In 1998, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were “saving” baseball by pursuing the 37-year-old record for home runs in a season, set by Roger Maris, the sports apparel company Nike came up with an ad campaign based on one sentence:

“Chicks dig the long ball.”

(Video of that spot, which actually features pitchers Mike Maddux and Tom Glavine, can be seen here.)

The recollection, two decades later, of serious baseball fans is that home run totals were inflated in the late 1990s and into the following decade in large part because of the performance-enhancing drugs players like McGwire were taking.

Now, I wonder if chicks still dig the long ball, because the home run has become so cheap.

As we saw in Game 2 of the World Series, a contest that featured eight (!!) home runs — a postseason record — in Houston’s 7-6 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers in 11 innings.

This, after a season in which MLB players destroyed the season record for home runs, hitting 6,105, — 512 more than were hit in 2000, when the former record of 5,693 was set.

The former record. It happened to come in the middle of the Steroids Era.

If the 2000 record was a function of players using PEDs … what is the 2017 eruption about?

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Baseball and beards have become inseparable. Or so it seems.

Somebody on just about every Major League Baseball team sports a Civil War-style beard. Six inches or more of facial hair flapping in the breeze.

Perhaps the greatest postseason collision of mega-beards occurred in Game 1 of the 2017 World Series tonight, when Los Angeles Dodgers infielder Justin Turner pitted his wild, red uber-beard against the more sober but just as impressive growth sported by Houston Astros starting pitcher Dallas Kuechel.

A few years ago, beards that extreme were rare in baseball, leaning toward nonexistent. Some of the early big-beard men included Brian Wilson of the San Francisco Giants and Mike Napoli of various teams.

Now …

Turner has what I like to call the Stone Age beard, which appears to suffer zero care while guys attack mammoths with primitive spears … while Keuchel responds with what I think of as the Stonewall Jackson beard, less unruly than but still an attention-grabber.

And who won the Battle of the Beards?

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Scott Wolf has been covering USC athletics seemingly forever.

He writes for the L.A. Daily News/Los Angeles News Group, and in an era where nearly everyone else lost their jobs, Wolf kept his.

Mostly because he generally breaks all significant news coming out of his alma mater’s athletic department. Readers, and editors, have picked up on that.

And because he is controversial, never sugar-coating anything. Making him the kind of guy Real Trojans love to hate. (But also read.)

His experience and his sources put him in a position where he can take on the football team, and did he ever over the weekend — when the Trojans were blitzed 49-14 at Notre Dame and can safely be said to have fallen out of the national-title discussion.

To read that rant …

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Portugal seems to be a bit off the grid, among American tourists.

Inexpensive, lots of sun — but not a priority. In practice, it is a country Yanks visit only after seeing the leading sights of Europe, led by those in France and Britain.

It turns out that Portugal’s second city, Porto, is in itself interesting enough to make an initial visit the country. And we have Lisbon and the sun-drenched Algarve ahead of us, still.

Porto is better known and more often seen by Britons for a couple of good reasons.

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Reaching the quarterfinals of a Fifa tournament is pretty much the definition of success, on the male side of the U.S. national soccer realm, and the Under 17 team just did it, at the U17 World Cup in India.

And what does it mean for the senior side to have the kids get to the last eight of a 24-team tournament?

We would like to be able to say “help is on the way”, but if we have learned anything from watching U17 teams play … it is nearly impossible to project what sort of player a kid will be three years hence. Never mind a decade into the future.

It could be that forwards Josh Sargent and Tim Weah will be with the men’s team sometime soon, or maybe goalkeeper Justin Garces. Or maybe none of them.

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Los Angeles Lakers fans presumably saw the stat line from the NBA debut of savior/point guard Lonzo Ball.

It was scary.

The headline espn.com ran on the Associated Press report began like this: “Deflated Ball”.

Couldn’t argue with that. Lonzo was unable to escape the enthusiastic defense of Clippers guard Patrick Beverley and the rookie from UCLA had three points on 1-for-6 shooting with four assists and two turnovers. He did have nine rebounds. There was that. But the Clippers rolled, 108-92.

Then came Game 2 of the Lonzo Era, and he missed a triple-double by one assist.

Hey, wait! Which one is the real Lonzo Ball?

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The Dodgers will play in a World Series.

That was harder than we thought it would be.

From 1941 through 1988, the Dodgers were National League champions 16 times in 48 seasons. On average, they were in the World Series every third year, during that era, when they also won the World Series six times.

From 1989 through 2016, the Dodgers were National League champions zero times in 28 seasons.

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The New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers. One of the great rivalries in baseball.

To me, it remains the greatest, and only in part because these teams have met in a World Series 11 times, by far the most championship matchups in baseball history.

With a 12th Fall Classic pitting them now suddenly very possible … well, I would love to see it.

The Dodgers lead the Chicago Cubs 3-1 for the National League championship, and the Yankees have surged to a 3-2 lead over the Houston Astros for the American League title.

If the Dodgers win tomorrow and Yankees follow suit on Friday, their collision would be set — the 12th, as noted, but the first since 1981.

Older fans of the game would love to see this happen. And broadcasters would certainly not mind, given that New York is the biggest TV market and Los Angeles is No. 2, and both clubs are more than a little popular.

A clash of titans!

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Americans tend to think of Europe as a small place. Physically small. Especially when compared to North America, let alone Asia.

And Europe is fairly compact. Especially the western half of it. From Ireland to, say, the borders of the former Soviet Union.

But, and it’s big but … Europe is not dinky. If you are thinking of France (four-fifths the size of Texas), Spain (three-fourths the size of Texas), Germany 85 percent the size of California), Poland (three-quarters the size of Cali) … Europe is not to be conquered in a morning’s drive. Unless you’re talking about the Benelux countries, maybe.

Which explains our falling asleep-at-the-wheel fatigue after driving the 530 kilometers from southeast France to southwest France and over the border into Spain’s Basque Country and, specifically, to San Sebastian.

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Most observers would say the NBA is better than ever.

I would say it is worse. Than ever. Certainly, in terms of competitive balance and number of clubs with a shot at winning a championship.

Because stars are clustering in a half-dozen teams.

Because several NBA teams have little hope of reaching the playoffs and zero hope of winning a title.

Because at most four teams realistically hope to win a championship, and more likely that number is really two — the two that have played in the past three NBA Finals.

Because the mostly meaningless regular season has been extended by two more weeks.

The season begins tomorrow. Yes, on October 17. About when the exhibition season began, a year ago.

What this means is regular-season tedium extended to 25 weeks. An extra 14 or so days to mull how the NBA is a lot of same ol’ same ol’ — regular seasons of stars producing at some reduced level of effort, and a half-dozen hopeless teams tanking.

Consider:

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