After a two-year battle with cancer, Roger Maris, who hit 61 home runs in a single season in 1961 to set a major league baseball record, died today. Maris, who was 51 years, died Nov. 20 at MD Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute. He was accompanied by his wife Patricia Ann and six of their children.
Hospital spokeswoman Jane Brust said the former New York Yankees outfielder was being treated for lymphoma. Lymphoma is a cancer that invades the lymphatic system. Baseball is mourning the passing of one of its all-time greats, as commissioner Peter Huberoth put it.
“While we will always remember his brilliant hit on the home run record in 1961, we must also remember his courageous battle against this dread disease over the last two years,” said a baseball writer. Former Yankees teammate Yogi Berra tried to visit Maris on Friday but was turned away due to his illness.
Ralph Hook, the Yankees manager in 1961, said, “It’s a sad night.”He excelled in baseball and was devoted to his family. For him, winning was more important than any kind of personal best.In November 1983, Maris received the news that she had lymphoma. The doctor at the time estimated that five years had passed without detection.
Although Maris reported that his disease went into remission in the spring of 1983, it had returned by August 1984. Although he received experimental cancer treatment in Nashville before moving to Texas that fall, his condition it has gotten worse since then. A blood drive was set up this week in San Diego, home to the MLB Winter Meetings, to collect blood for him.
With his historic home run total, Maris cemented his place in baseball lore by surpassing Babe Ruth’s mark of 60 in 1927. Maris has an asterisk next to his name in the baseball history books because of the roller coaster of emotions he experienced during this 1961 season.
Maris hit his home run record on the final day of a season spanning 162 games, while Ruth had set his mark when the teams played 154 games. “As a football player, I’d love to do it again,” Maris said in a magazine article after the 1961 season. “On a personal level, I’m not sure I have what it takes to do it again.”
Maris was born in Hibbing, Minnesota on September 10, 1934. He moved to Fargo, North Dakota when he was ten years old. He first played professional baseball for the Cleveland Indians. Before a Cleveland scout watched him play in summer league in 1953, he was on the verge of accepting a football scholarship to attend the University of Oklahoma.
In 1957, Maris joined the Cleveland Indians after signing with the team. In 1958, he was sent to the Kansas City Athletics. He was traded to the Yankees after the 1959 season and promptly won the AL MVP award in 1960 and 1961.. After the 1966 season, he was dealt again, this time to the St. Louis Cardinals, where he spent his final two years in baseball before retiring.
Those two seasons were “my happiest in baseball,” he said. Maris finished his career with 275 home runs, 851 RBIs and a .260 batting average. He competed in seven World Series and won two with the Yankees (1961, 1962) and three with the Cardinals (1967).
In 1961, Maris got off to a poor start. His home run streak lasted ten games, during which he had just one hit. However, he did hit 15 home runs in the first three weeks of June and finished the month with 27 on the season.
Because the home runs continued into mid-July, Commissioner Ford Frick decided that if Ruth’s record was to be tied or bettered, it would have to be done in 154 games. Fans who said they didn’t want Ruth’s record to be broken wrote hundreds of hate mails to Maris. He should have been a hero,” Yankees owner George Steinbrenner noted.
Having already played in 154 games, Maris hit his 60th and 61st home runs in the final week of the season. Home run number 61 was hit by him at Yankee Stadium against Tracy Stallard of the Boston Red Sox. Maris remarked, “I just wanted to draw the curtains and shut out the wild world I had just been through” after the Yankees won the 1961 World Series in five games over the Cincinnati Reds.
During his time in Gainesville, Florida, Maris worked as a beer distributor and reflected on his career, saying, “If I had the chance to do it over again, I probably wouldn’t. There are times when I question whether the result was worth it or not.”
Funeral services are tentatively scheduled for Thursday at St. Mary’s (Catholic) Cathedral in Fargo, according to Larry Boulger, director of Boulger Funeral Home. Bulger said burial will take place at Holy Cross Cemetery.