SEATTLE -- As distinguished Home Run Derby-ites go, he isn't quite Mark McGwire, pounding balls off the light towers, the Rocky mountain peaks and six or seven planes circling the airport.
But it's not as if Luis Gonzalez had never won any kind of Home Run Derby before he sneaked off with the big silver derby trophy at the All-Star Game on Monday.
|  | | Luis Gonzalez connects with one of his 16 home runs during Monday's Home Run Derby. |
Yes sir. Who among us can forget that he did win the prestigious University of South Alabama alumni home run derby one year?
"I think Marlon Anderson and Mike Mordecai were in it," Gonzalez reminisced Monday night. "And last year, I won the Triple-A-versus-big-league home run derby against our Triple-A club, when balls were just flying out in Tucson.
"But I'm pretty sure," guessed Luis Gonzalez, "I wasn't the odds-on favorite to win this one."
OK, so he wasn't quite the odds-on favorite to win the All-Star Home Run Derby. But in an ESPN.com poll conducted earlier in the day, he almost was the odds-on favorite not to win it. (He finished fifth out of eight.)
Now that might seem slightly ridiculous, considering we're talking about a man with 35 home runs, a .355 batting average and 86 RBI at the All-Star break. But Luis Gonzalez himself was not exactly aghast at this development.
"Know what?" he said. "I like it better if nobody expects you to do it and you surprise everybody. That's just me. I walked in here, saw my locker was between Barry Bonds and Sammy (Sosa), and I said, 'Geez. I'd just as soon be over in the corner with the bat boys.' "
Once, of course, there was a time Gonzalez was so anonymous, he practically did hang out with the bat boys. But he's screwing that up big-time this year. And that trend continued in the fabulous Home Run Derby.
To win this thing, all Gonzalez had to do was hit 6,509 feet (or 1.23 miles) worth of home runs. And pray that Jason Giambi would need a good triceps massage or something after crunching a record 14 homers in the first round. And then have to go head-to-head with Barry Bonds and Sosa in the semifinals and finals.
"Actually," Gonzalez confessed afterward, "my big fear in the first round was that I wasn't going to hit any."
He had good reason for that fear for a while there, too. Stepping in after Troy Glaus had just gone homerless in 10 swings and immediately sought asylum in the witness-protection program, Gonzalez started his day with four straight outs himself.
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I
like it better if nobody expects you to do it and
you surprise everybody. That's just me. I walked
in here, saw my locker was between Barry Bonds
and Sammy (Sosa), and I said, 'Geez. I'd just as
soon be over in the corner with the bat
boys.' ” |
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— Luis Gonzalez |
But then he whomped the next ball 440 feet, over the Hit It Here Café in right field. And the rest is history.
Luis Gonzalez history, anyway.
A few weeks ago, Gonzalez lofted a home run into the swimming pool in Arizona and won a fan a car. Monday, by taking this Home Run Derby, he won an eminently grateful fellow named Thomas Knepp, of Potters Mills, Pa., a $250,000 house.
"That's Gonzo," said teammate Curt Schilling. "He's a do-for-others kind of guy. He's the male Mother Theresa."
But in a way, it was almost fitting that the male Mother Theresa won this contest, won a guy a house and still got overshadowed in this derby by the bigger names around him.
When people think back on this first half, they will think of it as Barry Bonds' year -- even though Gonzalez would be the MVP if the season ended today.
And when people think back on this Home Run Derby, they will think of it as Giambi's show -- even though it was Gonzalez who will have to go home and build another shelf for his trophy case.
But hey, without Big Mac on the premises to poke a few balls off the Space Needle and Mt. Ranier, we needed somebody to step in and do a decent McGwire imitation.
And that guy was Giambi, who had the gall to break Big Mac's record for most home runs in a single round. McGwire hit 13 in the first round at Fenway two years ago. Giambi then stepped up there, got into his most furious uppercut mode and hit 14 in the first round Monday.
"I don't think I can take that same hack into the game," Giambi quipped afterward. "If I do, I might punch out four times."
But after spending the last decade watching Sosa and his pal, McGwire, "and some of those other cartoon characters" flailing away in this derby, smoking balls into distant zip codes, Giambi knew how this was supposed to work.
"Basically," he said, "I was just swinging from my shoetops, trying to hit every ball as hard as I can."
And he did, all right. After making four straight outs to start the round, he then pounded seven homers on his next seven swings. One splattered off the foul pole next to the second deck. Another clanked off the window of the café (431 feet away if you're scoring). Then he drove the crowd into a frenzy usually reserved for new Starbucks flavors by crashing a 452-foot rocket into the upper deck.
