'Long Gone Summer' Trailer: Sammy Sosa And Mark McGwire Swing For Home Run Supremacy

Following the massive success of the Michael Jordan and Chicago Bulls documentary series The Last Dance, ESPN is trying to keep the hype alive by releasing new 30 for 30 sports documentaries on Sundays. One of them will be Long Gone Summer, which chronicles the famous home run battle in the summer of 1998 between St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire and Chicago Cubs outfielder Sammy Sosa. The first Long Gone Summer trailer has arrived to tease the film's arrival next week.

Though fans latched on to the battle between Sosa and McGwire as a huge moment for sports, it would later be sullied by the news that Sammy Sosa used banned performance-enhancing drugs and Mark McGwire consistently used steroids throughout his career. But even so many still look back on that season of baseball as a highlight, mostly because it was a beacon of light at a time when the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal and the Kosovo War were dominating headlines. Looking back after 22 years should provide plenty of thoughtful hindsight on this historical moment in baseball.

Long Gone Summer is directed by A.J. Schnack (Kurt Cobain About a Son, We Always Lie to Strangers), and here's the official synopsis from ESPN.

It was one of the most memorable and significant seasons in the history of baseball. In the summer of 1998, the St. Louis Cardinals' Mark McGwire and the Chicago Cubs' Sammy Sosa embarked on a chase of one of the game's most hallowed records, igniting the passion and imagination of fans and non-fans everywhere. The drama, excitement, and results would be remembered for generations. If we only knew then just how complex our feelings about it all would eventually become.

In ESPN's new 30 for 30 film "Long Gone Summer," director AJ Schnack takes viewers back to the landmark 1998 baseball season – its tremendous highlights, massive impact, and undeniable complications. Featuring in-depth interviews with both McGwire and Sosa, talking at length for the first time in over two decades, the intimate portrait carries viewers through every twist and turn of the sluggers' historic chase of Roger Maris's iconic record of 61 home runs in a single season. With a musical score composed by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, a St. Louis-area native and current Chicago resident, the film is a journey back through time that recalls how seismic and emotional the story was – even as the legitimacy of the accomplishments at its center would later be called into question.

Long Gone Summer debuts on ESPN on Sunday, June 14 at 9:00 P.M. ET