Yankees: The Day That Roger Maris Hit Number Sixty-One In ’61

The Yankees took the field that autumn day at Yankee Stadium having already won 108 games and well on their way to capturing another World Series title. But unfolding in the dugout was a drama that would reach epic proportions when a kid from the Midwest stepped to the plate in the fourth inning. Here’s that story.

The Yankees and their fans had already crowned Babe Ruth as the Greatest Yankee of All Time years ago. The Sultan of Swat, the Great Bambino, he had so many nicknames they had to give George Herman Ruth another one and finally settled on simply Babe.

Roger Maris, who claimed his hometown as Fargo, North Dakota, never wanted to be Babe Ruth. In fact, at times it was pretty obvious that he would have preferred not being in the limelight of New York City, and he would have been perfectly happy finishing out his career with Kansas City or St. Louis, tucked away neatly in the Midwest.

Instead, Baseball Reference reports that on December 11, 1959, Maris was traded by the Kansas City Athletics with Joe DeMaestri and Kent Hadley to the New York Yankees for Hank Bauer, Don Larsen, Norm Siebern and Marv Throneberry.

In those days, the Athletics were treated almost like a farm team by the Yankees, who restocked their team and unloaded players they had no use for almost at will. The prize catch in the deal, though, was Maris who, at the age of 25 had shown promise as a power hitting outfielder. More importantly, the Yankees saw him as a pull-hitter who would thrive with the short porch at Yankee Stadium.

The Yankees And Maris Got More Than They Bargained For

They would not be disappointed. But never in their dreams did they believe they were inheriting a player who would arrive at Yankee Stadium on a Sunday afternoon to play the final game of the season with a chance to break Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in a single season.

Over the Summer of ’61, Maris had been through hell, some of which was his making due to his inability or lack of desire to curry the favor of the media. He found himself in the shadow of New York’s Golden Boy, the untouchable Mickey Mantle who, regardless of his penchant for alcohol and womanizing, always escaped the notice of the New York media, which is those days was still, primarily, the newspapers.

Worse than that, Mantle picked the same year to have his best season as a home run hitter and the two of them locked in a battle that was covered on a daily basis as Maris moved ever closer to Ruth’s record.

Ironically though, when the Yankees took the field on October 1st, Mantle would not even be in the lineup, having succumbed to a hip injury and was rested for the upcoming World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.

Maris Stands Alone

And so it would be Roger Maris, standing alone that day in a place he did not want to be, minus a good chunk of his crew-cut hair which had fallen out due to the stress of the long season.

The game that began at the usual starting time (then) of 2:00 P.M. would only take an hour and fifty-seven minutes to play. Only 23,154 fans decided to attend the game to witness history in the making. And as another irony, the game would feature a pitcher’s battle and would ultimately be won by the Yankees by a score of 1-0, the margin being, of course, the home run hit by Maris.

The Yankees Box Score for the day looked like this:

Looking dead-red for a fastball, Maris got one, and he drilled a low line-drive into the right field seats sending him into the history books as the man who broke the Babe’s record. In ensuing years, several others would follow during the steroids era in baseball, but no one would come close to achieving the notoriety of Maris who, many still believe stole something from the Yankees.

Phil Rizzuto – “Holy Cow, He Did It.”

Immediately following the home run, History.com describes the scene at Yankee Stadium this way:

“An ear-splitting roar went up,” the New York Times reported, as “the crowd sensed that this was it.” The ball was gone, all right–Sal Durante, a 19-year-old Brooklyn truck driver, caught it about 10 rows back in the right-field stands. Maris trotted around the bases, stopping to shake hands with a young boy who’d managed to wriggle past security and onto the field and stepped on home plate. Then he tipped his cap to the crowd, took four bows and returned to his seat on the bench.

Of note, Maris led the American League that season in runs scored (132), runs batted in (141) and total bases (366), in addition to his 61 home runs. He also won the Most Valuable Player award.

Maris would finish out his career in St. Louis with the Cardinals before retiring after 12 big league seasons.

The Yankees Twenty-Five Most Memorable Home Runs

In the Yankees storied history, twenty-five of their home runs stand out as moments in time never to be forgotten and always treasured by baseball fans.

Maris would go to establish a partnership with Anheuser-Busch that would make him a successful businessman and a very rich man. Regrettably, he died a very young man at the age of 51.