Why Mark McGwire Walked Away From 50 Home Runs

Ben BeeriIn 1987, Mark Maguire was having one of the greatest rookie seasons baseball had ever seen. He was 23 years old, playing his first full season with the Oakland A's, and he did something no rookie had ever done before. He hit 49 home runs. The previous rookie record was 38. So Maguire didn't just break the record, he shattered it. Going into the final games of the season, there was another number sitting right in front of him. 50. 50 home runs was a massive milestone, and Maguire was just one swing away. Then his wife went into labor with their first child, and Maguire had a decision to make. He could stay with a team, finish the season and try to hit number or he could leave and try to make it home for the birth of his son. He left. And because of that decision, his rookie season ended at 49 home runs. I love this story because it's really easy to look at it now and say, of course he left. Of course the birth of your son is more important than a baseball game. But put yourself in that. You're 23 years old. You're having a historic season. You're one home run away from 50. You've spent your entire life trying to get to the major leagues and now you're standing on the edge of something that very few people in history of the sport have ever accomplished and you don't know if you're ever going to get this opportunity again.

McGuire reportedly explained his thinking afterwards in essentially this way. He might get another opportunity to hit 50 home runs, but he would never get another opportunity to be there for the birth of his first child. And he was right. There's certain opportunities in life that come back, and there's others that don't. We spend so much of our lives being taught to maximize everything. If you get to 49, get to 50. If you make a million dollars, make two. If the business grows, grow it more. If you're winning, keep winning. There's always another number.

But maybe a part of being successful is knowing that when the next number isn't the most important thing in the room. Maguire didn't just quit at 49. He didn't stop caring about baseball. He simply understood that on this particular day, there was something more important than number 50. He eventually did get another chance. Years later, Maguire would hit more than 50 home runs in a season. Eventually, he would hit 70, but he never would have gotten another chance to be there for the birth of his first son.

And his 49 home runs, that rookie record stood for thirty years. Maybe that's the lesson. Maybe we're so focused on what we might lose by walking away that we don't stop to think about what we might lose by staying. There will always be another number to chase, but some moments only happen once. And maybe success isn't just knowing how to keep going. Maybe it's knowing when you've done enough and recognizing what matters more. Mark Maguire was only gonna have one opportunity to go and be there for the birth of his first son.

There's only one first born son that you're going to have. But as he continued to play in the major leagues, he got to excel at a level that at the time had never been seen before. In 1998, he even shattered the home run record. He hit 70 home runs, became the first player ever to hit 70 home runs. And it was really something to watch. Like, you're around in 1998, you're watching the home run chase with him and Sammy Sosa, that was one of the most exciting things that really brought joy to baseball back for fans all over the country.

And in this particular case, it's like family was a priority for Mark Maguire. It's like there's many other things that can be a priority for you, and that you may fear walking away from something at a particular moment because you might feel like you may never have another chance at it again. Some opportunities only come once in life, and there's many of those opportunities. And for him to go back and he said there and you think of the rookie record, like, he broke it. He shattered it. But he also knew he was just getting started.

And I think it's important to know sometimes where it's like, you never know if you'll get another chance at something. But I feel like sometimes we know how much gas we have left in the tank. And to know that you have a few more runs and a few more pushes at something, I think it's good to be able to make a decision as to, hey, there's something else here that requires my bandwidth and attention at this moment. I'm gonna come back to what I excel at, knowing that I have gas left in the tank. It's meant for me, it's going to happen, and if it doesn't, at least I made the decision that was aligned for me at the time, and did the thing that I felt was best for me, best for my family, and ultimately, I chose to do something that I wasn't going to regret down the line. Today, we're in 2026.

We're not looking back at Mark Maguire's home run record that has since been broken and gone, He only had 49 home runs and not 50. And at the end of the day, breaking a record, it's awesome. But it's an external thing, and it's an external thing that really gets measured by people who are external to you. And how many times for us in our life do we measure ourselves by something external, and something that only other people can measure, and we forego something that could be important to us so we can achieve the external metric.

And that could be the amount of money that you want to have in your bank account. Maybe you're missing spending time with your friends, so you can work, you can achieve that. I know that was the case with me for a while. And there's so many things that we try to achieve that can be external where we miss out on what's really important for us in life. And I think a really important takeaway from this is that Mark Maguire knew what was important to him at a time where he was still very young. And I think that's something that he'll cherish forever, his family will cherish forever, and records are meant to be broken.

Somebody out performed him. Aaron Judge hit over 50 home runs in 2017 as a rookie. It happens. Somebody will break his record too. You're out there working to get some money. There's always more money to get. Some opportunities may be spending time with your family, or being around your family, or traveling, or going on some unique experience, a once in a lifetime type of thing, might never come back. And being at the birth of your firstborn son, That day isn't in the near future for me, but I'm excited for when that day does come, to be able to be there for that.

I can't think of an opportunity that's an even greater once in a lifetime opportunity than that. And I think for us, we should all take a look around and kind of learn to try to recognize the once in a lifetime opportunities that we have. And when they come up in our lives, we should take those once in a lifetime opportunities, and we should take full advantage of them, and we should be fully present for them because the external opportunities will come and they'll go, but the once in a lifetime opportunities, they'll come, and you'll either be there for them or you won't. And I think that being there for those moments is one of the most powerful things that you can do.