As a national baseball writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1998, Jayson Stark had a firsthand view of the home run chase that resurrected post-strike baseball and captured the attention of the country. He was in attendance for 17 of Mark McGwire’s 70 home runs, then a record whose validity was later challenged by suspicions and subsequent admission of steroid use.
“I thought at the time this was the greatest story I ever covered,” Stark, best known for his work on ESPN that ended last year, said. “Obviously now I look back on it, and that record — what we think about it, what we feel about it — is so different.