1963 World Series

As I said at the conclusion of our post about it, the end of the 1956 World Series marked the end of the Golden Age of New York City baseball. Over a ten year span from 1947 through 1956, the only World Series not to feature at least one New York team was 1948. There were seven Subway Series, six between the Yankees and Dodgers, one between the Yankees and Giants. The Yankees won seven championships, the Dodgers and Giants one each.

Taking it back to 1936, New York was represented in 16 of 21 World Series, the three clubs combining for twenty six total appearances, including seven Subway Series between the Yankees and Dodgers and three more between the Yankees and Giants. New York City was home to the World Series champion fifteen times in those twenty one years.

The Yankees returned to the World Series in 1957, but after years of finishing second to the Dodgers, Milwaukee finally captured the NL pennant. The Dodgers slipped to third, the Giants to sixth. And as Jay detailed in Friday night's preview, there was a movement afoot with Gotham's two NL clubs. On August 19th, Giants owner Horace Stoneham announced his team would move to San Francisco for the 1958 season. On October 8th, one year to the day after Larsen's perfect game, Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley - who was instrumental in convincing Stoneham to choose San Francisco over Minneapolis, announced that the Dodgers would move to Los Angeles for 1958. Unlike Giants fans, the Brooklyn faithful didn't even get a chance to say goodbye.

Following the '56 season, the Dodgers did the unthinkable, trading Jackie Robinson to the hated Giants. He retired rather than report. On January 28, 1958, just a month shy of reporting to spring training, Roy Campanella was paralyzed following a car accident on Long Island. The Dodgers moved west without two of the cornerstones of their Brooklyn dynasty.

By the time the Yankees and Dodgers met again in the 1963 World Series, it had been more than three years since Ebbets Field had been reduced to a pile of rubble. The principle members of the Brooklyn dynasty had moved on. Don Newcombe was shipped to the Reds midway through the Dodgers' first LA season. Pee Wee Reese too moved west with the Dodgers, spent one season as a part time player, was released at the end of the year, and retired. Carl Erskine was finished midway through 1959. Thirty eight years old and his skills in steep decline, Carl Furillo was released a month into the 1960 season; a month later Clem Labine was traded to Detroit. Gil Hodges and Roger Craig were taken by the Mets in the expansion draft after the 1961 season, starting a Metropolitan fascination with the Brooklyn club that continues to this day. Duke Snider followed them back to New York just prior to the start of the '63 season.

The last remaining tie to the Brooklyn pennant winners was 1955 World Series hero Johnny Podres. Thirty one years old by the start of the 1963 Fall Classic, the southpaw was the Dodgers number three starter. The two men in front of him in the rotation were dominant workhorses who had cut their teeth as teenagers in Brooklyn. Sandy Koufax made his debut with the 1955 Dodgers and was joined by Don Drysdale the following spring. Koufax didn't see the field in neither the '55 nor the '56 Series; Drysdale pitched two mop up innings at the end of Game Four in '56. The two were still developing as the club moved west, but by 1963 they were the most dominant duo in baseball, combining for 44 wins in 82 starts, covering 626.1 innings pitched, 37 complete games, 14 shutouts, striking out 557 batters, and allowing just one baserunner per inning.

Meanwhile, the Yankee dynasty had continued in the intervening years. After dropping the '57 Series to Milwaukee, they won a rematch in 1958. The club slumped to a third place finish the following year, missing yet another World Series encounter with the Dodgers, who in just their second season in L.A. equaled the number of championships they won in 74 years in Brooklyn. In 1960 the Yankees returned to the Fall Classic, losing Game Seven in heart breaking fashion on a walkoff homer by Pittsburgh's Bill Mazeroski. The loss spurred the club to end their twelve year relationship with seventy year old manager Casey Stengel.

Stengel was replaced by Ralph Houk. Dubbed "The Major" following his decorated Army career during World War II, Houk was one of several anonymous back ups to Yogi Berra before the emergence of Elston Howard, appearing in just 91 games over an eight year career from 1947 through 1954. Houk doubled as a coach during the final two years of his career, then spent the next three years managing the organization's top farm club at Denver. He returned to the Major League staff for the final three years of Stengel's career, and as the Yankees entered the 1963 World Series, they were aiming for their third championship in as many seasons under Houk.

