Roger Maris

Baseball Player

• Born: September 10, 1934
• Birthplace: Hibbing, Minnesota
• Died: December 14, 1985
• Place of death: Houston, Texas

Sport: Baseball

Early Life

Roger Eugene Maris was born in Hibbing, Minnesota, a northern Iron Range town, on September 10, 1934. His parents, Rudy, a railroad worker, and Connie, were of Austrian, German, and Polish ancestry. The original family name Maras was changed to Maris in 1955. Roger’s older brother, Rudy Jr., was born in 1933. When the children were infants, the family moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota, and finally settled in Fargo when Roger was twelve. Roger’s hometown of Fargo is a small city in the fertile Red River Valley of eastern North Dakota, which produces sugar beets, wheat, and barley.

School was difficult for Roger, who preferred outdoor activities and lacked patience for academic work. From an early age, Roger stood out as a gifted athlete in a variety of sports including hockey, a favorite pastime of his father.

The Road to Excellence

Urged to play baseball by his brother, who was also a fine athlete, Roger soon looked to Ted Williams as his idol. Shanley Catholic High School, which Roger attended, did not have a baseball team. However, Roger excelled on the school’s track, basketball, and football teams while continuing to play baseball in the city league and American Legion programs. In 1953, his senior year, Roger, an all-state halfback, received football scholarship offers from a dozen universities. Although he considered attending Oklahoma, Roger’s dislike for books and classes and a timely offer from a Cleveland Indians scout persuaded him to choose baseball.

From the Class C Fargo-Morehead club, where he hit .325, the left-handed right fielder moved up through the Indians’ farm system to Keokuk, Tulsa, Reading, and finally the Indianapolis AAA team in 1956. In the minors, Roger had his ups and downs, experiencing injuries and problems with some managers, as he would in his later career. In Keokuk and Reading, Roger’s manager was Jo Jo White, an easygoing person with the patience to handle a tense young ballplayer. White, who was the most significant influence on Roger’s baseball career, advised him to worry less about hitting singles and concentrate on power hitting by pulling the ball to right field. The result was promising. In 1957, at the age of twenty-three, the future star was ready for his major-league debut.

The Emerging Champion

Roger’s first three major-league seasons were not especially notable. On June 15, 1958, Cleveland traded Roger to the Kansas City Athletics. Roger was content in this familiar midwestern setting. In 1956, he had married his high school sweetheart, Patricia Carvell. The couple bought a home in suburban Raytown and started to rear the first of their six children.

The farsighted New York Yankees management recognized Roger’s possibilities as a natural home-run hitter in Yankee Stadium, with its short distance to the right field fence. Through a trade on December 11, 1959, Roger joined baseball’s tradition-rich team and reluctantly stepped into the spotlight of national scrutiny in the “house that Ruth built.”

In his first Yankees season, Roger received the American League’s most valuable player award with a .283 average, 39 home runs, and a league-leading 112 RBI. This valuable new Yankee was a compact 6-foot, 195-pound athlete with powerful shoulders. Baseball experts praised Roger’s picture-perfect, lashing home-run stroke. Furthermore, Roger was a complete ballplayer who had good speed on the bases, made spectacular outfield plays, and won respect from base runners for his strong, accurate throwing arm. On the field, Roger was an unselfish, loyal team player and a serious competitor.

Roger made the 1961 season an unforgettable year in baseball when he and teammate Mickey Mantle chased Babe Ruth’s record of 60 homers in one season. Mickey finished with 54, and, on the last day of the season, Roger broke the record with 61, while driving in 142 runs. The huge Yankee Stadium crowd that came to witness this historic baseball moment gave Roger the unrestrained, joyous ovation he deserved.

Continuing the Story

Roger paid a high price for glory. He received boos, hate mail, and disparaging comparisons from Ruth loyalists, who felt that Roger was an unworthy twenty-six-year-old upstart. Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick announced that, because Ruth had played the old 154-game schedule instead of the current 161 games, an asterisk explaining this would go into the record book if Babe’s total was surpassed in more than 154. Roger also suffered from poor relations with the press; he was a shy, blunt man of few words who preferred the privacy of family life. Before the 1961 season ended, Roger was losing his hair as a result of stress.

In 1962, Roger hit 33 homers with 100 RBI, but the boos and bad press persisted because he did not duplicate the previous year’s achievement. Roger would never regain the form of the 1961 season, which had taken its toll on him. The Yankees traded Roger to the St. Louis Cardinals in December, 1966. Pleased with the move, Roger played enthusiastically before appreciative fans; he had an excellent 1967 World Series and retired at the end of the next season.

Roger moved to Gainesville, Florida, where the Cardinals’ owner had given him a beer distributorship. In his remaining years, he avoided returning to Yankee Stadium for Old Timers’ Day and turned down proposals to make a movie of his life. On December 14, 1985, he died at the age of fifty-one, following a two-year struggle against lymphatic cancer. His body was laid to rest on the northern plains of his youth, among his people. The large funeral in Fargo was attended by many former Yankees teammates who came to pay him tribute.

Summary

Roger Maris’s achievement should not be diminished by the infamous asterisk. The great Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs under less hectic circumstances without the media pressures and hostile critics. Under similar conditions, Roger may have topped Ruth’s mark in less than 154 games. Roger deserves credit for persevering and hitting 61 home runs against these formidable obstacles. Mickey Mantle called Roger’s achievement the greatest single feat he ever saw in baseball.

By the time Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs 1998, Maris’s record had stood for thirty-seven years—longer than Ruth’s record had stood. The attention attracted by McGwire’s pursuit of the record focused new interest on Roger. In 2001, Billy Crystal produced and directed a film for HBO about Roger’s great season titled 61*.

Bibliography

Allen, Maury. Roger Maris: A Man for All Seasons. New York: D. I. Fine, 1986.

McNeil, William. Ruth, Maris, McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds: Baseball’s Single Season Home Run Champions. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003.

Maris, Roger, and Jim Ogle. Roger Maris at Bat. Des Moines, Iowa: Meredith Press, 1962.

Rosenfeld, Harvey. Roger Maris: A Title to Fame. Fargo, N.Dak.: Prairie House, 1991.

Smith, Ron, and Billy Crystal. Sixty-One*: The Story of Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, and One Magical Summer. St. Louis: Sporting News, 2001.