Let me be the next one to write about Mark McGwire--enough cannot be said about him.

But perhaps what I can say cannot be said by all.

Outside of my parents, Mark was my boyhood hero.

And it is also through McGwire that I have one of my most vivid childhood memories.

McGwire became my hero after hitting just 49 homeruns in his first season with the Oakland Athletics, far less than his monstrous 70 this season, but an impressive debut nonetheless.

It is hard to explain McGwire's influence on me while I was growing up. You need to step into the mind of a young boy who poured over the sports section every morning, checking the box scores for McGwire's stat line and who became disappointed to find the words "late game" most of the time.

I am the same kid who woke up at 6 a. m. daily to watch ESPN SportsCenter so that I could see the clips of his towering shots.

When I stepped to the plate in Little League, I pretended to be Mark McGwire. The opposing pitchers were supposed to fear me as I approached the batter's box. Unfortunately, I did not always back up the image with performance.

I also bought every piece of A's merchandise I could get my hands on--T-shirts, hats, pennants and baseball cards.

So it is with that background that my story begins.

I was an eight-and-a-half-year-old boy in the spring of 1988 when my family took a vacation to Arizona.

One of the stops on our trip was in Mesa for a spring training game between the Cubs and my A's.

I wore my A's hat and A's T-shirt and brought my baseball glove with me, hoping for that elusive foul ball--a foul ball from anybody.

Before the game, a group of Cubs players were peppering balls near the dugout while a crowd looked on. Calvin Schiraldi knocked a ball into the stands.

A mad scramble ensued. I was in the middle of it all, on my knees, battling 40-year-old men for a piece of nostalgia.