-1963-

Though not quite as much as the Dodgers, the Yankees had undergone a number of changes since the clubs had last met seven years earlier. The axis of Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford remained, but Berra was now 38 years old, serving as a player-coach in his final season, and had seen action in just 64 games. Mantle meanwhile, was limited to just 65 games, courtesy of broken foot suffered when his spikes became entangled in Baltimore's chain link outfield fence on June 5th. It was just the latest in a string of leg injuries that was starting to sap Mantle of his once top flight speed.

Roger Maris was in his fourth season as a Yankee, and while he had slipped somewhat from the form the saw him capture the MVP award in both of his first two seasons, he was still an outstanding all around player. Yet he too saw action in less than a hundred games as injuries cost him extended stretches of both June and July.

In their collective absence, Elston Howard picked up the slack in a big way. After spending the first five years of his career as a valuable utility player, Howard finally replaced Berra as the primary catcher in 1960. He had been an All-Star for seven years running, and with Mantle out of the lineup for much of the summer, Howard became the big bat in the heart of the Yankee order. He batted .287/.342/.528, with a career high 28 home runs. He won the first of his two Gold Gloves and became the first African-American to win the AL MVP award, the fourth consecutive year and eight time in ten years the award went to a Yankee.

Elsewhere on the roster, the Yankees had a new infield. Clete Boyer, Tony Kubek, and Bobby Richardson were in their fourth season as the Yankee third baseman, shortstop, ans second baseman respectively, forming a slick defensive, if offensively below average, infield. Meanwhile, longtime first baseman Moose Skowron was across the field in the Dodger dugout, having been traded the previous off-season with the emergence of Joe Pepitone. In the outfield, left fielder Tom Tresh enjoyed a great sophomore season, and filled in admirably in center field in Mantle's absence. Behind Ford, the pitching staff featured 1962 World Series hero Ralph Terry and youngsters Jim Bouton and Al Downing.

The Yankees entered the Series with a record five and a half games better than the Dodgers, but that wouldn't much matter by the time the games begun. The Series began on Wednesday October 2nd, at Yankee Stadium, with a heavyweight match up between lefties Ford and Koufax. The Dodgers got at Ford early, with former teammate Skowron opening the scoring with an RBI single in the second. He later came around to score on a three run homer from John Roseboro. Moose added another RBI an inning later, and Ford was gone after five innings and as many runs. The Yankees had no answers for Koufax. As he had been against NL competition all year, Koufax was dominant, tossing a complete game and allowing just nine baserunners against fifteen strikeouts. The only Yankee offense came on an eighth inning two run homer from Tresh, as the Dodgers took the opener 5-2.

Instead of Drysdale, Dodger manager Walter Alston gave the ball to the veteran Johnny Podres in Game Two. Aside from his being a veteran of three previous Fall Classics, Podres was a lefty, and pre-renovation Yankee Stadium was extremely favorable to southpaws. Houk was of the same mind, skipping over Ralph Terry and starting lefty Al Downing. While he's best remembered for serving up Hank Aaron's 715th home run, Downing was an effective starter for the Yankees for seven seasons, and 1963 was probably his finest. Once again the Dodgers struck early, with a two run double from Willie Davis in the first inning. Skowron burned his former teammates again in the fourth, launching a solo homer to right. L.A. added a fourth run of Terry in the eighth. Meanwhile, Podres recaptured some of his 1955 magic, carrying a 4-0 lead into the ninth. He allowed a one out double to Hector Lopez, and was lifted for Ron Perranoski. The Dodger fireman allowed Lopez to score, but got the final two outs to give the Dodgers a two game lead.

Two days later the Series resumed in Los Angeles. This time Drysdale got the nod. He had a nasty reputation for being an intimidator on the mound, standing 6'5" and leading the NL in hit batsmen for four straight years while living by the philosophy "you hit one of mine, I hit two of yours". He was opposed by the Yankees' own bulldog, Jim Bouton. For the third consecutive game the Dodgers took an early lead. Tommy Davis drove in Junior Gilliam with two outs in the first. It was all the offense Drysdale needed. He dominated the Yankee offense, allowing just three singles, a hit batsmen, and a walk. He and Bouton matched zeros from the first inning on, but Drysdale sent Bouton home a hard luck loser and the Yankees were in a 3-0 hole.

