September 25, 2011, Roger Maris Day celebration feature for Fargo Forum
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Yankees honor Roger Maris' 1961 season
NEW YORK – A referendum on the owner of Major League Baseball’s single-season home run record and Roger Maris’ Hall of Fame worthiness was an overriding topic of discussion on the day that the New York Yankees honored a man behind one of the organization’s greatest individual years.
By: Denis Gorman, Special to The Forum, INFORUM
- Yankees honor Maris' '61 season
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NEW YORK – A referendum on the owner of Major League Baseball’s single-season home run record and Roger Maris’ Hall of Fame worthiness was an overriding topic of discussion on the day that the New York Yankees honored a man behind one of the organization’s greatest individual years.
“As far as the record is concerned, the family feels that it is his record. That is just how we feel,” Roger Maris Jr. said about his father’s Hall of Fame credentials in a pregame news conference at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees were celebrating the 50th anniversary of Maris’ 61 home runs in 1961. He broke the mark on Oct. 1, 1961.
“As far as the Hall of Fame is concerned, we do think he should be in the Hall of Fame.”
Roger Maris Jr. threw out the first pitch before Saturday afternoon’s Red Sox-Yankees game. Derek Jeter presented Maris’ bat to the Maris family on the field before the game. The bat had been loaned, along with the 61st home run ball, by the Baseball Hall of Fame. The Yankees also had the number 61 painted on the grass.
The pregame ceremony had been scheduled for Friday night’s Red Sox-Yankees game, but the celebration and the game were postponed due to torrential rain.
The Maris family was represented by his wife, Pat, daughters Susan and Sandra, sons Roger Jr., Kevin, Randy and Richard and grandchildren. Teammates Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Moose Skowron, Bobby Richardson, Bob Cerv were on hand, along with Frank Prudenti, a bat boy for that team; Mickey Mantle’s sons David and Danny; and Sal Durante, who caught Maris’ 61st home run.
Before the on-field ceremony, the group unveiled a tour bus that commemorated Maris with a mural on the front before taking a private tour of the Yankees Museum and Monument Park.
“I think he’d be excited,” Ford said when asked to speculate how Maris would react to a day in his honor at Yankee Stadium.
Maris authored one of the legendary single seasons in the Yankees’ storied history. He won the second of his two American League MVP awards following a year in which he broke Babe Ruth’s single-season home-run record, led the American League in runs scored (132), runs batted in (141) and played in 161 games. The Yankees would go on to win the 20th of the franchise’s 27 World Series championships, beating the Cincinnati Reds in five games. In the five-game series, Maris walked four times, scored four runs, drove in two runs and homered.
“He was a good ballplayer,” Cerv said. “No one played outfield like (Maris did). (He) made it lots easier for Mantle, too, because he could cheat over to left-center field.”
Maris’ accomplishments that year have grown in stature as time has passed. In 1961, though, the then 26-year-old’s quest was detested by a portion of Yankee fans and media members because he was challenging two Yankees icons, Ruth and Mantle.
Ruth’s 60 home runs in 1927 set the standard for sluggers. Mantle finished the 1961 season with 54 home runs, 128 RBIs and 131 runs scored in 153 games before being hospitalized in September due to a hip infection.
“He had a great time when he was between the lines, on the field with the guys,” Randy Maris said of his father. “He enjoyed the camaraderie. I think he enjoyed it. It’s just that he enjoyed it between the lines.”
Roger Maris Jr. and Randy Maris acknowledged that there had been a rift between their father and the organization due to the way it had treated him in 1961 and after he broke his hand during the 1965 season. The late George Steinbrenner convinced Maris to return to Yankee Stadium in 1978 so he and Mantle could raise the 1977 world championship banner. The Yankees retired Maris’ No. 9 in 1984.
“I think that was the thing with the old regime Yankees; they didn’t protect him too much with the press, and the press turned a lot of fans against him, and he resented that a little bit,” Randy Maris said. “When Mr. Steinbrenner took over and he ended up retiring my dad’s number, that was a great thing. My dad was damn proud to be a Yankee.”
http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/335173/group/Sports/
posted by Denis P. Gorman at 12:05 PM
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