Baseball Way Back: Trachsel looks back on historic moments with the Cubs

The 1998 season featured a number of memorable moments not only for the Cubs, but for the game of baseball itself.

And Steve Trachsel was a big part of it.

Trachsel pitched the game that sent the Cubs to the playoffs for the first time since 1989. He also gave up the home run to Mark McGwire that broke Roger Maris' single-season home run record.

In a recent interview, the right-hander shared his memories not only of that season, but also his time with the Cubs in the 1990s.

After leading Long Beach State University to the College World Series, the California native was drafted by the Cubs in the eighth round of the 1991 MLB draft, the 215th pick overall.

Although he felt he should have been picked higher, while toiling in the minors, he realized that if he remained healthy, he would have a good chance to pitch in the big leagues.

He was among eight members of the 1993 AAA Iowa Cubs team that won the American Association championship, including Carlos Zambrano, who were called up that September to the big club.

In his major league debut on Sept. 19 against the Florida Marlins, Trachsel pitched seven solid innings, recording 5 strikeouts and singling in his first major league at-bat, in a 2-1 Cubs loss. In the fifth, Marlins pitcher Chris Hammond hit a squeeze bunt back to Trachsel, whose underhanded throw could not retire Alex Arias as he dashed home with the second run.

Cubs manager Jim Lefebvre was so impressed with the 22-year-old that he penciled him in for two more starts, saying to reporters, "I was very impressed with his poise, his arm, his mound presence. He has a good idea what he wants to do."

Pitching at Wrigley Field for the first time, he was awed. Trachsel not only felt at home at Wrigley, he moved into the neighborhood.

"The neighborhood around it was just amazing. There is nothing like that in California. My second, third year, I lived four blocks away and walked to the field every day."

Trachsel said his teammates, including Mark Grace and Terry Mulholland, helped him make the transition to the majors.

He learned that umpire Paul Runge had a test for new pitchers - early in the game he would call a pitch belt high and right down the middle a ball and look over the catcher's shoulder to gauge the pitcher's reaction.

"If you throw your arms in the air or look weird, you're screwed. You're not going to get another good call," he was told. But it you didn't react, "the next couple of innings you might start getting three-four inches off the outside corner, which is pretty much exactly what happened."

His first major league win came on April 8, 1994 in Montreal, shutting out the Expos 4-0 while giving up only 3 hits. And his first major league homer came off Curt Schilling on June 3, 1996 in a 4-3 Cubs win over the Phillies at Wrigley.

Another memorable game was May 13, 1996, when Trachsel gave up a leadoff double in the first inning to Houston's Brian Hunter. It would be the only hit of the game for Houston, as the Cubs beat the Astros 6-0.

The right-hander developed a style that would probably come into conflict with today's pitch clock, which he jokingly called "a little quick."

At the suggestion that he was a bit deliberate, he said, "I was a lot deliberate. Not on purpose and not in my head. In my head, it was going a million miles an hour. But watching afterward, it was extremely deliberate."

Trachsel had one of his best years in 1996, posting a 13-9 record, with a 3.03 ERA in more than 200 innings.

He said he felt he had gotten better "control-wise and stuff wise."

He went 15-8 in 1998, with the 15th win capping the season on Sept. 28 at Wrigley Field, as the Giants and Cubs, vying for a wild card berth, played their 163rd game of the year. Trachsel threw two outs short of seven innings of 1-hit, shutout ball, with 6 strikeouts, as the Cubs beat the Giants 5-3.

He said he could feel "the electricity of the stadium and of the city from just leaving downtown all the way to the stadium. You could feel it. It was just electric across the board, like nothing I've felt before. The number of people in Wrigleyville before the game was like nothing I've seen before."

It was the culmination of a memorable year for baseball and the Cubs.

Trachsel said a favorite memory is Kerry Wood's 20-strikeout game.

"I was doing the pitching chart for that game," he said. "It was just amazing. Backward K. Swinging K. Swinging K. There were no balls put in ball hardly."

1998 was also the year of the home run tug-of-war between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

He said it was "chaotic and exciting all at the same time," especially with press attention growing exponentially.

"We would normally have maybe a dozen (reporters). Then we're having 25-30 press passes. That clubhouse, back then, was not very big, so you would put in more than 15 reporters in there and it was kind of like a sardine can."

But although what Sosa did "was truly amazing," Trachsel also found Sosa aloof away from the diamond.

"Off the field, we had no interaction whatsoever" during Trachsel's tenure with the Cubs.

With the climactic series between the Cardinals and Cubs approaching, "We actually talked about it in our pitchers meeting, that we definitely didn't want (the record breaker) happening against us."

But in the 4th inning of the Sept. 8 game at Busch Stadium, Trachsel said, "a sinker down and in didn't sink enough."

When McGwire made contact, Trachsel said he assumed the ball would go foul, "because it was down and in-ish and it didn't look like there was any elevation going to it.

"And then with them bringing the fences in and having that low fence down the line, it just barely got over, so I was kind of shocked. And then reality set in and I was (angry)."

During the celebration, he said, the players stood around while the umpires were at a loss about what to do next. One umpire, Gary Darling, began telling jokes on the mound to kill time.

When Sosa celebrated with McGwire, it "rubbed some guys the wrong way, including myself unfortunately. We were in a playoff race, so we were kind of focusing on that."

In the grand scheme of things, he said, "to be part of that type of history, there are a lot worse things you can be a part of, so I just kind of embraced it. Unfortunately, years later Mark admitted to using steroids, so that kind of dampened it a little bit."