ST. LOUIS, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- After being snubbed for selection to baseball's Hall of Fame, Mark McGwire may lose a section of Missouri interstate renamed in his honor in 1999.
The retired St. Louis Cardinals slugger hit 70 home runs in 1998, in a headline-grabbing home run derby with then Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa. The home run race helped revived lagging interest in the nation's pastime after a strike.
Six years after Missouri lawmakers named five miles of Interstate 70 for McGwire, his legacy was publicly tarnished by suspicions he had used performance-enhancing substances. McGwire told a House committee hearing in 2005 that he was not going to "talk about the past."
A state representative Wednesday proposed renaming the five miles of highway in honor of former educator and Missouri state Sen. John Bass, who is now 80, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
In his first year of eligibility for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame, McGwire received just 23 percent of the vote necessary to get into the hall.
