1998 Major League Baseball home run record chase

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Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa

During Major League Baseball's (MLB) 1998 season, Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs pursued the league's long-standing and highly coveted single-season home run record (61), set in 1961 by Roger Maris. The season-long chase culminated on September 8, 1998, when McGwire, facing Sosa and the Cubs, hit his 62nd home run of the season to break the record. McGwire finished the season with 70 home runs, while Sosa finished with 66. The 1998 home run record chase, as well the previous year's pursuit of the record, was widely credited by sports analysts with restoring interest in MLB among its fan base following the 1994 strike that resulted in that season prematurely ending and the cancellation of the 1994 World Series. McGwire's record was later broken in 2001 by Barry Bonds, who hit 73 home runs.

Several players had come close to breaking Maris's record in the years before 1998. Before the 1994 season was cut short, Matt Williams of the San Francisco Giants and Ken Griffey Jr. of the Seattle Mariners were both on a pace which threatened Maris's record: they hit 43 and 40 home runs respectively in a season which was shortened by approximately 50 of the scheduled 162 games. In 1995, Albert Belle became the first player since Cecil Fielder in 1990 to hit 50 home runs in a season.^[1] Belle was only the 4th player in the previous three decades to reach the 50 home run milestone (George Foster hit 52 in 1977, following Willie Mays in 1965). In 1996, Brady Anderson of the Baltimore Orioles hit 50 home runs, twice the number he hit during any other season.^[2] Of more note was McGwire of the Oakland Athletics, who first drew attention by hitting a league-leading 52 home runs that season while only playing in 130 games.^[3]

The 1997 home run chase featured McGwire and Griffey, but neither reached it that year. It was during that season that full-fledged interest over the record kicked in as both players were on record pace well into the summer.^[4][5] McGwire finished the 1997 season with 58 home runs following his mid-season trade to the Cardinals, besting Griffey's total of 56 that year.