This Week’s
Attitude

By Neil S. Friedman

‘61 Home Run Record Is Now Crystal Clear

As it is for America, baseball is also my favorite pastime — especially the New York Yankees.

In 1961, when Yankee teammates Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris went head-to-head for the major league home run record, like most fans regardless of age, I rooted for "The Mick" to win the race.

Mantle was, after all, a Yankee mainstay and the team’s multi-talented golden boy for a decade. Maris, on the other hand, was a newcomer, having arrived a mere two years earlier in a trade with the Kansas City Athletics. Though he proved himself a potent slugger, hitting 39 home runs (to Mantle’s 40) during the 1960 season and edging the Mick for the Most Valuable Player Award, Maris’ introverted personality led to elusive popularity with the fans and the press.

The average baseball fan, as well as the sportswriters covering the Yankees in 1961, was most likely unaware of who Roger Maris really was. Now, 17 years after his death, a made-for-cable movie explores the man behind the home run king who broke Babe Ruth’s 1927 single season home run record.

While the Mantle-Maris home run competition is the backdrop of "61*," director Billy Crystal’s moving portrait focuses instead on how that pursuit of Ruth’s record psychologically affected Maris and Mantle. ("61*" debuted last Saturday night and will be encored by HBO several times this month.)

Most young baseball fans probably vividly remember the 1998 baseball season when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were in a race to break the single season home run record established by Maris. It was a dramatic competition that McGwire won with what seems an untouchable 70 home runs. Sosa finished with 66.

Because there was no fabricated animosity created by the press during the Mantle-Maris home run record pursuit, the McGwire-Sosa rivalry was kinder, gentler and exciting.

What many baseball fans may not realize — until they do the math — is that Ruth’s record stood for 31 years, while Maris’ spanned 37 seasons.

For a movie about baseball, "61*" oddly relies less on baseball action — no doubt due to budget limitations — and more on the personalities of Mantle and Maris. Actually, except for the two Yankee sluggers, the asterisk in the title proves to be the focal point.

Mantle was a consummate baseball player with switch-hitting capabilities. He could also field, throw and run, despite a debilitating bone disease and nagging injuries. His charming country personality was in contrast to Maris’ intense, brooding persona. Mantle could be free and easy with the sports writers covering the team, while Maris was uncomfortable at bantering with the press, which turned them against him, resulting in a non-existent feud between the Yankee outfielders.

Midway through the 1961 season, Mantle and Maris were on pace to exceed Ruth’s record. As a result, talk of the asterisk arose due to the longer, 162-game season compared to Ruth’s 154-games. (The telemovie appropriately points out that Ruth’s 1927 record-setting season was 14-games longer than that of his predecessor.)

The asterisk was forced into the record books by then baseball commissioner Ford Frick, a former ghostwriter and friend of the Babe. That decision, which was supported by many sports writers and fans, tainted Maris’ feat for several decades. It was not removed until seven years after Maris died from cancer at age 51.

There’s an old cliché that declares, "Records are made to be broken." And, after more than 100 years since baseball made its debut, there have been scores of records set and subsequently surpassed — all without special notations of different playing conditions, better conditioned players, improved equipment and ameded rules that affected the game.

For Roger Maris, the atmosphere of misguided antagonism and undeserved media influence diluted his achievement. When Mark McGwire was in the throes of resetting baseball’s home run records, baseball parks, sports bars and fans in the millions were paying attention. When Maris broke Ruth’s record, Yankee Stadium was more than half-empty.

Thankfully, Billy Crystal’s movie finally sets the record straight. And, despite the asterisk in "61*," the movie removes any lingering doubt that Roger Maris was rightfully baseball’s home run king longer than anyone else.