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Roger Maris was an outstanding athlete and family man
PAT KINNEY,
pat.kinney@wcfcourier.com | Posted: Monday, August 8, 2011 12:00 pm
Roger Maris was more than a great baseball player. He was a good father, a good husband and a good man.
He also was a hero. He's regarded as more of one now than in 1961 when he broke Babe Ruth's single season home run record.
In fact, his attack on Ruth's record, in the face of withering public criticism that would have taken the measure of most men, was possibly the single greatest display of courage in the history of Major League Baseball, next to Jackie Robinson breaking the color line.
The drama of that year, and the character of Maris the man, is aptly and poignantly captured in Tom Clavin and Danny Peary's biography of this plain-spoken and gallant human being.
Despite a rough-and-tumble family life growing up in North Dakota, Maris became an outstanding multisport athlete and earned a shot at the majors. He also married his high school sweetheart and they started a family. Maris gave baseball his all but saw it primarily as a way to provide for his family, explaining why he was such a fierce competitor.
He came to the New York Yankees in 1960, won the American League's Most Valuable Player award and put the team back in the World Series. Yet to the fans and press he was considered an outsider, not a "true Yankee," having played for other teams first.
So when he and Mickey Mantle went after Ruth's record in 1961, it was the home-grown Mantle who was the crowd's favorite, if Ruth's record had to fall. But to Mantle and his teammates, Maris was every bit a Yankee.
The book devotes several chapters to that pressure-filled season and all that Maris endured. It also talks about the peace he found in his final playing years with the St. Louis Cardinals and subsequent business success. He eventually got the recognition he deserved from a new Yankee owner, George M. Steinbrenner III.
When Maris died in 1985, Mantle said he wished he'd have gone first because Maris was a better family man.
In 12 years, Maris won two MVP awards, multiple All-Star selections and a Gold Glove and helped lead his teams to seven league titles and three world championships. He was one of the two best players on one of greatest teams of all time, the 1961 Yankees. Perhaps this book will finally put him where he belongs --- in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