With their backs against the wall, the Yankees sent Whitey Ford to the hill for Game Four, and he once again had the unenviable task of opposing Koufax. Ford fared far better than in Game One, managing to keep the Dodgers off the board in the early innings for the first time all Series. Still, the Dodgers managed to draw first blood, on a solo homer from future Yankee coach Frank Howard in the fifth inning. The Yankees meanwhile were still flummoxed by Koufax. He was perfect through three and third and had allowed just two baserunners entering the seventh. With one out, Mantle hit his fifteenth career World Series homer, tying him with Babe Ruth for the most all time. More importantly, it tied the score, but it was to be short-lived. In the bottom of the inning, an error by Joe Pepitone allowed leadoff batter Junior Gilliam to go all the way to third. Willie Davis followed with a sacrifice fly, putting the Dodgers back on top. The Yankees put the potential tying run on base in both the eighth and ninth innings, but Koufax snuffed out the rallies and gave the Dodgers their second title in five years.

===

It wasn't apparent at the time, but the Yankee dynasty was crumbling. Game Four marked Houk's final game as Yankee manager, for the time being at least. Houk moved up to the general manager's chair, replacing the retiring Roy Hamey. Yogi Berra, now retired as a player, succeeded Houk as the Yankee manager. He had a successful 1964, leading the Yankees to another pennant, but lost a heartbreaking seven game World Series to the Cardinals. Berra's fate had been decided before the final out was made though. The club felt he was too close to his former teammates to be an effective leader and he was replaced by Johnny Keane, the Cardinals manager who had just defeated him in the Series. While the Dodgers captured another title in '65, Keane lasted just a year and a month as Yankee manager, replaced by Houk twenty games into the 1966 season.

By that point, the franchise was in disarray. Age or injuries, or both, had taken their toll on Mantle, Ford, Maris, Howard, Tresh, and Tony Kubek. The late dynasty years had produced some promising youngsters, like Tresh, Pepitone, Downing, and Bouton, with others like Mel Stottlemyre, Bobby Murcer, and Roy White following behind them. But some never reached their potential, others got injured, and none were enough to adequately replace the aging, but Hall of Fame caliber, core of the team. The bottom came in '66, as the club finished last for the first time since 1912, their .440 winning percentage standing as the fourth poorest mark in club history to that point. They improved by just two wins in '67, rising from tenth to ninth, and spent the majority of the next several years hovering within a few games of .500.

The turnaround would come eventually, as the club's fortunes began improving under George Steinbrenner's ownership in the mid-seventies. By the time the Yankees rose to the top of the American League again, they would find a familiar foe waiting for them in October.

9 Days Until Spring Training: Roger Maris

In a perfect world, Mantle would have been the one to break Babe Ruth's single season home run record. Instead it was an aloof North Dakota native named Roger Maris who didn't come up with the Yankees, wasn't comfortable in New York, didn't get along with the media, and was never fully embraced by the fans.

Maris was signed by the Indians in 1953 for $5,000 and chose the path of professional baseball over a standing offer for a scholarship to Oklahoma State. In his first full season as a minor leaguer, Maris was assigned to the B-level Keokuk Kernels of the Illinois-Indiana-Iowa league. It was there that manager Jo Jo White taught him how to pull the ball and transformed from a solid hitter for average to a bona fide home run threat. That year, Maris hit 32 round trippers in 134 games and made his first significant strides towards becoming a Big Leaguer.

He made his debut on Opening Day 1957 for the Indians and hit the ground running with a 3 for 5 effort against the White Sox. The following day, he hit his first Major League home run, a go-ahead grand slam in the top of the 11th inning.

Maris was the starting center fielder for Indians in '57 but played all three OF positions, appearing in 116 games in total. He left his high batting averages in the minor leagues, hitting only .235 but his 14 home runs helped him to be a better than league average hitter (105 OPS+).

During the 1958 season, Maris was dealt to the A's for, among others, the immortal Woodie Held. Maris doubled his home run output from the previous year to 28 but hit only 19 doubles, saw his on base percentage dip below .300 and his OPS+ drop to 97. In 1959 he was transitioned to right field and began to put it all together at the plate, hitting .273/.359/.464 (123 OPS+) and was rewarded with a selection to the All-Star team.

