By: Kevin Schnepf | INFORUM
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was published in The Forum in September of 1998, the year Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris’ single-season home run record.
Fargo – It wasn’t your typical day for Roger Maris, although he would have strongly preferred it that way.
It was Oct. 1, 1961 – the final day of the regular season for the New York Yankees. Maris, the quiet, somewhat introverted Yankees outfielder who grew up in Fargo, was about to make history. The 27-year-old Maris needed only one home run to break the single-season record of 60 set by the legendary Babe Ruth.
Despite the historical significance, Maris was trying to treat it like any other day. He and wife Pat, his high school sweetheart at Fargo Shanley, attended mass the night before. They had breakfast together at a downtown New York City hotel.
“He didn’t show it, but I’m sure he was really tense,” Pat said. “I know he was in a hurry to get it over with.”
But it would take until the fourth inning in the season finale against the Boston Red Sox before Maris could feel any sense of relief. Maybe it helped make it seem like a more typical day when only 23,154 fans showed up in Yankee Stadium that day.
“Strange it’s not a full house,” thought Pat, who positioned herself in her seat behind home plate amongst the other Yankee wives. “Because the stadiums seemed to fill up almost everywhere else they went. He and Mickey drew the fans.”
Mickey Mantle and Maris drew about 1.9 million fans on the road that summer, nearly 200,000 more than they did at home. Mantle, the cleanup hitter who would not suit up this day, had been sidelined since mid-September with a hip injury and would finish the season with 54 home runs. “I’m done,” Mantle told Maris after his injury. “It’s up to you. Go get him.”
But Yankees fans, even the New York media, wanted Mantle to break the record. As Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek would later say: “They wanted a hero, a golden boy. Not some hard-working guy from North Dakota.”
They were stuck with Maris on this Sunday afternoon. And a rookie by the name of Tracy Stallard was about to get stuck with the assignment of pitching to Maris and the rest of the mighty Yankees lineup.
While Maris was quietly getting ready in the Yankees locker room, Stallard was putting on his Red Sox uniform – not knowing if he or Gene Conley would be the starting pitcher. Pitching coach Sal Maglie walked over and dropped a new baseball in Stallard’s right shoe. The 6-foot-5, 205-pound son of a Virginia coal miner was about to become a part of history too.
A new record at 2:43 p.m.
Maris grabbed his 35-inch, 33-ounce Louisville Slugger as Yankee leadoff hitter Bobby Richardson stepped to the plate and Kubek started taking practice swings in the on-deck circle.
Stallard retired Richardson and Kubek. The lefthanded-swinging Maris stepped into the batters’ box for his 587th official at bat of the season.
The 23,000 fans perked up. Among the throng that packed the rightfield bleachers was Sal Durante, a 19-year-old from Coney Island attending his second game of the season. As Maris swung at an outside pitch, they saw the ball slice to leftfield and into the glove of Carl Yastrzemski.
No record this at bat.
That prompted Pat Maris to silently send some more prayers to St. Jude – a saint she prayed to the entire season. The prayers intensified the next time Maris came to bat in the fourth inning.
With the game still scoreless, Stallard looked hard at the sign given by catcher Russ Nixon. His curve sailed high outside and the fans began to boo. Maris stepped out of the box momentarily while Stallard fiddled with the baseball. Stallard fired a fastball and umpire Bill Kinnaman called ball two. The crowd booed again.
Maris knocked some dirt off his shoe with a tap of his bat. Trying to ignore the boos, Stallard threw a pitch that dropped low, but directly across the plate. He was hoping to catch the outside corner.
“It wasn’t a bad pitch,” Stallard recalled later. “I sure didn’t intend to walk him. I would rather have had him hit a homer than walk him four times.”
Maris pivoted with a smooth swing, sending Stallard’s pitch soaring high toward the rightfield bleachers. The fans, including Durante, began to scramble. The Yankee pitchers sitting in the rightfield bullpen popped up, armed with their gloves to catch a piece of history.
Red Sox rightfielder Lu Clinton backpeddaled to the wall, then gave up.
At 2:43 p.m., the ball landed 10 rows into the bleachers and eventually into Durante’s hands. A 365-foot home run. Ruth’s record, set in 1927, had fallen.
