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ESPN's 'Roger
Maris' Goes Yard
Documentary Shows Human Side of Former Single-Season
Home Run Champ
By Randy
Williams
Roger Maris
hit 61 home runs in a season, won the American League Most Valuable
Player award twice and ended his career with the St. Louis Cardinals.
Most casual fans know these facts but even most serious fans
don't know Roger Maris.
ESPN Classic's "Roger Maris: Reluctant Hero," tries to bridge that
gap with an hour documentary about the late slugger's life.The
program is well done and all-encompassing, weaving a tale from
his Sept. 10,1934, birth in Hibbings, Minn., to his Dec. 12,1985,
death in Houson.
Classic Sports did a very nice job of interviewing a broad range
of people during the program - family, friends, reporters, teammates
and managers - and tying them together to present a more distinct
picture of Maris. The story wasn't sugar-coated by producers Ron
Yassen and Ouisie Shapiro as some of those interviewed criticized
Maris though most were complimentary.
Childhood friend Dick Savageau said Maris was a "very confident"
kid who knew he was going to be a major league player by the time
he was a high school senior. By 1957 he was with Cleveland, signed
by Hank Greenberg, ironically the last man to challenge Ruth's mark,
with 58 home runs in 1938. He was traded to Kansas City after a
feud with general manager Frank Lane and the A's sent him to the
Yankees after the 1959 season.
Despite making the all-star team in 1959, Savageau said Maris was
reluctant to go to New York because he was "worried about fitting
in on a team full of stars." In footage from a 1978 interview, Maris
disclosed that it was an "Insecurity-type thing. With so many great
players I knew I had to come up and do a great job."
After an injury sidelined Mantle late in 1961, Maris was left to
attack Babe Ruth's record by himself. Now, instead of chasing Mantle,
a modern New York icon, Maris was chasing "the memory of a dead
hero," as Maris biographer Maury Allen put it in "Reluctant
Hero." Teammates and reporters testified on Classic Sports that
everyone was rooting for Mantle to break the record. So, when Mantle
dropped out of the race, a lot of people turned on Maris, preferring
that a "true Yankee," like Ruth, keep the record.
The pressure Maris faced was compounded by a ruling by Commissioner
Ford Frick. Frick, a friend of Ruth's, declared that whoever broke
the record would have to do so in 154 games, the number of contests
on the schedule when Ruth set the mark in 1927. Frick was lambasted
for the move but it was columnist Dick Young who initially
suggested that Frick place an asterisk by any record that occurred
after 154 games, the program says.
Steve Hirdt, vice president, of the Elias Sports Bureau said the
move was "unprecedented," as the rules weren't changed after Ned
Williamson set the record with 27 long balls in 112 games in 1884.
Thankfully in the early 1990s, commissioner Fay Vincent spearheaded
a movement that resulted in Maris being declared the sole single-season
home run champion.
That the idea sprung from the mind of a newspaperman wasn't a surprise.
Maris never had a great relationship with the press and much
of this stemmed from the unfair treatment he felt he received in
that record season. In an interview after his playing career, Maris
said "When I came to town with the Kansas City ballclub (as a young
player), I wondered why the Yankee people were on Mickey's back.
I found out later on I was to sort of accumulate this role from
Mickey."
Mantle wasn't completely comfortable in the spotlight but he was
certainly more adept at handling the media than Maris. Whitey Herzog,
a former teammate of Maris in Kansas City, explained that Maris
didn't dislike people but just took time to warm up to strangers.
He described Maris as like a carp fish, "which like to look at bait
a long time before he'll go for it."
"Reluctant Hero's" most interesting angle on the Maris-press relationship
came from Newsday's Steve Jacobson, who said the growth of television
changed the attitudes of newspapers. He explained that papers,
seeking to combat the popularity of television, decided that they
must not only report about the game but "an effort had to be
made to delve into what the athlete was thinking and what his response
was."
In the days of Ruth, Jacobson said, writers wrote about what happened
at the park and nothing else. Perhaps this has something to do with
how Ruth, a man with infinitely more bad habits than Maris, was
viewed as a man who could do no wrong while Maris, a family man,
was treated like a pariah.
The show provided good examples of the newspapers' brazen attitude
with reports that one scribe asked Maris, "When you're on the road,
do you fool around (on your wife)?" Think a writer today would
dare ask that of Mark McGwire?
But the harshest articles written about Roger Maris were
a series by Jimmy Cannon, who was irked that Maris missed
an appointment with him, and a piece by UPI's Oscar Fraley,
who thought Maris had snubbed a child asking for an autograph.
Cannon ripped Maris in 1962 for purportedly snubbing him, calling
him "the whiner" and accusing him of "treacherous smallness," "lingering
rudeness," and "self-worship." Also that spring, Fraley called
him a one-year wonder and a "zero."
Some of his former teammates didn't agree. According to Bob Costas,
Mantle was so broken up by Maris' death that he said "Roger
was a better person than me...a better family man than me. If anyone
went early, I should have been the guy."
Former second baseman Bobby Richardson, a teammate of Maris with
the Yankees, said "He was the most reserved, quiet individual I
think I ever knew. And so I think the press portrayal was not
the real Roger Maris."
ESPN Classic, on the other hand, does an excellent job of educating
us about "the real Roger Maris," showing that the measure of
a man is much more than a number in the record book or his status
.
Thank You, Thank You: When I tuned in for the show, I feared
I'd be in for a commercial-filled episode like ESPN Classic's documentary
about the history of the NFL on television. Thankfully, the ads
were kept to a bare minimum, making the show much more enjoyable
than the NFL program.
What about this: I've read several stories that talked about
how the Maris family changed the spelling of its name from Maras
when Roger was 18. Nothing about this in the documentary.
Kudos to: Producers Ron Yassen and Ouisie Shapiro for a
job very well done.
It would have been interesting: To find out what current players
know and/or think about Roger Maris. What does his legacy mean to
those in the modern era?
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