The Yankees were tantalized by Maris' left handed power and were looking to give their team a boost after a third place finish in '59. They sent World Series hero Don Larsen, their two starting corner outfielders from the previous season, Hank Bauer and Norm Siebern along with 25 year old first baseman Marv Thornberry to Kansas City in exchange for Maris, Joe DeMaestri and Ken Hadley.

As he did in his first game in Cleveland, Maris made a great first impression as a Yankee, smacking two homers and a double in his debut against the Red Sox. He went on to win the AL MVP that season, nudging out Mickey Mantle by a scant 3 points in the voting. They had similar years at the plate but Maris, batting behind Mantle, drove in 18 more runs in 66 fewer plate appearances.

While the writers were willing to recognize Maris' accomplishments, many fans refused to embrace him as a True Yankee®. The Bombers were still very much Mickey Mantle's team and Maris' icy relationship with the New York media only served to further extend that perception.

While some still hold Maris' single season record up as the all-time mark, 1961 was far from a normal year in baseball and comes with it's own share of caveats.

Before 'the 61 season began, the AL expanded from eight to ten teams, adding the Los Angeles Angels and the Washington Senators by way of an expansion draft. Both teams selected Yankees with their first picks; the Angels took Eli Grba and the Senators claimed Bobby Shantz. The Yanks also lost Duke Maas, Dale Long, Bob Cerv, Ken Hunt, Bud Zipfel. The expansion draft weakened the overall talent pool in the league fairly significantly, but despite the pillaging, the Yankees were among the teams least affected.

That same season, the schedule was lengthened from 154 to 162 games. Commissioner Ford C. Frick, initially announced that in order to break Babe Ruth's record, it would have to be done in 154 games. He said:

Any player who hit more than sixty home runs during his club’s first 154 games would be recognized as having established a new record. However, if the player does not hit more than sixty until after his club has played 154 games, there would have to be some distinctive mark in the record books to show that Babe Ruth’s record was set under a 154 game schedule and the total of more than sixty was compiled while a 162 game schedule was in effect.

This was met with strong media backlash. The Sporting News placed it at #15 of the "most shameful acts in baseball history" and columnist Leonard Koppett called the decision "a remarkably foolish thing".

The prevailing wisdom at the time said the decision was prompted by Frick's loyalty to Ruth which could be traced back to Frick's days as a newspaper man. Frick had ghostwritten for Ruth in the past, allowing Ruth to "cover" every world series from 1921-1936 and wrote glowing columns about Ruth during his time with the New York Evening Journal.

Regardless of his perceived bias, Frick was making a logical choice. The tag of single season is rather arbitrary and it was clearly easier to reach 60 home runs given 8 extra games to say nothing of the substantially thinner pitching that resulted from expansion. Frick was stuck with two difficult choices: keep two separate rule books for each season length or give all players who came after 1961 an unfair advantage in breaking counting stat records. It was popular at the time, but his choice of the latter allowed one of the most hallowed records in sports to fall under dubious circumstances.

Maris' pursuit of the record wasn't especially popular with some living legends of the game either. Legendary second baseman Rogers Hornsby said at the time, "It would be a disappointment if Ruth's home run record were bested by a .270 hitter."

Partially because of the controversy surrounding his quest for 61, Maris was heckled and even had objects thrown at him on the field. He received hate mail, death threats and claimed his hair fell out "in clumps" as the season progressed. He had 59 HR after 154 games and hit his 61st on the last day of the season in the home half of the fourth inning against the Red Sox.

Maris spent five more seasons with the Yankees but his peak had decidedly past. While he was an above average hitter each of those five years, Maris never hit more than 33 home runs in a season and missed large chunks of 1963 and 1965 with injuries. He was ultimately traded after the 1966 season to the Cardinals in exchange for Charley Smith.

Despite breaking one of the most hallowed sports records of all time, Maris remained sour about the experience. During an interview at the 1980 All-Star game, he said:

They acted as though I was doing something wrong, poisoning the record books or something. Do you know what I have to show for 61 home runs? Nothing. Exactly nothing.

He passed away 5 years later from Hodgkin's Lymphoma at the age of 51.

