Mark McGwire says the final weekend of the 1998 home run race changed when Sammy Sosa hit number 66 and moved ahead of him 66–65, and says he went to a Tiger Woods/Kobe Bryant place mentally and hit 5 home runs in the next 3 days to finish with 70 “That Friday night, Sammy’s playing in Houston, and the whole stadium has the game on watching Sammy. All of a sudden I hear this, ‘Ohhh,’ and he went ahead. He hit 66 and I was at 65.” “I said to myself, ‘I can’t let this happen.’ I’m sitting there going, ‘Okay, I broke the record first, but if Sammy takes this over, he’s going to have the record.’” “In my mind, I dug as deep as I could dig. I was like Tiger Woods winning all his championships. I was like Kobe Bryant doing what he does.” “I ended up hitting five home runs in the next three days and ended up with 70. The mindset can get you places where you don’t know.” “It’s unfortunate that I guess people want to forget that. Listen, I apologize for what I did. It didn’t have to happen. I didn’t need it. But I’ll tell you what, that was a lot of fucking hard work that I fucking put in.”