Roger Maris

Roger Maris: 61 in 61

Roger Maris: 61 in 61

Roger Eugene Maris (September 10, 1934 – December 14, 1985), was a baseball player primarily remembered for breaking Babe Ruth's 34-year-old single-season home run record in 1961 on the last day of the season. Although his record was subsequently broken, some believe that those records set by both Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds should be invalid, due to their likely use of performance enhancing substances.

Early Life

The son of Croatian immigrants, he was born as Roger Eugene Maras (he later changed his last name to Maris) in Hibbing, Minnesota. He grew up in Grand Forks, North Dakota and Fargo, North Dakota where he attended Shanley High School. A gifted athlete, Maris participated in many sports while in Fargo.

At an early age, Maris exhibited an independent, no-nonsense personality. Recruited to play football at the University of Oklahoma, he arrived by bus in Norman and found no one from the University there to greet him. He turned around and went back to Fargo.

Major League Career

Early Years

Maris made his Major League Baseball debut in 1957 with the Cleveland Indians. The next year, he was traded to the Kansas City Athletics, whom he represented in the All-Star Game in 1959 in spite of missing 45 games due to an appendix operation.

Kansas City frequently traded its best players to the New York Yankees, and Maris was no exception, going to New York in a seven-player trade in December 1959.

When he showed up in New York to join the Yankees, he was dressed in blue jeans, white bucks and a sport shirt. According to one story, he was met at the airport by a Yankees fan who took one look at his white bucks and said, "Look, man, Yankee ballplayers don't dress like you. These shoes--they gotta go." Maris immediately took the fan to a Thom McAn's store, where he bought two more pairs of white bucks. Later, when told to get a different wardrobe, he snapped, "If they don't like how I dress, I'll go back where I came from." That seemingly curmudgeonly side of Roger Maris only encouraged the New York sportswriters to look for things to criticize. They called Maris aloof, rude, and a hick.

In 1960, his first full season with the Yankees, despite the already-nagging media, he led the league in slugging percentage, RBIs, and extra base hits and finished second in home runs (1 behind Mickey Mantle) and total bases. He was recognized as an outstanding player with a gold glove award, and the American League Most Valuable Player award.

61

In 1961, the American League expanded from 8 to 10 teams, generally watering down the pitching, but leaving the Yankees pretty much intact. Yankee home runs began to come at a record pace. One famous photograph lined up six 1961 Yankee players, including Mantle, Maris, Yogi Berra, and Bill Skowron, under the nickname "Murderer's Row," because they hit a combined 207 home runs that year. As mid-season approached, it seemed quite possible that either Maris or Mantle, or perhaps both, would break Ruth's 34-year-old home run record. Unlike the home run race of 1998, in which both McGwire and Sosa were given extensive positive media coverage, sportswriters in 1961 began to play the "M & M Boys" against each other, inventing a rivalry where none existed, as Yogi Berra has testified in recent interviews.

Five years earlier, in 1956, Mantle had already challenged Ruth's record for most of the season and the New York press had been protective of Ruth on that occasion also. When Mantle finally fell short, finishing with 52, there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief from the New York traditionalists. Nor had the New York press been all that kind to Mantle in his early years with the team: he struck out frequently, was injury prone, was a true "hick" from Oklahoma, and was perceived as being distinctly inferior to his predecessor in center field, Joe DiMaggio. Over the course of time, however, Mantle (with a little help from his teammate Whitey Ford, a native of New York's Borough of Queens) had gotten better at "schmoozing" with the New York media, and had gained the favor of the press. This was a talent that Maris, a blunt-spoken upper midwesterner, was never willing or able to cultivate; as a result, he wore the "surly" jacket for his duration with the Yankees.

So as 1961 progressed, the Yanks were now "Mickey Mantle's team" and Maris was ostracized as the "outsider", and "not a true Yankee." (Similar words have been leveled in more recent times at Alex Rodriguez. Rodriguez, however, had become a Yankee by choice. In Maris' day there was no choice involved.) The press seemed to root for Mantle and to belittle Maris. But Mantle was felled by a leg infection late in the season, leaving Maris as the only player with a chance to break the record.

On top of his lack of popular press coverage, Maris' chase for 61 hit another roadblock totally out of his control: along with adding two teams to the league, Major League Baseball had added 8 games to the schedule. In the middle of the season, Baseball commissioner Ford Frick announced that unless Ruth's record was broken in the first 154 games of the season, the new record would be shown in the record books as having been set in 162 games while the previous record set in 154 games would also be shown. It is an urban legend, probably invented by New York sportswriter Dick Young, that an asterisk would be used to distinguish the new record.

