the Summer of 1998
Reading about Sosa reminds me of the summer of 1998, oft-referred to as the summer that Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa saved baseball. (Ozzie Guillen, once a Sosa teammate on the White Sox, just did so again.)
It *was* a great summer for baseball. (Other events of note from that summer: the soon-to-be-disbanded Bulls won their sixth title; the embassy bombings; Monicagate simmered; Russia devalued the ruble; and India and Pakistan tipped on the edge of nuclear war.) I had moved back to Chicago from Tokyo and was living four blocks from Wrigley Field. When Wrigley erupted, my apartment reverberated. It was glorious. I played hooky from work on a Friday and saw Sosa hit #60, which, at the time, was still a rare feat. Of course he passed Maris over the weekend. Put it in perspective - Sosa hit 20 home runs in the month of June.
The animated gif to the right comes from mlb.com, and is from the day Sosa hit #61 and #62. 
Another item of historical context. I just came across a book, “The Summer that Saved Baseball“, written by two recent college grads who hit 30 ballparks in 38 days that summer. Talk about living the dream. It’s a book I’m glad somebody wrote.
Reflections aside, this occasionally burbling, yet still mostly submerged “list of 104 names” is basically ongoing double jeopardy. I can see why Bud Selig might be grumpy.