The Lying Stones of Marrakech (38 page)

McGwire belongs to this most select company of superhuman achievers. He may well hit 70, thus creating the same sweep of empty space that separates DiMaggio and Thorpe from their closest competitors. Moreover, the character of his blasts almost defies belief. A 400-foot home run, while not rare, deserves notice and inspires pride. The vast majority of Major League dingers fall between 300 and 400. Well, only 18 of McGwire's first 60 failed to reach 400 feet, and several have exceeded 500—a figure previously achieved only once every few years among all players combined.

When faced with such an exceptional accomplishment, we long to discover particular reasons. But I think that such a search only denotes a deep fallacy of human thought. No special reason need be sought beyond the good fortune of many effectively random moments grafted upon the guaranteed achievements of the greatest home run hitter in the history of baseball. I don't care if the thin air of Colorado encourages home runs. I don't care if expansion has diluted pitching. I don't care if the ball is livelier or the strike zone smaller. And I deeply don't care if McGwire helps himself to train by taking an over-the-counter
substance regarded as legal by Major League Baseball.
*
(What nonsense to hold McGwire in any way accountable—simply because we fear that kids may ape him as a role model—for an issue entirely outside his call, and fully in the province of baseball's rule-makers. Let no such hypocrisy dim this greatest moment in our sporting life!)

Mark McGwire has prevailed by creating, in his own person, an ultimate fusion between the two great natural forces of luck and dedicated effort: the gift of an extraordinary body, with the skill of a steadfast dedication to training and study that can only merit the literal meaning of a wonderful word—
enthusiasm
, or “the intake of God.”

11
I wrote this piece for
The Wall Street Journal
to honor McGwire's sixtieth homer and the certainty of his fracturing Maris's old record of 61. Since nearly every forecast I have ever made has been ludicrously wrong, I do take some pride in the only example I can cite of a personal prediction that, for reasons of pure dumb luck, happened to come up golden. McGwire ended his season with exactly 70 dingers, Sosa with 66.

12
For the details and documentation of this claim, see chapter 15.

13
Don't get me started on the illogic and hypocrisy of public attitudes to drugs—a real and tragic problem fueled, rather than helped, by our false taxonomies and hyped moralisms that suppress and paralyze effective thought. McGwire (and many other ballplayers) takes androstenedione, now sold at nutrition stores, entirely legally and over the counter (and overtly advertised, not hidden in drawers and available only by request—as druggists sold condoms in my youth). If baseball eventually decides to ban the substance because it may raise testosterone levels, shall we retrospectively denounce McGwire for obeying the law of his time? Do we annul the records of all artists, intellectuals, politicians, and actors who thought that smoking enhanced their performance by calming their nerves?

A
S
S
AUL DESPISED
D
AVID FOR RECEIVING TEN THOU-
sand cheers to his own mere thousand, scientists often stigmatize, for the same reason of simple jealousy, the good work done by colleagues for our common benefit. We live in a philistine nation filled with Goliaths, and we know that science feeds at a public trough. We therefore all give lip service to the need for clear and supportive popular presentation of our work. Why then do we downgrade the professional reputation of colleagues who can convey the power and beauty of science to the hearts and minds of a fascinated, if generally uninformed public?

This narrow-minded error—our own philistinism—arises in part from our general ignorance of the long and honorable literary tradition of popular presentation for science, and our consequent mistake in equating popularization with trivialization, cheapening,
or inaccuracy. Great scientists have always produced the greatest popularizations, without compromising the integrity of subject or author. In the seventeenth century, Galileo wrote both his major books as dialogues in Italian for generally literate readers, not as formal Latin treatises designed only for scholars. In the eighteenth century, the Swiss savant J.J. Scheuchzer produced the beautifully elaborate eight-volume
Physica sacra
, with 750 full-page copperplate engravings illustrating the natural history behind all biblical events. In the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin wrote
The Origin of Species
, the most important and revolutionary of all scientific works, as a book for general readers. (My students often ask me where they can find the technical monograph that served as the basis of Darwin's popular work; I tell them that
The Origin of Species
fulfills both allied, not opposing, functions.)

