I could have been there. I could have been a piece of history. Instead, when Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals hit his sixty-second home run of the 1998 season, breaking the most famous record in the world, sports or otherwise, I was sitting in class. I was discussing the difference between a short story and a short, short story, while McGwire was making St. Louis the celebratory epicenter of the universe.

While watching Monday night football, the phone rang. It was a friend of mine extending an open invitation to all those in the room to come with him and some of his fraternity brothers to St. Louis the next night. I got wide-eyed and starting salivating immediately. A chance to actually be there when the record falls. How could I possibly pass up the chance?

The whole “Chasing Maris” story is the biggest thing in the nation and has been for weeks. If I were the cynical type, I might question the timing of such a big story (read: White House loves baseball now). Luckily, I’m not cynical. All I know is that when even my friends who would rather watch SCOLA than ESPN start asking, “Mac go deep tonight?” we’ve got something big on our hands.

But while my heart was screaming “GO! GO! GO!,” my brain was calmly saying “No.” As usually is the case, my heart played the red-headed stepchild to my brain. I decided I just could not miss a day of school. I decided that I had to make it to recitation, lecture and work. I decided to pick routine over the extraordinary.

I would not allow myself to think outside of the box. It didn’t even occur to me that I could simply call in sick at work, give my homework to someone else to hand in at recitation, or skip a meaningless lecture. All I thought about was that reasonable, responsible people don’t just get up and go to St. Louis because some oversized, modern giant is smacking the hell out of some leather-covered balls with a stick of wood.

But when I got home from my night class on Tuesday and watched the replay over and over on ESPN and listened to the crowd roar even after the game was two-hours over, my heart sank. The utter blandness of my life suddenly hit me. Was I so programmed into my routine that I could not make simple sacrifices to be part of something greater? That scared the crap out of me. I consider myself a wild guy. I consider myself a free thinker.

I tried to tell myself that I did not know for sure that the record would fall on Tuesday. I took comfort in the fact that my friend probably didn’t even make it to St. Louis, let alone find the stadium. I definitely refused to believe that he might pick up a scalped ticket and get into Busch Stadium (which he did).

Excuses were flowing like the tears of the Maris children, but they didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I could have done something I would have been talking about for the rest of my life, and instead I went to class. For the rest of my life, I will have a deep feeling of regret whenever anyone mentions the name Mark McGwire.

However, the greater issue here is not about baseball, of course. The point of the whole story is that I refused to capture the moment. Not unlike the dorky guys who didn’t sneak around in caves and read poetry in “Dead Poet’s Society,” I was too caught up in things that all in all are not important. I was one of the guys who didn’t stand up on his desk and proudly pronounce, “Captain, my, captain.” I was a wuss.

So on Tuesday night, I decided to make things different. I was no longer going to be a putz. It’s time to take the bull by the horns. I was going to live my life by the words “carpe diem” (that is Latin for “go to St. Louis”).

While the rest of the world is clamoring on about how McGwire has restored baseball as the national pastime, he has done something completely different for me. It’s probably something that can only happen to a male, having a major sports event change one’s attitude towards life.

Understand that I am not saying I am just going to throw caution to the wind and flunk out of school in the name of chasing the dragon. I’m sure I’ll still go to class, as usual, nearly every day and do my whole slew of regular guy activities. It’s not every day that a moment presents itself that is worthy of seizing.

No longer will I be afraid, though, to participate in life rather than watch it. Instead of thinking about how wonderful it would be to go places and feel things, I will go there and actually feel. I refuse to let my life be a waste of a body and a soul.

That’s what living is really about. You’ve got to not let what is expected of you control you and become your master. We all have the free will to follow our hearts — and follow them we should.

That’s why I have already made the decision. The Chicago Cubs, my favorite baseball team since birth, are in the playoff hunt. Conceivably, if they did fend off the Mets and win a wild-card spot in the post-season, they could battle their way to the seventh game of the World Series. If presented with this situation, I now know what to do. I won’t sit on my butt and watch as history is being made. I will take part in the glorious moment in the way only a man who truly lives can; I’ll jump in head- first. See you in Chicago.

---

David Roepke is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Aurora, Iowa.