““olive skinned Castilians’’ by club owners as early as 1911. They and their successors were largely invisible to middle America because they couldn’t speak English. Black Latino stars of the 1960s and 1970s, like Roberto Clemente, faced doubled-edged discrimination: racial hostility and public mockery in the sports pages, which made fun of their ungrammatical English. It is a measure of how far the game has come that Sosa recently stood up at a press conference and spoofed an old American TV spoof of a Latino player who knows just one English phrase: ““Baseball been berry berry good to me.’’ Everyone in the room cracked up, including McGwire.
Yet Latino players still struggle against invisibility. Every fan knows Sosa, but few realize how much the game has changed: 30 percent of all major-leaguers are Latino, up from 14 percent in 1990. So are a disproportionate number of the superstars, from the game’s highest paid player, Boston pitcher Pedro Martinez, to its most prolific RBI man, Juan Gonzalez, and a crop of new Cuban defectors like Yankee pitcher Orlando ““El Duque’’ Hernandez (following story). The stunning performances of Latino players in last year’s World Series and All Star games have been feted as a kind of ““coming-out party’’ in the Spanish press, but for the most part, Anglos did not attend. It’s the language barrier, says Masso: ““Americans know Latin players for their numbers, but not as people. Sosa is the first one America has come to love as a person.''
The tale is already part of baseball lore. Sosa rose from shoeshine boy in San Pedro de Macoris to superstar in America, and now showers his mother and his hometown with largesse. He has lived the American Dream, much like Babe Ruth himself, who rose from Baltimore street urchin to baseball’s highest paid player, and returned to save the orphanage where he grew up after it burned. But the similarities end there. Ruth was a beloved rogue, whose drinking and womanizing inflated his legend, but made him unemployable after he left baseball. Sosa is known as Slammin’ Sammy, the hard-working father of four kids and role model, which has helped win him acceptance as an American hero.
Still, Sosamania is not simple. Most North Americans are unaware of whether Sosa is an American citizen (he’s a legal resident) and their allegiances are complicated by nationality and politics. Most Canadians are rooting for Sosa because they see him as the outsider and underdog. Carrie Masterman, 26, a graphic designer from Missouri, favors McGwire because ““To me McGwire is so all-American. And this is baseball.’’ Her boyfriend, 30-year-old Manhattanite Jim Brennan, is rooting for Sosa. ““As the Upper West Side liberal democrat, I would like it to be somebody other than the white guy who wins.''
American blacks are in perhaps the most confusing position. Polls show the majority rooting for McGwire, and many say they do so because they see Sosa as a foreigner. Yet those generalities break down in politicized neighborhoods, like Harlem, where it is difficult to find a McGwire supporter. ““What about Sammy Sosa? Why doesn’t he get the same hurrahs?’’ says Terence Layne, a 34-year-old barber. ““I think it’s racism. He’s Dominican. He’s dark. The icons of baseball have always been white. Someone’s going to have the record. I don’t think they want him to have it.’’ And who are they? ““The powers that be.''
The complex racial tensions are still close to the surface, emerging as racial conspiracy theories. Whites say Latino pitchers are ““grooving’’ easy pitches to Sosa, while Latinos say ““they’’ are ordering pitchers to go easy on McGwire. Much has been made of how the league stopped the game to celebrate McGwire’s 62nd home run, but not Sosa’s five days later. Sosa partisans also claim McGwire derives an advantage from an over-the-counter muscle-builder he has been taking for the last year. ““McGwire’s using legal steroids,’’ says New Yorker Alfredo Martinez, 47, whose parents hail from Puerto Rico. ““Sosa’s diet consists of plaintains, rice, beans and meat. Latin food.''
One thing is clear: Sosamania has united the fractured Latino community in America. Cubans, Mexicans, Nicaraguans–all are pulling behind Sosa, a special point of pride for his fellow Dominicans. They are both the poorest of Latino immigrants and by far the most successful in baseball. Of 130 Latino big-leaguers last year, 57 hailed from the Dominican Republic. Sosamania grips the heavily Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights in New York, where Sosa’s home-run tallies–scrawled everywhere–have become a sort of calendar, as in, ““The day Sosa hit 66, I was . . .’’ ““Now [Americans] only see us as second-class citizens,’’ says Rolando Martinez, 32, a taxi driver who moved to the United States 10 years ago. ““We can be as good as you. Or even better. Just give us the chance to prove it.’’ It hardly even mattered whether Sammy Sosa won the home race. With dignity and good humor, he had made his point about America.
Age: 29 Born: Dom. Rep. Team: Chicago Cubs Position: Outfield 1998 stats (after Saturday’s game): Home runs: 66 RBI: 157 Batting avg.: .306
