Athletes - Roger Maris

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	Athletes - Roger Maris

Roger Maris (September 10, 1934 – December 14, 1985), was a baseball player primarily remembered for breaking Babe Ruth's 34-year-old single-season home run record in 1961. Although his record was subsequently broken, many regard the records set by both Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds as invalid, due to mounting suspicion of their use of performance enhancing substances.

Born Roger Eugene Maras in Hibbing, Minnesota, he grew up in Grand Forks, North Dakota and Fargo, North Dakota. While he was in Fargo, he attended Shanley High School, and was a very good athlete and participated in many sports. Later he made his Major League Baseball debut in 1957 with the Cleveland Indians. The next year, he was traded to the Kansas City Athletics, whom he represented in the All-Star Game in 1959 in spite of missing 45 games to an appendix operation.

Kansas City frequently traded its best players to the New York Yankees, and Maris was no exception, going to New York in a seven-player trade in December 1959.

Early on, Maris had exhibited an independent, no-nonsense personality. Recruited to play football at the University of Oklahoma, he arrived in Norman on a bus and found no one from the University there to greet him. He turned around and went back to Fargo.

When he showed up in New York to join the Yankees, he was dressed in blue jeans, white bucks and a sport shirt. According to one story, he was met at the airport by a Yankees fan who took one look at his white bucks and said, "Look, man, Yankee ballplayers don't dress like you. These shoes--they gotta go." Maris immediately took the fan to a Thom McAn's store, where he bought two more pairs of white bucks. Later, when told to get a different wardrobe, he snapped, "If they don't like how I dress, I'll go back where I came from." That seemingly curmudgeonly side of Roger Maris only encouraged the New York sportswriters to look for things to criticize. They called Maris aloof, rude, and a hick.

Although Maris is most remembered for his record-breaking 1961 season, he was, for a number of years, a fine all-round player. In 1960, despite the already-nagging media, in his first season with the Yankees he led the league in slugging percentage, RBIs, and extra base hits and finished second in home runs (1 behind Mickey Mantle) and total bases, won a gold glove, and won the American League Most Valuable Player award, in another pennant-winning season for the Yankees.

The issue of Maris' personality was just another story in 1960. That changed dramatically in 1961. The American League expanded from 8 to 10 teams, generally watering down the pitching, but leaving the Yankees pretty much intact. Yankee home runs began to come at a record pace, and one famous photograph lined up six 1961 Yankee players, including Mantle, Maris, Yogi Berra, and Bill Skowron, under the nickname "Murderer's Row," because they hit a combined 207 home runs that year. As mid-season approached, it seemed quite possible that either Maris or Mantle, or perhaps both, would break Ruth's 34-year-old home run record. The local writers began to play the "M & M Boys" against each other, inventing a rivalry where none existed, as Yogi Berra has testified in recent interviews. The situation contrasted starkly with the home run race of 1998, when both McGwire and Sosa were given extensive media coverage of a positive nature.

Earlier, in 1956, Mantle had already challenged Ruth's record for most of the season and the New York press had been protective of Ruth on that occasion also. When Mantle finally fell short, finishing with 52, there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief from the New York traditionalists. Nor had the New York press been all that kind to Mantle in his early years with the team: he struck out frequently, was injury prone, was a true "hick" from Oklahoma, and was perceived as being distinctly inferior to his predecessor in center field, Joe DiMaggio. Over the course of time, however, Mantle (with a little help from his teammate Whitey Ford, a native of New York's Borough of Queens) had gotten better at "schmoozing" with the New York media. This was a talent that Maris, a blunt-spoken upper midwesterner, was never willing or able to cultivate; as a result, he wore the "surly" jacket for his duration with the Yankees.

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Athletes - Roger Maris

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