THE LATEST LINE: INDIANS SHOWED A BIG HEART

CHARLESTON, Ill. -- No, Southeast Missouri State University's football team did not win here Saturday afternoon.

And there is no telling how many more games the 2-3 Indians will be able to win this season because the remainder of their schedule is extremely difficult.

But the Indians were certainly not losers as they walked off the O'Brien Stadium field -- no matter that the scoreboard said they had just suffered a 35-33 setback to host Eastern Illinois.

The Indians put together one of the most amazing comebacks I have witnessed, rallying from several big deficits when it looked like they were going to suffer a lopsided defeat.

I'm not sure a whole lot of teams would have been able to keep their head up and hang in there like SEMO did. The Indians came from 32-13 down in the last 10 minutes to go ahead by a point before EIU kicked a late field goal to win.

As a human being and a guy who has played plenty of sports over the years, I must admit I hurt a little bit inside as I saw many of the Indians sobbing after the game.

But they have nothing to hang their heads about. No matter what the scoreboard said -- and no matter how the rest of the season goes -- the Indians showed me plenty on a chilly day in Illinois.

* Everybody knew going into the 1998 season that Mark McGwire was a tremendous slugger who had a legitimate chance of becoming baseball's all-time single-season home-run king.

And as the season took shape, and as McGwire and Sammy Sosa waged a home-run duel for the ages, it became crystal clear that McGwire and Sosa would both surpass the previous single-season record of 61 -- although which one would wind up on top was not so certain.

But to finish with 70 home runs, as McGwire did? That is a figure that seems so absurd, it's almost hard to fathom.

Were all of us sports fans dreaming this year? Did the Cardinals' standout really slug 70 baseballs out of the park? And did Sosa, the Cubs' star, really hit 66 over the fences?

Nope, it wasn't a dream. McGwire and Sosa gave us a two-man baseball show that will go down in history as one of the best one-two performances ever -- in any sport.

And Big Mac gave us a performance that just might rank as the best one-season sporting feat of all time.

* It's the halfway point of the high school football season -- and St. Vincent and Scott City continue to march along as two of the top smaller-class teams in the state.

Both squads posted dominating victories Friday night, St. Vincent pounding Crystal City 38-0 and Scott City destroying Chaffee 41-0. The 1A Indians are 5-0 while the 2A Rams are 4-1.

The area's top individual performer continues to be Jackson's standout senior tailback Todd Wessel, who had his second straight game of more than 200 yards as he went over the 1,000-yard mark for the season.

~Marty Mishow is a sports writer for the Southeast Missourian