Roger Maris was 19 days old when Babe Ruth hit his last home run for the Yankees in 1934. Mari’s career ended decades before Aaron Judge was born in 1992, and he died of cancer more than six years earlier. When Maris was buried on a bitterly cold December day in Fargo, ND, Bobby Richardson delivered the eulogy.
“Roger was quiet, a family man, a wonderful guy,” Richardson, the Yankees’ second baseman for all their World Series games in the 1960s, said by phone last week. “He would be tickled to death that Judge would be the one to break his record. And he would be happy that steroids are not involved at all.”
Judge hit his 61st home run Wednesday in Toronto, surpassing Ruth’s career high and matching Maris’ 1961 mark for the single-season American League record. Judge connected Blue Jays left-hander Tim Mayza with a liner to the left in the seventh inning, a two-barrel shot that broke a tie in an eventual 8-3 Yankees win. Roger Maris Jr., along with Judge’s mother Patty, watched from the front row behind the Yankees dugout along the first baseline at the Rogers Center.
“He should be revered for being the real home run champion of a season,” Maris Jr. told reporters after the game. “He really is when he turns 62 and I think that has to happen. I think baseball needs to look at their records, and I think baseball should do something.
Judge is the first hitter to hit 61 home runs in the two decades that Major League Baseball has tested for performance-enhancing drugs. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa hit 61 homers twice in the late 1990s, and Barry Bonds hit 73 homers in 2001.
Judge’s feat brings at least one number with deep historical roots back to the Yankees, a franchise he honored with all the qualities Yankee fans love — pride, professionalism, and respect for tradition.
“I came back for a vintage game, I was standing around the batting cage, and he came up to me and said, ‘Rich, I’m glad you’re still doing well enough to experience this and be a part of it to be it,” said Richardson, 87, who still lives in his hometown of Sumter, SC. “I looked straight at him.”
Richardson, who is 5-foot-9, never had his number retired by the Yankees like Maris did for his number 9. But the Yankees held a day to honor Richardson before his retirement in late 1966, a miserable year that saw the team finish bottom for the first time since 1912.
It was also the last Yankees season for Maris, who hit just 13 home runs on his injury-damaged pinstriped departure. The Yankees didn’t keep a tag for Maris this year that they would trade to St. Louis for the offseason, but Maris took the time to commission a personalized gift for his friend.
“Roger gave me a gold watch on his own,” Richardson said. “He had a friend who was a jeweler and had it made. It didn’t have a 1-2-3-4 on the front; it had my #1 all around.”
The game on Richardson’s day — a Saturday afternoon that saw the Yankees lead 26 1/2 games in first place — drew a crowd similar to that of Maris’ record-breaking game on a Sunday five years ago. It was Maris’ fourth game after hitting his 60th homer and the meager attendance is hard to fathom today.
Maris took time off against Baltimore on September 27, 1961, shortly after tying up Ruth. Only about 7,500 people showed up that afternoon, and tickets for the finals weekend’s three-game series against Boston were scarcely in demand.
Those games, all of which Maris was one shot away from beating Ruth’s record, drew 21,485 on Friday, 19,061 on Saturday and 23,154 on Sunday. The pennant race was over at that point — the Yankees would host Cincinnati in Wednesday’s World Series opener — and as any Yankees fan knows, there were doubts about the legitimacy of the record.
MLB Commissioner Ford C. Frick infamously declared in July that if a batsman went more than 154 games to eclipse Ruth, the total would be appended with a “distinctive mark in the record books.” An asterisk symbolized the threat but was never actually applied.
Maris hit 61 homers in a 162-game slate that had never been used before. It was reasonable to assume that others would also overtake Ruth as the majors continued to expand and presumably the quality of pitching declined.
Yet Mari’s 61 stood longer than Ruth’s 60, which happened 34 years earlier. Maris reigned at the top of the single season chart for 37 years until 1998 when McGwire and then Sosa toppled him. McGwire finished the season with 70 home runs, four ahead of Sosa, and his last one was auctioned for a record $3 million to comic book creator and toy company executive Todd McFarlane.
We may never know the value of Judges 61st. It crashed off the back wall of the Blue Jays’ bullpen and was recovered with a bounce by trainer Matt Buschmann. Yankees Auxiliary Zack Britton then retrieved the ball for Judgewho gave it to his mother Patty.
When Maris connected with a drive to the right from Boston’s Tracy Stallard, the memory madness was far away. The idea of paying for a milestone ball was so unusual that it was big news when Sam Gordon, a Sacramento restaurant owner, offered to buy the ball for $5,000 from whoever happened to catch it.
That included the players who were woefully underpaid at the time. Some Yankees, like future Hall of Fame pitcher Whitey Ford, attempted to position themselves strategically.
“Roger was hitting a lot of home runs in the Yankee bullpen this year, so we figured we had as good a chance as anyone of catching the ball,” wrote Ford, who won the Cy Young Award that season while earning just $36,000 , in “Slick,” his memoir with Phil Pepe. “After all, five grand was five grand.”
Instead, the 61st homer found its way to Sal Durante, a 19-year-old Brooklyn fan who spontaneously caught him in the stands. Durante said he wanted to return the ball to Maris, but Maris insisted he keep it and demanded the reward.
“What do you think of this kid?” Maris told Boston catcher Russ Nixon later in the game, as reported in The Times. “The boy is planning to get married and he can use the money, but he still wanted to give me the ball back for free. It shows that there are still a few good people in this world after all.”
As Richardson recalls, Maris didn’t care too much about the record at the time; the 154-game mark was still surpassed, and the relentless scrutiny of the chase had so upset Maris that he lost a few hairs towards the end of that season. It was only later, Richardson said, that Maris appreciated the majesty of his performance.
Maris was only 27 in 1961, and the 61st homer was the 158th of his career. For the 30-year-old judge, his 61st career home run was No. 219, and with the long-term contract he’s sure to land as a free agent this winter, he’ll almost certainly cruise past Maris’ 275 total.
So the Judge’s legacy may encompass much more than the records he now shares. For Maris, however, there is no doubt about the majesty and importance of 61. His diamond-shaped tombstone in Fargo has an image of Maris engraved mid-swing: 61 above his club, ’61 below.