Huge sigh of relief
“As soon as he hit it, I knew it was over my head,” Durante recalled. “So I stood on my seat. I put up my hand, couldn’t get any higher than I was, and that ball landed square in my palm.”
It knocked him backwards into the next row. Pat Maris’ prayers were finally answered.
Maris, who stood at the plate for a brief moment, started trotting around the bases with his head down. Coach Frank Crocetti shocked the Yankees by shaking Maris’ hand as he rounded third base. The only other time Crocetti would not perform his customary slap on the back was when Mantle hit his 500th home run six years later.
Yogi Berra, the next batter due up, greeted Maris at home plate. The rest of the Yankees mobbed him in front of the dugout.
“Everytime he went to bat, our hearts were just throbbing,” said Johnny Blanchard, who batted sixth in the lineup that day. “We had to throw him back out of the dugout when the crowd was cheering. But that was Rog … he was kind of an introvert. He was silent.”
Maris waved his cap to crowd – exposing his blonde crew cut. He quickly ducked back into the dugout. Maris sat down, leaned his head back against the dugout wall and his teammates heard him let go with a huge sigh of relief – as if all the pressure he had been carrying around for months was finally off.
“It was like all the air was out of him … he was just staring,” said Blanchard, who had a locker next to Maris. “Rog later told me that all he was thinking was, ‘Let me go home to Patty and the kids. I’ll lock the door and they can leave me alone.’ ”
The mob scene begins
Soon after the home run, security officials escorted Pat under the bleachers to the room where Yankees wives usually wait for their husbands. Maris struck out and popped out in his next two at bats. Two hours later, the game ended with a 1-0 Yankees’ win.
The mob scene in and outside the Yankee locker room began. As reporters swarmed around Maris, security officials escorted Durante to the scene. Babe Ruth’s wife eventually showed up outside the Yankee locker room.
“She had tears in her eyes,” Blanchard recalled. “Rog, being the gentleman that he was, pecked her on the cheek. It was very touching … it really was.”
Maris then met Durante, proudly displaying the ball that made history. Durante still recalls the meeting place as “somewhere underneath.”
He remembered one of the security guards saying to Maris, “The kid wants to give you the ball.” Durante held it out for Maris. Maris’s expression is something Durante still couldn’t explain to a New York Daily News writer recently.
“He just shook his head,” Durante said. “Just like I always saw him do. He didn’t have that – how can I describe it, I can’t really explain – he wasn’t overly excited. Does that sound right? Let me put it this way: I think Roger was very shy.”
Finally Maris told Durante to keep the ball and make some money. Durante later sold the ball for $5,000 to a California millionaire. The ball sits in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., today.
With Pat patiently waiting in the wives’ room, Maris answered one reporters’ question after the other for two to three hours. There were the New York reporters who often made him mad and reporters he never saw before and would never see again.
One of those reporters even made a phone call back to Fargo to Maris’ high school coach, Sid Cichy. The ringing woke Cichy up from an afternoon nap on the living room couch – resting from an early-morning duck-hunting excursion.
“I was half asleep and not very coherent, so I think this guy was half-disgusted with me,” Cichy said. “He wanted an answer right now. It was an awakening … I got a taste of what Roger had to deal with.”
‘It wasn’t like we celebrated’
Pat Maris was used to waiting for Roger, who usually was the first one to the park and the last one to leave.
“It was just a little longer that day,” Pat said.
She didn’t mind. She was grateful she was able to watch his 61st home run. Had son Randy not been born a month premature, she may have had to stay in Kansas City that day.
“That whole day is kind of a blur,” Pat said.
It is a day that has lost some of its historical significance . Since that Oct. 1 day in 1961, three other players – Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds – have surpassed Maris’ 61 homer mark.
Nonetheless, it was a special day – despite how hard Maris tried to make it a typical day.
It was a day that started with a quiet breakfast and ended with a quiet dinner.
“We went to a quiet place for dinner … so it wasn’t too bad as far as being recognized,” Pat said. “It wasn’t like we celebrated. Roger wasn’t that way.”
Readers can reach Forum Sports Editor Kevin Schnepf at (701) 241-5549
Subscribe