Eventually, he hit 14 home runs in 19 swings, including a ball off an auxiliary scoreboard, another off the facing of the upper deck and a grand finale over the restaurant into the third tier in right.
Giambi said he had a feeling that he probably should have "shut it down a little bit" to conserve energy for the next two rounds -- "but I was having too much fun. I just wanted to let it fly."
Then, however, he had to return to the runway and sit around for an hour between rounds. And he wound up getting eliminated by Sosa in Round 2, eight homers to six. Oh, well.
Giambi said his "arms just got tired" after all that wailing. But if he thought he was spent after hitting all those homers, he should have tried describing all those homers.
That was the challenge facing Mike Piazza, who volunteered to do color commentary in the ESPN booth in order to "try and bring some new schtick to the home run contest."
"After a while," Piazza said, "you've got so many guys hitting so many home runs, it's like watching the NBA guys shoot free throws. So I think we need some new vocabulary to describe these things. Some will take off. Some won't. It's kind of like a continental breakfast."
For example, Piazza said, "I think 'bomb' is kind of an outdated term. We need some new terms that aren't so out of date. Like I played with Pat Mahomes last year. And he had a term he threw out there when a guy hit a home run on a high pitch. He said, 'A pitch like that is so high, it's already over the fence coming in. So all you've got to do is tap it to get it out of the ballpark.' I like that. So when I'd hit one on a pitch like that, I'd just look at him and say, 'Aw, I just tapped it.' "
Piazza said he doesn't consider himself "a pioneer or anything. I just want to try and throw a few new terms out there and see if any stick."
And we know the broadcasting industry appreciates it, too. As guys like Bonds and Gonzalez keep chasing 70 homers, we're going to need some serious terminology -- and lots of it.
Speaking of Barry, you'll recall that a couple of months ago, he was adamant about not wanting to take part in any more derbies. But sure enough, there he was Monday.
"To me," he said, "if you're elected to play in the game, you should play. It's an obligation. But the Home Run Derby is not an obligation. It's a choice. But they've made it a lot easier for us now by allowing us to bring our own BP pitcher. By doing that, they've allowed us to fulfill a dream for another individual."
So Bonds invited Giants BP pitcher Juan Lopez to accompany him. And Lopez served up just enough homers to Barry in the first round -- three -- to get him into a second-round duel with Gonzalez.
It was almost like real life itself, where Bonds and Gonzalez are dueling toward history.
"You know," Bonds said, "it's not easy to stay focused for 162 games. I don't care who you are. In '98 Sammy pushed Mac for 162 games, and I think they helped each other.
"But this year, it's not the same. Me and Gonzo? I mean, what the heck are we doing?"
Bonds then declared Gonzalez the official favorite in this home run race -- because "he plays in Arizona. I don't."
To which Gonzalez replied: "Go back and tell Barry I've only hit 15 home runs at home. I hear that all the time: 'He hits in the light air in Arizona.' But I've done most of my damage on the road. Tell Barry that."
Ah, but when they went head-to-head in Home Run Derby, what happened? Gonzalez eliminated Bonds, five to three. Then he turned his attention to the defending derby champ, Sosa.
After making six straight outs to kick off the finals, Gonzalez then erupted for six homers in his next nine hacks. Whereupon Sammy, the defending champ, dug in there against Gonzalez's personal BP pitcher, Jeff Matuzas, Arizona's bullpen catcher.
Matuzas later admitted he'd been "stressed out over this the whole last week. I couldn't sleep. I was losing weight. Everybody kept saying, 'The whole world's watching. You're on national TV.' And I kept saying, 'I can handle this. I can handle this.' "
You thought there was pressure on Gonzalez and Sosa? What about poor Jeff Matuzas?
"I'll tell you what," Schilling said. "It would have been a nightmare for Tooz to go back to Arizona and face our guys after giving up a derby-winner to Sammy. I kept telling him to break out his cutter to Sammy."
But Matuzas said, in that honorable way of his: "That wouldn't have been fair." So he played it straight. Sosa hit just two in 12 cuts, anyway (or seven fewer than he hit in last year's final, against Junior Griffey). And Luis Gonzalez had crept out of the shadows just a little bit farther.
Or had he?
After the derby, they sat Thomas Knepp, the proud new home-owner, down beside him. And someone asked: "How much did you know about Luis Gonzalez?"
"I didn't know him at all, to tell you the truth," Knepp said.
"Neither," said Luis Gonzalez, "did a lot of people."
Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer for ESPN.com.
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