With the death of Carl Sagan, we have lost both a fine scientist and the greatest popularizer of the twentieth century, if not of all time. In his many books, and especially in his monumental television series
Cosmos
—our century's equivalent of Scheuchzer's
Physica sacra
and the most widely accessed presentation of our subject in all human history—Carl explained the method and content of our discipline to the general public. He also conveyed the excitement of discovery with an uncanny mix of personal enthusiasm and clear presentation unequaled by any predecessor. I mourn his passing primarily because I have lost a dear friend, but I am also sad that many scientists never appreciated his excellence or his importance to all of us, while a few of the best of us (in a shameful incident at the National Academy of Sciences) actively rejected him. (Carl was a remarkably sanguine man, but I know that this incident hurt him deeply.) Too many of us never grasped his legendary service to science.

I would epitomize Carl Sagan's excellence and integrity in three points. First, in an age characterized by the fusion of high and pop culture, Carl moved comfortably across the entire spectrum while never compromising scientific content. He could joke with Johnny Carson, compose a column for
Parade
, and write a science fiction novel while maintaining an active laboratory and publishing technical papers. He had foibles aplenty; don't we all? We joked about his emphatic pronunciation of “billions,” and my young son (much to Carl's amusement) called
Cosmos
the “stick-head-up show” because Carl always looked up dreamily into the heavens. But the public watched, loved, and learned. Second, for all his pizzazz and charisma, Carl always spoke for true science against the plethora of irrationalisms that surround us. He conveyed one consistent message: real science is so damned exciting, transforming, and provable; why would anyone prefer the undocumentable nonsense of astrology, alien
abductions, and so forth? Third, he bridged the gaps between our various cultures by showing the personal, humanistic, and artistic side of scientific activity. I will never, for example, forget his excellent treatment of Hypatia, a great woman, philosopher, and mathematician, martyred in Alexandria in
A.D
. 415.

You had a wonderful life, Carl, but far too short. You will, however, always be with us, especially if we as a profession can learn from you how the common touch enriches science while extending an ancient tradition that lies at the heart of Western humanism, and does not represent (when properly done) a journalistic perversion of the “sound bite” age. In the words that John Dryden wrote about another great artist, the composer Henry Purcell, who died even younger in 1695: “He long ere this had tuned the jarring spheres and left no hell below.”

14
Originally written as an editorial for
Science
, the leading professional journal of the trade—hence the mode of address to professional researchers, rather than to the general public.

I
N OUR SAGAS, MOURNING MAY INCLUDE CELEBRATION
when the hero dies, not young and unfulfilled on the battlefield, but rich in years and replete with honor. And yet for me, the passing of Joe DiMaggio has evoked a primary feeling of sadness for something precious that cannot be restored—a loss not only of the man, but also of the splendid image that he represented.

I first saw DiMaggio play near the end of his career in 1950, when I was eight and Joe had his last great season, batting .301 with 32 homers and 122 RBIs. He became my hero, my model, and my mentor, all rolled up into one remarkable man. (I longed to be his replacement in center field, but a guy named Mantle came along and beat me out for the job.) DiMaggio remained my primary hero to the day of his death, and through all the vicissitudes of Ms. Monroe, Mr. Coffee, and Mrs. Robinson.

Even with my untutored child's eyes, I could sense something supremely special about DiMaggio's play. I didn't even know the words or their meanings, but I grasped his gracefulness in some visceral way, and I knew that an aura of majesty surrounded all his actions. He played every aspect of baseball with a fluid beauty in minimal motion, a spare elegance that made even his swinging strikeouts look beautiful (an infrequent occurrence in his career; no other leading home run hitter has ever posted more than twice as many lifetime walks as strikeouts or, even more amazingly, nearly as many homers as whiffs—361 dingers versus 369 Ks. Compare this with his two great Yankee long-ball compatriots: 714 homers and 1330 Ks for Ruth, 536 homers and 1710 Ks for Mantle).

