By Annette Hinkle
For baseball fans of a certain age, the summer of 1961 will forever remain a golden memory. It was the summer of Mantle and Maris — the “M&M Boys” when two great Yankee sluggers went head to head in a race to break Babe Ruth’s record of 60 homeruns in a single season.
Though it should have been one of the happiest years of his life, author Danny Peary notes that for Roger Maris, it was utterly miserable.
“Maris came over to the Yankees at the end of ’59 — 1960 was his first year in New York,” explains Peary. “He loved the first year in New York. He took the place of Hank Bauer who had been part of the Yankee dynasty, and he got off to a great start. He was cheered all through the year then all of a sudden, there was a homerun race with Mantle. Mantle beat him in ’60 with a high of 40 to 39 and Maris said my goal is to beat Mantle next year.”
“It set up all the boo birds,” he adds. “They engaged in another race in ’61, even though they were best friends and lived together, the press started writing about this being a rift, making people choose sides. Most people chose Mantle.”
Danny Peary, who lives in Sag Harbor has co-authored “Roger Maris: Baseball’s Reluctant Hero” with fellow East Ender Tom Clavin. The new biography looks at a stellar ball player with a less than stellar reputation — in New York anyway. Peary notes the book is an attempt to dispel many of the myths surrounding Maris and what many perceived as his bad attitude. In fact, Peary notes Maris was a quiet man who didn’t understand the public’s keen interest in him. It also didn’t help Maris’ case that in 1959, with rumors flying he would soon be traded to the Yankees from Kansas City, he had told reporters he didn’t want to don the pinstripes — a nearly unthinkable statement for any ball player.
“He said, ‘I don’t want to go to New York because I hear they get on their players and force you to do what they want you to do,’” says Peary. “When he was traded to New York he said, ‘I don’t want to go.’”
Even before he picked up a bat for the Yankees, word on the street was that Maris felt he was too good for New York. In truth, notes Peary, Maris was a family man who thought Kansas was a good place to raise kids — and he and his wife ultimately had six of them. But somehow that wasn’t the message delivered by the press at the time.
“He was the greatest teammate. The thing about Maris was how much everybody loved this guy,” says Peary. “I wanted to correct the impression he wasn’t a great hero and player.
“Part of the fun was revisiting 1961 — the greatest year of my childhood,” he add.
As a researcher, Peary was also keenly interested in why Maris had such a difficult time dealing with the negative press. He explains that much of it comes down to the quiet manner in which he had been raised.
“He was a shy guy, a Midwesterner who guarded his privacy,” says Peary who explains that affairs and drinking were hallmarks of his parents’ relationship. These were the sorts of things people kept to themselves in North Dakota, where Maris was raised.
There was also the issue of his older brother, Rudy Jr. It was he, not Roger, who was considered the family athlete, but when Rudy, who was a year older, contracted polio, his dreams of a sports career were dashed. Peary picked up clues on how Roger felt about his brother’s illness in an autobiographical novel that he had written.
“In it he talked about two brothers, and the guilt one feels because they have a collision and the older brother can’t play sports and the younger one carries the burden,” says Peary. “One reason Roger wouldn’t brag to the press is because he always felt guilt over what happened to his brother and he was having the career his brother Rudy Jr. should’ve had.”
In many ways, Peary sees that summer of ’61 as another collision of sorts — one that pitted a thin-skinned, stubborn and shy young man against a press that was changing. The days of treating athletes with reverential respect were waning and the new breed of sports reporter was on the lookout for controversy — whether any existed or not.
“The press started to change by the late ‘50s, and it changed totally in 1961, the year Roger became the biggest sports figure in America,” explains Peary. “It was not just Roger being ill-equipped to deal with the press, he was ill equipped to deal with the new press. It was a new wave of brash young reporters. They were very irreverent and didn’t care about box scores so much, but were more interested in asking personal questions.
“He didn’t understand why they wanted to know about him,” adds Peary.
In 1961, the number of games played by major league teams was increased, which meant Maris had 162 games in which to reach the magical number — not 154 games as had been the case up to that point. Baseball commissioner Ford Frick, who had been a friend of Babe Ruth’s and at his bedside when he died, asked veteran sportswriters for ideas to prevent Ruth’s record from falling to a player who set it in more than 154 games. It was Daily News writer Dick Young who reportedly suggested that an asterisk be used for any such record.
For Maris, the move felt personal — as if a ruling had been made to prevent him as an outsider from breaking Ruth’s record — despite the fact he was wearing a Yankee uniform at the time. In the end, it was Maris, not Mantle, who did break Babe Ruth’s record.
“He did it in 162 games,” says Peary. “People always talk about the number of games he played, but he hit 60 home runs in fewer plate appearances than Babe Ruth.”
For Peary, the real insult was that the Yankee’s neglected to publicize the race for the record toward the end of the season — as if even they didn’t see it as a major accomplishment.
“There were very few people there even when he broke the record,” says Peary. “They [the Yankees] basically went along with Frick.”
For Peary, like the glow of a distant childhood memory, the notion of an honest homerun champion seems an impossible dream given today’s reality. As a St. Louis Cardinal, Mark McGwire broke Maris’ 37 year old homerun record in 1998, but later admitted using performance enhancing drugs. The record has been a tainted mark ever since.
“Steroids ruined the game,” says Peary. “I want him [Roger Maris] in the Hall of Fame. He’s the only guy ever who could break Babe Ruth’s record and he did it without steroids.”
Roger Maris died of lymphoma in 1985 at the age of 51. Though Maris ended up hitting 61 homeruns in 1961, beating Mantle and breaking the Babe’s record, it came with a caveat — that theoretical asterisk that has remained attached to his name ever since. Despite his hard feelings, Maris stayed with the Yankees until 1966. Then, on the eve of retirement, the team traded him to St. Louis were he finished out his career.
“One reason he agreed to play with the Cardinals was he didn’t want people to think he hated the Yankees so much he would quit baseball,” says Maris.
In St. Louis, Maris focused on the task at hand, and helped lead the Cardinals to two straight pennants and a World Series win.
“He had two years in St. Louis where everyone was cheering,” says Peary. “It was a wonderful thing that he had those two great years when he loved baseball.”
Tom Clavin and Danny Peary will be at BookHampton (20 Main Street, Sag Harbor) on Saturday, June 12, 2010 at 7 p.m. to read from “Roger Maris: Baseball’s Reluctant Hero.”
