Is this how people felt in 1935, when Babe Ruth retired?

Did they think about all those magical swings of the bat? Did they think about all those astonishing sights they'd seen?

Did they think about all those memories they got from one man carrying a baseball bat? Did they feel this emptiness that they were never going to see anyone or anything like this in their lifetimes again?

	Opposing catchers have watched Mark McGwire go yard 583 times.

Most of us don't know what it felt like to watch Babe Ruth swing a bat. But we know what it felt like to watch Mark McGwire swing a bat. And there wasn't any experience in baseball like it.

So how do we digest the idea that we've seen it, that we've felt it, for the last time? How much have all of us lost with the retirement of a man who has given us more jolts of electricity than Con Ed?

In 1998, it was the coolest privilege of my career as a baseball writer to watch the King of Swing hit 17 home runs in one season. It's a season the record book may now forget -- but one that none of us who lived through it ever will.

Twice, I saw him hit three home runs in a game. I saw No. 60. I saw 61 and 62.

I saw him come to the plate on the final Friday of the '98 season, 45 minutes after Sammy Sosa had hit No. 66 to pass him. A ballpark full of people squirmed uneasily, wondering if, after all this, Big Mac might not even lead the league. I can still feel the hairs on my arm quiver as the King of Swing pulled himself even again with a vintage, towering, McGwire-esque home run that hung in the air longer than Apollo 12.

I saw No. 67 and 68 the next day. I saw No. 69 disappear deep into the left-field lower deck of Busch Stadium on Sunday. I saw this man hit a game-winning home run on his final at-bat of the season, to reach a number we thought no baseball player would ever reach -- 70. The buzz after that home run was so loud and intense, I'm amazed it isn't still humming.

In some ways, though, it still is. So it doesn't matter that Barry Bonds now holds that record. As special as Bonds' season was, he can't ever be what Mark McGwire was.

	Mark McGwire First Base St. Louis Cardinals Profile
	1998 SEASON STATISTICS AB HR RBI AVG OBP SLG 509 70 147 .299 .470 .752

Sosa has hit 60 three times now himself. But great as Sammy is, he can't ever be what Mark McGwire was, either.

They can't be our Babe Ruth.

For sheer sustained chills and thrills, I've never covered a better story than McGwire in '98. I'll never, ever forget that feeling of watching him pop out of that dugout four times a night, as flash bulbs lit the night.

I'll never, ever forget that feeling of watching him swivel his rear foot into the back of the box, take a massive breath and fix his eyes on his next victim.

I'll never, ever forget the way everyone around him bolted to attention at the thought that they might be about to witness something no one had ever witnessed before: A new magic number. Or a new twist in the best plot line since "The Shawshank Redemption." Or a home run hit so hard it was about to deposit a dent in a billboard in the center-field upper deck.

Every night it was something new, something somehow more breathtaking than what had come before it. And the best part was the realization that this was a real-life Bambino we were watching -- not some splotchy old black-and-white newsreel.

No, this was a real guy, doing all of this in front of our eyes in a classic real-life American drama, seemingly sucking in every man, woman and child on every street in every town with every amazing swing.

And as the numbers got bigger, the more mind-boggling it got. Bruce Springsteen showed up to watch No. 60. The president of the Czech Republic mentioned McGwire in a visit to the White House.

The prime minister of Japan wrote him a fan letter. ABC News did a prime-time special about him.

He was invited to be a guest host on the Cartoon Network. And on that unforgettable Labor Day -- when McGwire and Sosa converged on the same field, one storybook swing away from number 61 -- McGwire's teammate, John Mabry, quipped that more reporters converged with them "than if Elvis found Jimmy Hoffa's body."

But that was Mark McGwire. He was the best show in town, in every town. He turned batting practice into Woodstock. And he hit home runs that went so high and so far, the Cardinals didn't need Tale of the Tape charts to track them. They needed their own air-traffic controllers.

Remember those home runs? How can you not?

How 'bout the 545-footer that left a 4½-foot Band Aid on the St. Louis Post Dispatch billboard dangling from Busch's center-field upper deck?

"If I stood at home plate and looked at our stadium," teammate Tom Pagnozzi said at the time, "and you said somebody was going to hit one in the center-field upper deck, I'd have said, 'No way.' Well, I was right. He missed -- by six inches."

Or how 'bout the 461-footer in Cleveland that hit a steel shaft on the way to a parking garage?

"He's like the Empire State Building, standing there with a bat in his hands," Jim Thome gulped after that one.

Or what about the 527-foot Mars probe that went over the scoreboard at Busch?

"It's time to start giving him 'three' for balls like that," said then-Marlins coach Rich Donnelly. "It would work like this: Hit it in the upper deck, you get three. Or you get three if you hit one where no one else in history has ever hit it. If somebody says, 'I've never seen one like that,' you have a meeting at home plate, and you award him three."

Or how 'bout another scoreboard launch in Cleveland -- the one that caused Indians catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. to speculate that if this massive Big Mac homer hadn't hit the scoreboard, "it would have hit me on the back of the head."

And how would that have happened, you ask?

"If it hadn't hit the scoreboard," Alomar said, "it would have traveled all the way around the world -- and hit me on the back of the head."

We'll miss those home runs. But even more than that, we'll miss the anticipation of them. We'll miss that little vibration in our circulatory system that shook us every time McGwire Time rolled around.

Remember those 2000 playoffs, when Big Mac could only pinch-hit because of knee trouble? Remember all those close-ups of him pacing the dugout, waiting for a swing that might never come? Remember the magical pinch homer off Mike Remlinger, after which McGwire laughed about how he used to be compared to Babe Ruth, and "now I'm Manny Mota?" And we'll miss BP, when Big Mac could freeze an entire ballpark in place until he'd finished whomping baseballs into 17th decks, through windshields in the parking lot, off distant mountain peaks.

One night in San Diego, 30,000 people showed up just to watch his show in batting practice. After which Pagnozzi said, "I saw something like this on TV when I was a kid. They called themselves the Beatles."

We'll miss the rarified moments after a McGwire home run, when the stadium rattled with a palpible energy that only this man could produce. From the moment Tony La Russa said one day in '98 that his favorite part of that season was "the buzz in the stadium after he hits one," I never failed to notice it.

And we'll miss the sense of appreciation people had for the privilege of just watching him. One scene from '98 is the sight of 48,000 people giving this guy a standing ovation for a groundout that ended a 7-6 loss in which he'd just happened to hit two home runs earlier in the game.

How many men who ever played any sport inspired a scene like that? You don't need both sets of fingers and both sets of toes to count them. We know that.

Other great players, other great sluggers will come along. That's the beauty of sports. But we have this feeling we've already seen the greatest slugger of our time. And now he's made that final trot. If you don't feel some emptiness over that thought, you ain't breathing.