Maris was a victim of our casting. Despite the fact that sports are unscripted, we still expect the right characters to come out on top. Mickey Mantle was the former farmhand, Yankee legend, the Hall of Famer, the rags to riches story from Oklahoma. He partied with the rat pack, Joe D. and Marylin Monroe, and had the key to the city. He was supposed to be the one to break Babe Ruth's record. Maris was the ostracized Kansas City transplant, who should have came up short. But that's not the way life works and while Maris' peak was far too short to earn him a spot in Cooperstown, he has a place in Monument Park.

Remembering Bobby Cox As A Yankee

Yesterday the Atlanta Braves announced that manager Bobby Cox, who recently had been pondering his managerial future, signed a one year contract extension and will retire as field manager at the conclusion of the 2010 season.

Cox is a fixture with the Braves. He'll have completed 21 consecutive seasons at their helm by the time of his retirment, as well as an additional four seasons as their skipper at the start of his managerial career. He was also the Braves' General Manager from 1986 until returning to the dugout in June of 1990. When he retires after next season he'll have a five year contract waiting for him to serve the Braves as a baseball operations consultant.

But before Bobby Cox became so inextricably linked with the Braves, he had a lengthy history with the Yankees organization. After the 1967 season, Cox was a twenty-six year old with no Major League experience who had already washed out of the Dodgers, Cubs, and Braves systems in an eight year minor league career. On December 7th, the Braves flipped him to the Yankees for two bit players, one of whom would never again appear in the Majors.

The Yankees had fallen on hard times by 1968, and Cox was able to break camp with the team. Two weeks into the season he won the third base job, replacing Charley Smith (who incidentally had been all the Yankees received from St. Louis in exchange for Roger Maris just a year earlier). Cox had a fair season (91 OPS+) and the Yankees, who had finished ninth in the ten team league the year before, turned in a surprising 83-79 record and finished fifth.

In 1969 Cox lost the third base job to Bobby Murcer, who was returning from two years lost to military service. When Murcer was moved to the outfield thirty games into the season, it was Jerry Kenney, not Cox, who took over at the hot corner. Cox stuck with the team as a reserve through the year, but that was the end of his Major League playing career.

After spending 1970 at the Yanks' AAA team in Syracuse, the Yankees gave Cox a start on his second careeer, appointing him manager of the single A Fort Lauderdale team for 1971. The next year he moved up West Haven (CT) in the AA Eastern League, and then spent four seasons as the skipper for AAA Syracuse. In six minor league seasons, Cox compiled a 459-387 record (.543), and won the EL Championship in 1972 and the IL Championship in 1976. Cox then joined the Yankees' Major League coaching staff for the 1977 season, picking up his first World Series ring in the process.

Following the season, the Braves hired Cox and save for a four year stint as the Blue Jays manager from 1982-85, he's been there ever since. Cox ranks fourth on the all-time managerial wins list with 2,409, sandwiched between contemporaries Tony LaRussa and Joe Torre. However, LaRussa has compiled his victories with three different clubs, Torre with four. Cox's 2,054 wins as Braves skipper rank third behind Connie Mack and John McGraw for the highest total with a single club.

Jeter, Gehrig, And Home/Road Splits

Good morning Fackers. So how about that game last night? An eight batter renaissance from Joba, outstanding relief from Alf and Albie, a huge home run from Posada, a clutch fielders choice from Swish - OK, maybe not on that one.

But of course, Derek Jeter was deservedly the story of the night. Exactly one year after he surpassed Babe Ruth for second place on the Yankees all time hit list, he tied The Bambino's long time partner in crime, Lou Gehrig. Last night's events came exactly one week short of the one year anniversary of the last time Jeter and Gehrig were intertwined in a historical achievement.

On September 16th last year, Jeter came to bat against the White Sox' Gavin Floyd in the bottom of the first with Johnny Damon on first base and no one out. Just as he did in his record tying at bat last night, Jeter jumped on the first pitch, grounding one under the glove of third baseman Juan Uribe. The play was scored a hit, giving Jeter 1,270 at Yankee Stadium, surpassing Lou Gehrig's ballpark record of 1,269.

