By Bill Murphy
One of the greatest battles in sports history was the star of the New York Yankees Mickey Mantle and the kid from North Dakota Roger Maris going at it to beat Babe Ruth’s 1927 home run record. Mantle was seen as the heir apparent to the Yankee legacy (Ruth, Gehrig, and Dimaggio ), and Maris was the underdog. The 1961 season was seen as a slugfest between two Yankees.
Roger Maris came to the Yankees in 1960, while Mantle had already been there for nine years. Mantle led the American League with 40 Home Runs in that season, and Maris had 39 home runs, with 112 RBI” S, and won a Gold Glove. In an upset, Maris won the MVP for the season with 72% of the vote, and Mantle finished in a close second with 71% of the vote. By the end of June 1961, it looked like Maris and Mantle competed to break Babe Ruth’s 1927 record of 60 home runs. Mantle had 31 home runs, and Maris had 27 home runs by this time.
Everything was on track for the record to be broken until July 17th, 1961, when Commissioner Ford Frick( who was a friend of Babe Ruth ) made a ruling that any record that would be broken in over 154 games (1961 was the first season that teams played 162 games )would be counted as a separate record. This gave the race a whole new meaning, for, at this point, there were only two months to break the record for the 154th game in September.
During the race, the fans were on one side, and it was Mantle’s, every time Maris hit a home run, he would be booed and cursed at while running the bases. It even got to the point that Maris and his family were receiving death threats, and an NYPD detective had to be hired to look after him. The stress started taking a toll on Maris as he broke out into hives and even started losing his hair.
Aside from the Shenanigans from the league and the fans, in August of 1961, Maris pulled ahead of Mantle, being the first player to hit 50 home runs in August. Due to an infection caused by a hip injury, Mantle was out for the year. On September 20th, 1961, the 154th game of the year In Baltimore, Maris came in with 58 home runs and realized that he had hit three home runs to break the record. Under pressure, Maris volunteered to take himself out of the game, but Ralph Houk told him to stay in. Maris hit only one home run that night, giving him number 59, so the chance of Maris breaking the record in 154 games was gone. Six days later, Maris hit number 60. On October 1st,1961, in front of a crowd of 23,000 at Yankee Stadium against the Yankee’s arch-rival, the Boston Red Sox, Maris had done it, Hitting number 61 putting Ruth’s record in the dust.
In the years following Maris hitting the home run, there was a rumor of an Asterik next to his record because it was considered a separate record. In reality, there was no asterisk. It was based on a comment by sports columnist Dick Young. All of the records that were released listed Maris as the single-season home run record. It was considered a separate record until 1991, when MLB commissioner Fray Vincent abolished separate records. Unfortunately, Maris passed away six years prior.
Now, should Maris’s record be considered separate? The answer to this question is no. Frick’s logic was that since there were eight different games than Ruth, he thought It would give Maris and Mantle an unfair advantage. In reality, Ruth hit the 60 home runs in 689 plate appearances, while Maris broke the record in five fewer plate appearances in 684 plate appearances. So, in reality, it was just a ridiculous rule.
Maris held the record for 37 years until Mark Mcguire broke it in 1998. Barry Bonds later broke it in 2001. After 60 years, we remember Maris’s quest to obtain greatness while the odds stacked against him.
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