His stance, his home run trot, those long flyouts to the cavernous left-center space in Yankee Stadium, his apparently effortless loping run—no hot dog he—to arrive under every catchable fly ball at exactly the right place and time for an “easy” out. If the sports cliché of “poetry in motion” ever held real meaning, DiMaggio must have been the intended prototype.

One cannot extract the essence of DiMaggio's special excellence from the heartless figures of his statistical accomplishments. He did not play long enough to amass leading numbers in any category—only thirteen full seasons from 1936 to 1951, with prime years lost to war, and a fierce pride that led him to retire the moment his skills began to erode.

DiMaggio sacrificed other records to the customs of his time. He hit a career high .381 in 1939, but would probably have finished well over .400 if manager Joe McCarthy hadn't insisted that he play every day in the season's meaningless last few weeks, long after the Yanks had clinched the pennant, while DiMaggio (batting .408 on September 8) then developed such serious sinus problems that he lost sight in one eye, could not visualize in three dimensions, and consequently slipped nearly 30 points in batting average. In those different days, if you could walk, you played.

DiMaggio's one transcendent numerical record—his fifty-six-game hitting streak in 1941—deserves the usual accolade of most remarkable sporting episode of the century, Mark McGwire notwithstanding. Several years ago, I performed a fancy statistical analysis on the data of slumps and streaks, and found that only DiMaggio's shouldn't have happened. All other streaks fall within the expectations for great events that should occur once as a consequence of probabilities, just as an honest coin will come up heads ten times in a row once in a very rare while. But no one should ever have hit in fifty-six straight games. Second place stands at a distant forty-four, a figure reached by Pete Rose and Wee Willie Keeler.

DiMaggio's greatest record therefore embodies pure heart, not the rare expectation of luck. We must also remember that third baseman Ken Keltner robbed DiMaggio of two hits in the fifty-seventh game, and that he then went on to hit safely in sixteen straight games thereafter. DiMaggio also compiled a sixty-one-game hit streak when he played for the San Francisco Seals in the minor Pacific Coast League.

One afternoon in 1950, I sat next to my father near the third base line in Yankee Stadium. DiMaggio fouled a ball in our direction, and my father caught it. We mailed the precious relic to the great man, and sure enough, he sent it back with his signature. That ball remains my proudest possession to this day. Forty years later, during my successful treatment for a supposedly incurable cancer, I received a small square box in the mail from a friend and book publisher in San Francisco, and a golfing partner of DiMaggio. I opened the box and found another ball, signed to me by DiMaggio (at my friend's instigation) and wishing me well in my recovery. What a thrill and privilege—to tie my beginning and middle life together through the good wishes of this great man.

Ted Williams is, appropriately, neither a modest nor a succinct man. When asked recently to compare himself with his rival and contemporary DiMaggio, the greatest batter in history simply replied: “I was a better hitter, he was a better player.”

Simon and Garfunkel captured the essence of this great man in their famous lyric about the meaning and loss of true stature: “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”
*

He was the glory of a time that we will not see again.

15
DiMaggio, so wholly possessed of integrity and refinement both on and off the field, was also a very concrete man of few words. In his op-ed obituary for
The New York Times
, Paul Simon tells a wonderful story of his only meeting with DiMaggio and their contretemps over Mrs. Robinson:

A few years after “Mrs. Robinson” rose to No. 1 on the pop charts, I found myself dining at an Italian restaurant where DiMaggio was seated with a party of friends. I'd heard a rumor that he was upset with the song and had considered a lawsuit, so it was with some trepidation that I walked over and introduced myself as its composer. I needn't have worried: he was perfectly cordial and invited me to sit down, whereupon we immediately fell into conversation about the only subject we had in common.