After going homerless in his first 10 National League games, McGwire belted 24 over the Cardinals' remaining 41 games to finish the season with 58. The total tied him with Jimmie Foxx and Hank Greenberg for the most homers by a right-handed batter and his 110 circuit blasts in 1996 and 1997 topped Foxx's record of 106 over two years. Neither record, however, would last for even a year.

McGwire loved the atmosphere in baseball-mad St. Louis, not to mention the National League style of play. "It's amazing how many 1-2-3 innings you see over here," he said. "Those innings never seem to happen in the American League. There is also so much more standing around in the American League. Here, you always feel into the game. It's just a better way to play the game." After years of sparse crowds at Oakland, he happily signed a three-year deal, including an option for the 2001 season, to stay with the Cardinals. The fans loved him for it, and the appreciation only grew when McGwire announced he was giving $1 million of his salary to help sexually and physically abused children in St. Louis and California.

By the start of his first full season in St. Louis, McGwire had become the biggest draw in baseball. Fans showed up in droves to see for themselves the awe-inspiring distances his pronounced upper cut swing could hit a baseball. "McGwire's swing is designed to produce home runs (and strikeouts)," wrote Allen Barra in the New York Times. "nything else - doubles, singles, the occasional ground ball, is an accident." Batting practice in St. Louis often attracted bigger and more enthusiastic crowds than the A's would bring in for games during his final seasons.

Those crowds set the tone for the circus-like ambiance that would attend his earth-shattering 1998 campaign. Beginning on Opening Day -- when he launched a grand slam off Los Angeles' Ramon Martinez -- the eyes of the baseball world followed Big Mac to learn if he could knock Maris off the top of the home run charts. Healthy and happy in St. Louis, McGwire homered in the first four games of the season, a feat previously accomplished only by Willie Mays in 1971. He won the NL Player of the Month Award in both April and May (he had also won the award in September of 1997, making him the first player ever to be so honored in three straight months), and by the All Star break had clouted 37 longballs to tie Reggie Jackson's 1969 mark for the most home runs in the first half of the season.