Yet here we are nearly a full year later and Jeter is just now tied with Gehrig for the franchise hit record, meaning Gehrig still has a sizeable advantage over Jeter when it comes to hits away from the Bronx. Here's a breakdown of both men's 2,721 career hits:

Gehrig: 1,269 at Yankee Stadium, 1,452 away
Jeter: 1,360 at Yankee Stadiums, 1,360 away, 1 at a Shea Stadium "home game"

Some interesting stuff there, besides Jeter's virtually even split between home and away games. Gehrig still leads Jeter by 92 road hits, meaning we'll likely endure another "chase" late next season as the media looks for another storyline with the season winding down.

But more interesting, Lou Gehrig accumulated about 53.36% of his career hits on the road. Percentage wise, this isn't a huge difference, but he had 183 more hits, nearly a full season's total for him and about 13 additional hits per season, away from his home ballpark.

Why is this? Yankee Stadium, particularly in its pre-1976 incarnation, was a great ballpark for left handed hitters like Gehrig. So why this difference?

Unfortunately, b-r.com doesn't have detailed split information pre-1954, so we can't hammer down on the cause for Gehrig's discrepancy. We can assume that Gehrig, since he played everyday, would have had roughly the same number of plate appearances at home and on the road. Considering that the Yankees won seven pennants and had just one losing record in his fourteen full seasons with the team, we know that the Yankees won a ton of games in Gehrig's career. As such, he may have picked up a number of ninth inning at bats on the road that he didn't get at home, but certainly not the 538 additional at bats it would have taken a .340 career hitter like Gehrig to accumulate an additional 183 hits.

So perhaps it was Yankee Stadium itself that was the cause. With its inviting right field porch just 295 feet away and no one near his own skill level batting behind him, Gehrig drew 1,508 career BB, good for 15th on the all time list. We can't know for certain without the split statistics, but perhaps the lion's share of Gehrig's walks came at home, reducing his number of at bats, and consequently his opportunities for hits, there.

Another potential cause could be Yankee Stadium's cavernous pre-renovation deah valley (487 to feet to straightaway center and 490 to left center). Even though Gehrig was a left handed hitter, he assuredly lost a number of hits to the cavernous centerfield dimensions. But I'm not quite sure that explains the difference, particularly with the extra hits Gehrig likely accumulated thanks to the short right field.

So what about other big Yankee bats to follow Gehrig? It's tough to find a good comparison for Gehrig, who's one of the top 5 to 10 offensive players in the history of the game. Mickey Mantle is closest, but was a switch hitter and the first three years of his career pre-date b-r's split data. The first seven years of Yogi Berra's career pre-date the split data. Roger Maris didn't play nearly the number of games with the Yankees as Gehrig, was not a power threat for the final two seasons of his Yankee days, and may have incomplete split information. Reggie Jackson was a power threat on the same order as Gehrig, but not nearly as complete a hitter and spent his entire Yankee career in the remodeled Stadium. Ditto for Don Mattingly, whose power abandoned him gradually in his sixth season and completely by his eighth season.

Still, here are the percentage of career Yankee hits accumulated on the road for those five men:

Berra: 51.56%
Mantle: 49.43%
Maris: 53.83%
Jackson: 52.34%
Mattingly: 51.09%

All the exclusively left handed hitters are over 50% and Maris' percentage exceeds Gehrig's 53.36%. Perhaps when it came to accumulating hits, not just home runs, Yankee Stadium wasn't as kind to left handed hitters as its reputation would have led us to believe. What do you think Fackers?

#9

It's 9:09 on 09/09/09. What else did you expect to see here?

After seven outstanding seasons, five pennants, two championships, two MVP awards, and one single season home run record, the Yankees sent Roger Maris to the Cardinals in a rather poor trade following the 1966 season. The Cardinals were owned by the Busch family, as in Anheuser-Busch. When Maris wanted to retire after the 1967 season, Gussie Busch promised Maris a distributorship if he would return for one more year. He did, helping the Cardinals to their second consecutive NL flag, allowing him to play in the seventh World Series of his career.

True to his word, Gussie Busch set Maris up with a Budweiser distributorship in Gainesville, FL. Maris would operate it until his untimely death from cancer in 1985. Unfortunately for Maris, the Busch family didn't have a stake in Magic Hat.

That's our numerical history lesson for the morning. Now grab your self a Magic Hat #9, sit back, relax, and listen to this one.

