First step toward history
After going without a home run in 10 games to start the 1961 season, the Yankees’ Roger Maris finally launches a solo shot off a solo shot to deep right field off Detroit’s Paul Foytack 64 years ago today at Tiger Stadium.
Maris’ homer is the first of 61 he hits that season for New York, breaking the record of 60 set in 1927 by the Yankees icon Babe Ruth.
Maris’ homer also gives the Yankees an 8-5 lead in a game that will not be decided until the 10th inning, when a two-run homer by Mickey Mantle to left-center off reliever Hank Aguirre breaks an 11-11 tie.
The Yankees then hold on for a 13-11 victory before a Wednesday afternoon crowd of only 4,676.
Roger Maris with Mickey Mantle during batting practice
While breaking Ruth’s record from 34 years earlier, Maris also finishes the 1961 season with an American League-leading 141 runs batted in.
No surprise, he wins his second straight American League Most Valuable Player Award as the Yankees go on to win the World Series in just five games over the Cincinnati Reds.
Maris, though, begins to decline in 1962, when his home run total drops from 61 in ’61 to a more pedestrian 33.
Injuries follow, and so does a lack of production as Maris hits only 35 more homers over 290 games in his final four seasons from 1965-68.
Maris is done playing shortly after turning 34 years old.
He, though, is never done with reminders of his epic season from 1961.
Another day in 1961, more questions
The memories, though, are not good ones for quiet, non-assuming Maris.
During his record-breaking season, Maris often finds himself under the relentless and uncomfortable probing of the New York media.
“I think the most privacy I had was when the game was going on,” Maris later says.
“It would have been a helluva lot more fun if I had not hit those 61 home runs.”
Maris also deals with the negativity both from the fans and press who seemingly prefer that Ruth’s record would fall to someone else – namely, teammate Mickey Mantle since Mantle is a homegrown Yankee rather than Maris, who joins the Yankees before the 1960 season in a trade from the Kansas City Athletics.
“Every day I went to the ballpark in Yankee Stadium as well as on the road, people were on my back,” Maris tells the New York Post in 1977. “The last six years in the American League (from 1961-66) were mental hell for me.
“I was drained of all my desire to play baseball.”