Mark, Sammy and the Color of Ad Money

Ellen DeGeneres, what have you wrought?

Sammy Sosa hits his 62nd home run, and the next thing you know, he’s on TV saying, “I love you, Mark.�

But seriously, folks. . . .

What happens next in the adventures of Sosa and Mark McGwire, as captured on TV? When do they get their capes, spandex tights and winged shoes?

Hero worship from afar can be perilous, given the tendency of public images to show fractures under a microscope. As the media continue to focus the nation on prominent pairs, however, it’s just possible that a couple of cheer-worthy baseball players with big biceps and bigger hearts will endure longer and more powerfully as role models for youth than Bill Clinton and Monica S. Lewinsky. In this era of depressing incivility, it’s the silver lining you’d want.

As surely as the Bill and Monica soap opera is destined for the screen as a film or films, bank also on at least one blockbuster TV movie about Sosa and McGwire. It will recall, with great emotion, how they responded with grace to the intense pressures of this season and sustained their mutual affection and respect despite being rivals for a piece of sports history.

The fact that Sosa is black and McGwire white enhances the potential, a story about racial harmony being the likeliest hook. And you’ll be getting out your hankies when the script has Sosa saying, as he did this week, that what he does on the field “is for my mother.� And of course you’ll see a triumphant McGwire lovingly lifting his young son like a trophy after hitting his record 62nd home run.

Familial love, brotherly love. If it weren’t on TV and in sports pages day after day, you’d dismiss this scenario as too cornball to be believed.

Another question, though, is to what extent Madison Avenue will continue to love McGwire should he not win the home run title. And how much those controlling big TV ad dollars will love Sosa if he were to hit more home runs in a season than any other major leaguer. Sosa will never again know the poverty of his youth in the Dominican Republic. But will being less of a traditional all-American hero than McGwire limit his ultimate payday?

What does happen next?

As of this writing, much of the traveling media swarm that once stuck closely to McGwire was last seen buzzing around Chicago Cubs star Sosa, and the home run duel between these two admirably gentle, mutually laudatory gents was too close to call. Yet if Sosa does wind up ahead of the St. Louis Cardinals’ McGwire at the end of the season, after both have blasted past the previous homer mark of 61 set 37 years ago by Roger Maris, where do the bulk of the commercial endorsements go?

McGwire’s bat appeared to be carrying his bank balance to another level if not his stumbling Cardinals to postseason play. When McGwire passed Maris last week (surging ahead of Sosa by four homers in a Cubs-Cardinals matchup beamed live by Fox), much of the U.S. paused to note the moment with a thundering thumbs up, anointing McGwire America’s Great Redhead Hope nearly as much for his humility and respectful words about Maris and Sosa as for his stunning work hitting bouncing baseballs off of Jupiter. He was that rare celebrity jock who gleamed and sparkled from head to toe, exploding from a Wheaties box with a pair of superhero shoulders brawny enough to carry that mantle without sagging under the tonnage. Inscribed in stone was his claim to epic riches (even beyond his fat contract with the Cardinals) that it seemed only an act of God could nullify.

Then the unthinkable happened when Sosa got hot with his bat and pulled even, raising the question of which slugger would earn the most goodies at the end of the rainbow. And whether that outcome, given U.S. history in such matters, would be a white-black thing.

In the pre-Michael Jordan/Magic Johnson/Shaq/Tiger Woods era, African Americans complained, with justification, that the overwhelming number of big commercial endorsements going to athletes went to those who were white.

So what if Sosa equals or tops the already knighted McGwire at season’s end? Although equally likable and as generous with praise of others, he has a mild accent and is less verbal than McGwire. And outside the Dominican Republic, where he is adored, he is not as charismatic as the Cardinals’ first baseman, whose huge form alone casts him as Mt. Rushmore with a bat. Because McGwire led the home run race at a record pace for most of the season, moreover, he is the one who received most of the media attention, and thus is a much more known commodity to most Americans than is Sosa.

But is that the entire story?

“The media coverage has been totally one-sided,� charges Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a veteran media observer and author of “The Assassination of the Black Male Image.� He attributes this disparity to race. “I mean, he’s had this great season, and I barely know who Sammy Sosa is. Mark McGwire fits the idea of what some people think an American hero should be. They’re still looking at a black man vs. a good old boy.�

If true, does that extend to advertising?

Bob Williams, president of Burns Sports, a Chicago firm that matches advertisers with athletes, has spoken of a “cultural bias� in advertising. Isn’t that code for anti-black bias?

“I do mean cultural,� he said by phone from his office. “Advertisers became color blind years ago. If you look at the top two now, it’s Michael Jordan and [golfer] Tiger Woods. And you also have Shaquille O’Neal and [Detroit Pistons basketball star] Grant Hill. It’s who is trendy and unique that matters, and who can deliver a return on the investment.�

And Sosa? “It comes down to athletes who come from foreign countries and carry an accent being at a disadvantage with advertisers,� Williams said. Although not thick, Sosa’s accent still “makes him more difficult to understand than many other athletes who are being used,� he said.

Nonetheless, Williams believes that winning the home run title this season will be a tremendous boost to Sosa as a product endorser and grant him a “clear advantage� over McGwire in that area, despite the latter benefiting from a longer career and earlier media buildup.

Of course, no matter the outcome of the home run race, Sosa and McGwire are already obscenely paid kadzillionaires. And to most Americans, how they relate to Madison Avenue is less significant than how they relate to each other and those around them.