The most prominent photograph above Mark McGwire's locker shows him with Pope John Paul II. Or maybe, given the tenor of the time, it is actually a photograph of Pope John Paul II with Mark McGwire. Do you think there is a chance, even the slightest chance, that at this very moment this very same photograph is tacked above a vestment closet in the sacristy of St. Peter's?

There seems no end to the love out there for McGwire. Who knows where to draw the boundaries? Parents love Big Mac as much as their kids do. Women, men -- doesn't matter. The love comes at him in a 360-degree swarm. Everyone knows him like family. They lean over the railing in their replica jerseys and ask about his son with the coziness of a relative catching up after a vacation. They carry their pens and baseballs and disposable cameras, making sure to get all that is rightfully theirs. He has entered the most rarefied realm of ultracelebrity. He is now community property.

McGwire is the brand name in home runs, a human exaggeration in a culture that values hyperbole above all else. Since the All-Star break ("Look, Ma -- no andro!"), he has returned to hitting homers with a frequency and a ferocity that threaten to mock any previous concept of the power hitter. Yet even now, in the midst of another jaw-dropping season, after 70 home runs and the national, Sammy Sosa-aided group hug that followed, he can neither explain nor understand the love.

He also can't escape it, or predict what form it might take. Those two elements live on the less desirable side of the street, the side that wonders whether the Cardinals prefer living profitably in mediocrity with McGwire to spending the money to improve the starting rotation and compete in the National League Central. Love, it seems, takes on many forms.

McGwire is asked if there is such a thing as too much love, if someone can be -- figuratively, at least -- loved to death. There is a pause. The question is meant to be lighthearted, but he considers it seriously. His life has changed; it is public now and there's no going back. He isn't Michael Jordan, forced to live an invitation-only life, but those around him talk about his attempts to "carve out some space for himself." He says, "I don't know if it's too much love. It's hard to explain. I think it's just a fascination with the home run and the power that's come about the last couple of years. People are shaking their heads, thinking, 'What's going on here?' They don't understand it."

What's going on here is a one-man home run bender like nobody has seen before. The fewest at-bats to 500 homers, the first man to reach 400 one year and 500 the next (or any consecutive century mark, for that matter). This season's back-and-forth between him and Sosa might not reach the white-hot clamor of a year ago, but the numbers aren't far off. While McGwire claims never to think about his place in history, he is in the process of absorbing and evoking the legacies of Ruth, Mays and Aaron.

What's going on here is a man whose strength and swing make the most difficult single act in sports look awfully close to effortless. "I think sometimes I do make it look easy, and people take it for granted because of that," McGwire says. "But it's not easy. It's hard work, mentally and physically. Everyone looks at my body, but I use my mind more than my arms."

And what's going on here is a man who -- much to his displeasure -- lives outside the scope of his team and his sport. McGwire has repeatedly and mistakenly been described as a sideshow. In reality, whatever game in which he participates -- and whatever team on which he plays -- has become the sideshow. Instead of becoming a man who exists out of context, the opposite has happened: McGwire is so big he's become his own context.

Unless circumstances (No. 62, No. 70, 500th career homer) force him to, McGwire is loath to discuss issues that place him outside the context of the team. And because he plays on a mediocre club that has yet to enter a pennant race since he was traded from Oakland on July 31,1997, the clubhouse mood is often dispirited. When he has a good day but the Cards lose -- through Aug. 8, they were 16–23 in games in which McGwire homered -- he doesn't present himself as cheery or unconcerned. "He's been criticized for that," manager Tony La Russa says. "But I think it's admirable that he gets upset when we lose and he hits a home run. You're asking him to go against everything he's ever been taught about team sports."

McGwire takes the constant love and the occasional criticism and depersonalizes them. They're never about him; they're always about some external force -- the media's obsession with numbers or the public's genetic fascination with power and home runs. He believes he is merely a symbol for some larger issue, not the issue itself. The love isn't for him; it's for what he stands for. It seems there are all these runaway electrons out there, choosing their own orbit. It's just that they have intersected and joined on with his.

But right about the time he says, "I had nothing to do with creating it," you try to make a point. You tell him it can't all be the media's work, and it can't all be assigned to the outpost of the stat geek or the autograph hound. It has something to do with him, as well as with what he represents.

You start by saying, "You've become bigger ... "

McGwire jumps in, turning on the thought as if it were a Home Run Derby pitch. You don't get out another syllable. He sees the words in your eyes before you speak them.

"But I'm not," he says. "I'm not bigger than life. That's just it. I'm not. That's just wrong."

"Okay, not bigger than life," you say. "Bigger than the game."

"No. Not bigger than the game, either. No one is. That's the misperception. I don't even like to hear it. That comes only from the people with the pens and microphones."

He needs to believe this. His constitution demands it, and his popularity, both inside the clubhouse and out, depends on it. He has never sought the spotlight or been completely comfortable while in it -- two traits that serve to increase his appeal and, consequently, make him all the more mystified by it. Still, it's hard to remain the proverbial one-player-of-25 when ballparks fill up hours before the game to watch you practice. Or when you go into a city with the baseball tradition of Cincinnati and watch as they set off fireworks after you -- a visiting player from a team in the same division -- hit one out of the park. Or when reporters treat your teammates like strangers at a crowded party, occasionally nodding in their direction or stopping by only to glean a brief tidbit of what it's like to be in your presence.