Maris failed to reach 61 in 154 games. He hit his 61st on October 1, 1961, in the fourth inning of the last game of the season, a sparsely-attended contest between the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox in New York. The Red Sox pitcher was Evan Tracy Stallard. No asterisk was subsequently used in any record books -- Major League baseball itself had no official record book, and Frick later acknowledged that there never was official qualification of Maris' accomplishment. However, Maris remained bitter about the experience. Speaking at the 1980 All-Star game, he said of that season, "They acted as though I was doing something wrong, poisoning the record books or something. Do you know what I have to show for 61 home runs? Nothing. Exactly nothing." Despite all the controversy, Maris was awarded the 1961 Hickok Belt for the top professional athlete of the year, as well as winning the American League's MVP Award for the second straight year. It is said, however, that the stress of pursuing the record was so great for Maris that his hair occasionally fell out in clumps during the season. Later Maris even surmised that it might have been better all along had he not broken the record or even threatened it at all.

Remainder of Career

In 1962, Maris made his fourth consecutive and final All-Star game appearance. His fine defensive skills were often overlooked. He made a game-saving play in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the 1962 World Series, preventing the San Francisco Giants from scoring the tying run, and setting up Willie McCovey's Series-ending line drive to second baseman Bobby Richardson, capping what would prove to be the final World Series victory for the "old" Yankees.

Injuries slowed Maris for the next four seasons, most notably in 1965, when he played most of the season with a misdiagnosed broken bone in his hand.

In 1963, after missing a ground ball hit in a nationally televised game, he gave the middle finger to a jeering Minneapolis crowd. Now encumbered with an injured image as well as body, he was traded by the Yankees to the St. Louis Cardinals after the 1966 season. The Yankees questioned Maris' courage and Maris left angry.

Maris was well-received by the St. Louis fans, who appreciated a man with a straightforward midwestern style even if the New York press did not. He played his final two seasons with the Cardinals, helping them to pennants in 1967 and 1968 and a World Series victory in 1967 (he hit .385 in the post-season). Gussie Busch, owner of the Cardinals and of Anheuser-Busch, set Maris up with a beer distributorship after he retired.

Awards, Honors, and Life After Baseball

On the Indians, he wore uniform number 32 in 1957 and 5 in 1958; the Athletics first gave him uniform number 35, but in 1959 he wore number 3. On the Yankees and Cardinals, he wore number 9. The Yankees retired the number on Old-Timers' Day, July 21, 1984, and dedicated a plaque in Maris' honor to hang in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium. The plaque calls him "A great player and author of one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of major league baseball." Maris was on hand for the ceremony and wore a full Yankee uniform. His teammate Elston Howard, who had died in 1980, was also honored with the retirement of his number (32) and a Monument Park plaque that day. It is likely that the Yankees had waited to retire the number 9 until third baseman Graig Nettles, who had worn it since 1973, left the team following the 1983 season.

Maris was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1983. In response he organized the annual Roger Maris Celebrity Golf Tournament to raise money for cancer research and treatment. Maris died in December 1985 in Houston, Texas at the age of 51. A Roman Catholic, he was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Fargo, North Dakota. He remains a hero in his hometown of Fargo. Tributes include Roger Maris Drive, the free-admission Roger Maris Museum, and The Roger Maris Cancer Center, the fund raising beneficiary of the annual golf tournament.

In 2001, the film 61* about Maris and Mantle's pursuit of the home-run record was first broadcast. Much of the unpleasant aspects of Maris' season were adressed, including the hate mail, death threats, and his hair falling out. Maris was played by Barry Pepper.

Roger Maris is a recipient of the state of North Dakota's Roughrider Award. In 2005, the North Dakota Senate approved a resolution that would recognize Roger Maris as the single-season homerun leader. The BALCO steroids scandal was cited as a reason for the resolution. The Roger Maris Museum, dedicated to the life and career of Maris, is located at the West Acres Shopping Center in Fargo, ND

See also

• MLB players who have hit 30 or more home runs before the All-Star break

Roger hit a home run every game.

External links

• Career statistics from Baseball Reference
• Baseball Library
• Tribute - Minnesota Public Radio
• Article on North Dakota's Senate Resolution
• Roger Maris - Baseball Hero
• Roger Maris Museum official website

References

• Okrent, Daniel, and Steve Wulf (1993). Baseball Anecdotes. Collins. ISBN 0062732064.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Pietrusza, David, Matthew Silverman & Michael Gershman, ed. (2000). Baseball: The Biographical Encyclopedia. Total/Sports Illustrated.