Number of Days Until Spring Training: Roger Maris (#9)

It wasn't supposed to be Roger Maris. He didn't come up through the Yankees system, as he was acquired in the trade that sent Don Larsen to the Kansas City A's in 1959. He didn't get along with the New York media, and was considered surly.

Even though Maris won the AL MVP in his first year with the Yankees, they were still considered Mickey Mantle's team in 1961. Maris was an outsider and not considered a True Yankee(TM). In a perfect world, Mantle would have been the one to break Babe Ruth's single season home run record. Fate did not agree and Mantle suffered a leg infection late in the season that hindered him from topping the mark. He ended up with 54HR.

Before the 1961 season, the AL expanded from eight to ten teams, adding the Los Angeles Angels and the Washington Senators by way of an expansion draft. Both teams selected Yankees with their first picks; the Angels took Eli Grba and the Senators claimed Bobby Shantz. The Yanks also lost Duke Maas, Dale Long, Bob Cerv, Ken Hunt, Bud Zipfel. The expansion draft weakened the overall talent pool in the league fairly significantly, but despite the pillaging, the Yankees were among the teams least affected.

That same season, the schedule was lengthened from 154 to 162 games. Commissioner Ford C. Frick, initially announced that in order to break Babe Ruth's record, it would have to be done in 154 games. He said:

Any player who hit more than sixty home runs during his club’s first 154 games would be recognized as having established a new record. However, if the player does not hit more than sixty until after his club has played 154 games, there would have to be some distinctive mark in the record books to show that Babe Ruth’s record was set under a 154 game schedule and the total of more than sixty was compiled while a 162 game schedule was in effect.

This was met with strong media backlash. The Sporting News placed it at #15 of the most shameful acts in baseball history and columnist Leonard Koppett called the decision "a remarkably foolish thing". The negative reaction was certainly magnified by the fact that this was occurring in the first year of the extended schedule and the first year after the expansion.

The prevailing wisdom at the time said the decision was prompted by Frick's loyalty to Ruth which could be traced back to Frick's days as a newspaper man. Frick had ghostwritten for Ruth in the past, allowing Ruth to "cover" every world series from 1921-1936 and wrote glowing columns about him in the New York Evening Journal.

[Ed. Note: I leaned pretty heavily on an artcile by John Carvalho called "Haunted by the Babe: Frick's Columns About Ruth". The above links don't do it justice, so you can access the PDF here.]

Personally, I can't understand why this was such a big deal. Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in 154 games. The tag of "single season" is arbitrary. It should have to be broken in the same amount of games. I guess people at the time felt like by keeping two separate sets of records, baseball was divorcing itself from it's storied past.

The alternative they chose, however, diluted the Babe's most prized record, and allowed for it to be broken during a longer season against weaker competition.

Aside from his boorish persona, Maris just wasn't a truly great player (see to the right). He had an extremely sharp career peak, winning back to back AL MVPs with the Yankees, but only made two All-Star games outside of those two seasons. Legendary second baseman Rogers Hornsby said at the time, "It would be a disappointment if Ruth's home run record were bested by a .270 hitter."

Maris had 59 HR after 154 games and hit his 61st on the last day of the season in the home half of the fourth inning against the Red Sox.

Due in no small way to the controversey surrounding his quest for 61, Maris was heckled and even had objects thrown at hit on the field. He said he received hate mail, death threats and claimed his hair fell out "in clumps" as the season progressed.

Despite breaking one of the most hallowed sports records of all time, Maris remained sour about the experience. During an interview at the 1980 All-Star game, he said:

They acted as though I was doing something wrong, poisoning the record books or something. Do you know what I have to show for 61 home runs? Nothing. Exactly nothing.

Maris was a victim of our casting. Despite the fact that sports are unscripted, we still expect the right characters to come out on top. Mickey Mantle was the former farmhand, Yankee legend, the Hall of Famer, the rags to riches story from Oklahoma. He partied with the rat pack, Joe D. and Marylin Monroe, and had the key to the city. Maris was the ostracized Kansas City transplant, but primarily on the strength on his 1961 season, Maris has his spot in Monument Park as well.

[Ed Note: 61* is a pretty good movie despite having Billy Crystal's annoying fingerprints all over it.]