"I try to push it aside as much as I can, but it's hard," he says. "Every time I get to a city, there's a story on me on the front of the sports section. You know, 'Come out and watch batting practice. Come out and see him hit.' I don't encourage that. I don't want that. There are 24 other guys in this room. But that's what it's become, and I have no control over it. It's just out there, everywhere."

After hitting his 57th home run last year to break Hack Wilson's National League season record, after another endless press conference and then having to hide in the training room 'til the last reporter gave up, he sat in the clubhouse with 25 boxes of baseballs in front of him. He signed each ball -- 12 to a box, 300 in all -- and placed a box on the floor of each of his teammates' lockers. After hitting his 62nd to break Roger Maris' record, he repeated the same routine.

"He constantly tried to do things to show us he appreciated us putting up with the circus last year," says Cardinals pitcher Kent Bottenfield. "It bothered him. He knows we were put through the ringer, and he cares what we think about him."

He is perceived to be bigger than the team, which means the team's failures are perceived to be his failures. Since winning the NL Central in '96, the Cardinals have been out of the race by the end of July each of the past three seasons. McGwire's most famous exploits have taken place unencumbered by meaningful baseball games. This has created a low murmur in St. Louis about whether the Cardinals have the incentive to compete as long as McGwire's presence continues to fill the stands. "I don't buy that and I know our ownership doesn't buy that," says Cardinals GM Walt Jocketty. Without question, McGwire has proven to be a 250-pound ATM. The spot where his final homer of '98 landed is now called "Suite 70." For $4,900 a game -- 70 seats at $70 -- a group of fans gets beer and soda, pretzels and chips, caps and lapel pins. And they get to sit in a section that, before McGwire turned on a Carl Pavano fastball, had all the intrinsic charm of a narrow tunnel behind the visitor's bullpen. Suite 70 sold out for all 81 games.

While the Cardinals have put sound business and marketing practices to work in the selling of McGwire, they also cut the payroll from $52 million at the beginning of '98 to $46 million this season. La Russa calls these numbers "accurate but uninformed," because the team made legitimate offers to Randy Johnson and Kevin Brown before losing out to the Diamondbacks and Dodgers. They also went after Armando Reynoso in the off-season and Darryl Kile before the trading deadline. And how were the Cardinals to know that Matt Morris, a righthander with the look of a future ace, would go down for the season with a spring training arm injury?

"We were ready to spend double-digit millions on Kevin or Randy," says La Russa. "But if you can't get those guys, do you cover your butt and take two-thirds of that and sign somebody just to throw him out there? The will to beef the club up was there. It didn't work, and I think it's admirable Walt didn't try to cover his butt. Mark knows if there was a player out there who would make a difference, the money would be there to get him."

In an illogical extension, an op-ed columnist from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch -- who professed to love McGwire as much as the next guy -- wrote a piece that advocated trading him for the good of the team. The backlash follows along well-tilled soil: The musician goes too mainstream; the indie director goes big-budget; the athlete's individual talents diminish the team's objectives.

Let La Russa, who is admittedly defensive on the subject, take it from there: "One day in July I wrote down something that I had read: 'Because of the attention to the home run, it takes away from the Cardinals playing baseball.' So let's discuss how harmful it is to have Mark McGwire in your lineup hitting home runs and driving in runs. From the first day of spring training last year he was asked whether he could break the record. Then he goes out and does it, hits 70 home runs. Okay. Not only that, but he handles everything like a champ -- got a little testy a couple times, but only a couple. This winter he doesn't embarrass himself, doesn't run anybody over or shoot anybody. He's a solid citizen. Then he comes out and has another incredible year. So how is it bleeping possible to pick out a negative concerning Mark McGwire in St. Louis?"

McGwire would hate this, but what now? What about 600 ... 700 ... Ruth ... Aaron? None of these historic mile markers is inconceivable. With the world's electronic eye focused so tightly, could McGwire keep his sanity amid that kind of love?

"All we heard before he got to 50 last year was how he would stop, maybe eke out a few more because of the pressure," La Russa says. "Well, what happened when he got to 50? It was bap-bap-bap-bap-bap. He hit 'em faster than ever. That's how he handled all that pressure."

There is a contract extension awaiting La Russa's signature. He says he loves St. Louis and loves the Cardinals franchise. He says he won't talk about his contract, and whether he'll sign it, during the season. He has taken a couple of shots from Ozzie Smith and Whitey Herzog, but he says that has no bearing on his future. Those close to him predict that he will sign the extension and return to St. Louis.

"We're not a sad, embarrassing ballclub," La Russa says. Awaiting him next year could be a different outlook -- a healthy Morris, a healthy Alan Benes and 20-year-old lefthander Rick Ankiel. There is also a young core of talent in Fernando Tatis, Edgar Renteria and J.D. Drew. And Mark McGwire.

Together, maybe they can establish some team-wide love, the only kind McGwire hasn't experienced in St. Louis. He'd be willing to share. Lord knows he'll share.

This article appears in the August 23, 1999 issue of ESPN The Magazine.