WE HAVE EVERY REASON TO BELIEVE IN CAL RALEIGH — STEROIDS ARE IN THE PAST, RIGHT?
Only once before have four players hit at least 30 home runs in mid-July — that happened in 1998, the rage of the steroids era — but we must be fair and buy into his 38 homers and Home Run Derby win
The Cal Raleigh extravaganza, if the language allows such oddballish usage, is beyond the contagious level. Who doesn’t love a slugger who hits 38 home runs for the Seattle Mariners — only one behind Barry Bonds at the All-Star break — and just won the Home Run Derby with his father pitching and his brother catching?
Will we stand up and roar if he has 50 home runs before Labor Day? Will we wonder if he’ll beat Aaron Judge’s 62 for the American League record? Isn’t that number considered the best of the non-juicer crowd, below Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa? Isn’t Cal Raleigh, as quintessential a name as baseball has produced, worth a national swirl over the next two and a half months? Do it for his father, Todd, and his brother, Todd Jr., who co-starred in his Monday night triumph.
“It goes all the way back to him coming home — and me forcing him to throw me a ball and hit it in the backyard or in the house or something we probably shouldn’t be doing,” said Raleigh, who is not supposed to crouch behind home plate every day and try to win a playoff berth with taters. As he also pointed out, the player who leads the major leagues in homers doesn’t usually win the Derby.
“That’s as surprising to me as anything else,” he said. “It means the world. I could have hit zero home runs, and I would have had just as much fun. I just can’t believe we won. It’s unbelievable.”
A quirky bit of convenience for a troubled commissioner, Rob Manfred, has me thinking about a wicked past. Welcome to only the second time when four players have smacked 30 homers in mid-July: Raleigh, Judge with 34, Shohei Ohtani with 31 and Kyle Schwarber with 30. The first time was in 1998, when McGwire had 37, Ken Griffey Jr. had 35, Sosa had 33 and Greg Vaughn had 30.
Wasn’t 1998 the rage of the steroids era?
Please don’t view this as an insinuation — again, don’t go there — that Raleigh or anyone else is abusing performance-enhancing drugs. I have no idea, but I realize steroids are still used in the sport, with Jurickson Profar suspended for 80 games this season after Fernando Tatis Jr. was busted for 80 games. The last time the big boss dealt with issues bordering on dire straits — the TV future is shaky for Manfred, who has an expiring collective bargaining agreement after next season — happened when MLB crashed into the ugliest moral territory. It was favorable for commissioner Bud Selig and the owners to look the other way when a reporter saw a bottle of androstenedione in McGwire’s locker. Or when Sosa looked like a sumo wrestler in spring training. Or when Alex Rodriguez acknowledged he had lied twice about steroids.
We have been through a tragic experience. So why wouldn’t we ask again? Maybe Raleigh, the Big Dumper, is a delight wider than his broad set of buttocks. Maybe he is capitalizing on the torpedo bat after first swinging it in April, which is a legal form of enhancement. “It’s working, it’s working. So I’m going to keep using it,” he said. He hit 34 homers last year and 30 the season before, so his emergence shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Still.
America is talking homers again, dammit. Will we ever believe in homers the rest of our lives? No one is calling models to sing during TV commercials, “Chicks dig the long ball.” Judge, who is 6 feet 7 and weighs 282 pounds, made us buy into his 62 shots three years ago. After 1,088 career games, he has reached 350 homers far quicker than anyone else — including McGwire, who needed 192 more games with syringes. Judge is too big and does not need organic compounds. “I’ve been surrounded by great teammates and been on some good teams that have really put me in the best position to go out there and perform at my best,” he said. “So it’s really just a shoutout to all the teammates I’ve had over the years.”
Raleigh? No one knew he might chase Bonds. He grew up in the North Carolina town of Cullowhee, as unincorporated as he is, between Asheville and the Georgia border on the Tuckasegee River. His path toward possible history is the most brutal. He’s a catcher, not an outfielder like Judge. Even Ohtani, when he isn’t pitching an inning or two, trots back to the clubhouse as a designated hitter.
“I wasn’t expecting this, this first half,” Raleigh said. “I obviously had confidence, as a baseball player, you have to, but to be where I’m at, I’m grateful. I’m in a pretty cool spot.”
He is a catcher first, a bomber second. That’s how he endures the grind. “It's just about compartmentalizing. You set a good routine, obviously. Taking care of yourself physically, mentally,” Raleigh said. “The catching comes first, hitting comes next. And you just learn as a catcher, you have a lot going on all the time, so you learn to compartmentalize really well and not take other things elsewhere. That’s why you don’t see catchers put up the offensive numbers. You see the Aaron Judges and Shohei Ohtanis do it.”
His father was dreaming. He taught Cal about baseball at a young age. “I think that every dad that’s had a kid, this is what they dreamed about,” Todd said. “He dreamed about it. To see it come true for your son is unbelievable. I don’t know why we’ve been blessed like this. God is great, and I just, I can’t put it in words. This derby was huge when we heard about it. When we involved the family, the complexion of it changed. It was all a family thing, and I thought, ‘You know what? If he doesn’t hit any home runs, we’ll still be good.’ ’’
The Big Dumper is a switch-hitter. Even harder to believe. “Did it from the first day, when he was in diapers, literally,” Todd said. "And I would take that big ball and he had a big red bat. I'd throw it slow and he'd hit it. Then I'd say stay there, pick him up, turn him around, switch his hands and do it again.”
Todd Jr. watched all 54 of his brother’s shots at Truist Park. “Greatness,” he said.
Pat McAfee introduced Raleigh to the national TV audience, saying, “He has the fattest ass in professional sports.” The Big Dumper isn’t going away. “I’ve always had a large butt,” he said. “It’s a blessing and a curse, I guess.”
I would love to believe in Raleigh. Maybe he’ll break 62 and pass every legitimate drug test. An absence of curveballs, from pitchers who thrive on velocity, might be leading to more home runs across the majors. They hope hitters miss the fastballs. Those who make contact might crush balls over the fence.
Consider it one explanation for Raleigh — and three others with at least 30 homers.
Another consideration is that the commissioner is losing patience. When in doubt, demand a historic amount of home runs. You saw what happened after 1998. Congress. The Mitchell Report. An admission by an agent about counseling Sosa — he didn’t know much English, duh — before speaking to the House Committee on Government Reform.
Let’s just enjoy what we’re watching. OK? Hope it’s real.
If not, I’ll never care about baseball again.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.