On July 8, 1996, the Derby arrived at Veterans Stadium with 10 of baseball’s most recognizable power hitters, a crowd of 62,304 and temperatures pushing toward 90 degrees. The field included Brady Anderson, Jay Buhner, Joe Carter, Jeff Bagwell and Gary Sheffield. But the event belonged to two men whose names would eventually become inseparable from baseball’s home run era: Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire.
At the time, McGwire was the obvious favorite. He entered the All-Star break with 28 home runs and finished the season with a major league-leading 52 in only 130 games. Bonds already owned three National League MVP awards, but even he framed McGwire as something beyond ordinary.
“There’s no way any human being could beat him,” Bonds said before the competition.
For one round, neither looked untouchable.
McGwire and Bonds each hit four home runs in the opening round, enough to advance but fewer than Anderson and Buhner. The format offered no clock and little mercy: 10 outs, with every non-homer counting against the hitter. It was slower than the modern Derby, but it also gave every swing room to breathe. At the Vet, the pauses only increased the anticipation.
Then the show changed.
McGwire launched nine home runs in the second round, including three into the upper deck and a 460-foot drive that brought the Philadelphia crowd to its feet. Bonds answered differently. His power came in hard, rising line drives, most of them pulled toward left field. He hit 10, one more than McGwire, setting a Derby record for a round and creating the final everyone had come to see.
By then, the heat and the accumulated swings had taken something from both men. The championship round allowed only five outs. McGwire, preparing to hit, suggested a shortcut.
“Let’s alternate,” he joked to Bonds during the ESPN broadcast.
McGwire managed two home runs. Bonds needed three.
He did not make an out.
Using a bat borrowed from Colorado’s Ellis Burks, Bonds drove his first homer into the upper deck. After taking a pitch, he hit another to left field to tie the round. Then came the finish: a third consecutive home run, a no-doubt shot that sent Bonds flipping his bat and walking away before the ball landed.
It was not merely a victory. It was a walk-off before the Derby routinely produced walk-offs, delivered with the kind of theater that would eventually become central to the event.
“The highlight of my career,” Bonds said afterward. “I didn’t think I had a shot.”
Moments later, his excitement spilled into ESPN’s post-Derby coverage.
“I beat the great Mark McGwire,” Bonds said, before asking whether his mother was recording it. “I beat Mark McGwire — twice.”
Bonds finished with 17 home runs, two more than McGwire. Anderson totaled 11 and Buhner eight, but the final three swings became the lasting memory.
The careers that followed would change the way baseball remembered both men. Their names became attached to records, controversy and an era in which the home run overwhelmed nearly every other part of the sport. But none of that changes the shape of that afternoon at the Vet.
For one hot day in Philadelphia, the Derby found drama, personality and a perfect ending. Thirty years later, as the event returns to the city, the standard remains the same.
Three swings. Three home runs. One of the greatest finishes the Derby has produced.
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