'Roger Eugene Maris' (
September 10 1934 –
December 14 1985) was an
American right fielder in
Major League Baseball who is primarily remembered for breaking
Babe Ruth's single-season
home run record in
1961, a record that would stand for 37 years.
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 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.
Professional career
Early years
Even in the minor leagues, Maris showed talent for both offense and defense. He tied for the
Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League lead in
putouts by an outfielder with 305 while playing for Keokuk in 1954. Meanwhile, in four
minor league seasons (1953–1956) Maris hit .303 with 78 home runs.
Maris made his major league 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 — which led them to be referred to as the Yankees' "major league
farm team" — and Maris was no exception, going to New York in a seven-player trade in December
1959.
In
1960, his first full season with the Yankees, despite the already-nagging media, he led the league in
slugging percentage,
runs batted in, and
extra base hits and finished second in home runs (1 behind
Mickey Mantle) and total bases. He was recognized as an outstanding defensive outfielder with a
Gold Glove Award, and also won the
American League's
Most Valuable Player award.
1961
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 "
Murderers Row," because they hit a combined 207 home runs that year. The title "Murderers Row", originally coined in
1918, had most famously been used to refer to the Yankees side of the late
1920s. As mid-season approached, it seemed quite possible that either Maris or Mantle, or perhaps both, would break Babe Ruth's 34-year-old home run record. Unlike the home run race of
1998, in which the competition between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa was 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, never attempted 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." 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.
According to Nash and Zullo in ''The Baseball Hall of Shame,'' Frick made the ruling because, during his days as a newspaper reporter, he had been a close friend of Ruth's. Furthermore,
Rogers Hornsby--himself a lifetime .358 batter--compared the averages (In Ruth's record year he hit .356; Maris, .269)--and said, "It would be a disappointment if Ruth's home run record were bested by a .270 hitter." (Hornsby's old-time bias was well-known. Scouting for the Mets, the best report he could muster for any current player was "Looks like a major-leaguer". That was his assessment of Mickey Mantle.) Maris couldn't understand such a perspective; he said, "I'm not trying to be Babe Ruth; I'm trying to hit sixty-one home runs and be Roger Maris." (This sentiment would be echoed in 1973-1974, when
Henry Aaron, in pursuit of Ruth's career record, said, "I don't want people to forget Babe Ruth. I just want them to remember Henry Aaron.")
Maris failed to reach 61 in 154 games (he had only 59 after 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.
Maris' major league record would stand three years longer than Ruth's did, until
Mark McGwire broke it by hitting 70 in 1998. Maris remains the
American League record holder as of the 2006 season.
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, holding a runner at third with a strong throw and thus 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 him the next four seasons, most notably in
1965, when he played most of the season with a misdiagnosed broken bone in his hand. Despite real injuries, he began to acquire yet another "jacket" by the New York Press - the tag of "malingerer".
In
1963, after missing a ground ball hit in a nationally televised game, he gave the middle finger to a jeering
Minnesota Twins 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, while Maris himself felt much more at home in St. Louis. He played his final two seasons with the Cardinals, helping them to pennants in
1967 and
1968 with a
World Series victory in 1967 (he hit .385 with one home run and seven RBIs 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 lymphoma 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 and the 61 for 61 Home Walk/Run. There is also a movement to have Maris inducted into the
Baseball Hall of Fame.
In
2001, the film ''
61
★ '' about Maris and Mantle's pursuit of the home-run record was first broadcast. Many of the unpleasant aspects of Maris' season were addressed, including the
hate mail,
death threats, and his hair falling out. Maris was played by
Barry Pepper.
In 2005, in light of accusations of steroid use against the three players who had, by then, hit more than 61 home runs in a season (
Mark McGwire,
Sammy Sosa and
Barry Bonds), the
North Dakota Senate wrote to Major League Baseball and "urged" that Roger Maris' 61 home runs be recognized as the single season record
[1].
Roger Maris is a recipient of the state of North Dakota's
Roughrider Award.
The Roger Maris Museum, dedicated to the life and career of Maris, is located at the
West Acres Shopping Center in Fargo.
Gil Hodges is buried in a cemetery of the same name in
Brooklyn,
New York.
Hall of Fame?
Maris and
Dale Murphy are the only two-time MVPs who are not in the
Baseball Hall of Fame while eligible for induction as of 2007. The two have similar lifetime averages (batting, on-base, and slugging), however Murphy's cumulative totals are significantly better. Furthermore, even if one agrees with the argument that, because of steroid accusations against those who broke it, Maris' 61 homers remains the "legitimate" record, his lifetime totals of fewer than 300 HR and 900 RBI are simply not Hall-worthy, nor is his poor .260 average, especially for an offense-oriented position such as outfielder.
Mathematics
A mathematical property is named after Maris, along with
Sammy Sosa and
Mark McGwire. Two numbers form a
Maris-McGwire-Sosa pair if they are consecutive numbers such that when you add each number's digits to the digits of its prime factorization, they are equal. Engineer Mike Keith named this property after the sluggers because he noticed that the numbers 61 and 62 have this property, and McGwire and Sosa both hit home run number 62 in 1998, both passing the record of Maris, 61.
See also
★
MLB players who have hit 30 or more home runs before the All-Star break
★
50 home run club
★
Top 500 home run hitters of all time
★
List of Major League Baseball RBI champions
★
List of Major League Baseball home run champions
★
List of Major League Baseball runs scored champions
References
★
Baseball Anecdotes, Okrent, Daniel, and Steve Wulf, , , Collins, 1993, ISBN 0-06-273206-4
★ Pietrusza, David, Matthew Silverman & Michael Gershman, ed. (2000). ''Baseball: The Biographical Encyclopedia''. Total/Sports Illustrated.
★ ''1968 Baseball Register'' published by ''
The Sporting News''
External links
★
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