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In September, Maris learned he was missing patches of hair in the back of his head. Maris and Mantle found humor from hurling music records from their balcony. They found amusement from reading newspaper reports of alleged fighting between the teammates and roommates, whose at-bats merited news bulletins. The two-bedroom apartment left an MVP sleeping on the living room couch. Commutes to The Bronx came in Maris’ Oldsmobile convertible. Rollie Sheldon has a photo on the wall of his Missouri home, commemorating his first victory on the mound as a rookie that season.
Failing that, and anyone hitting more than 60 during the 162 game schedule would have to carry some special mark or notation indicating that it was done during the longer schedule. Still, as the competition heated up between the M&M boys, the buzz among fans and press was increasingly about one or both of them breaking Ruth’s record. At the first All-Star game break of July (there were two All-Star games played at the time, the second coming in August), Maris was in the lead at 33 home runs with Mantle at 29. In Yankee Stadium on June 11th, Mantle hit an impressive upper deck home run against the Los Angeles Angels in the first inning of a second game doubleheader, giving Mantle the home run lead at 18 – but only momentarily. Two innings later, in the same game, Maris hit his 19th home run, followed by another in the seventh inning, raising his total to 20.
Mantle becomes sixth player to reach 500 home runs
At this point, the combined total of home runs hit by Maris and Mantle, 109, eclipsed the previous record set by a pair of teammates — Ruth and Gehrig at 107 –set back in 1927. Some of the media had also fabricated a rivalry between Maris and Mantle that didn’t exist. That was obviously good for selling newspapers and gaining TV share, but it wasn’t true. Mantle and Maris, along with Bob Cerv, a Yankee friend of Maris’s, lived together in a Queens apartment for most of the 1961 season. Maris and Cerv had in effect, rescued Mantle from his more freewheeling lifestyle and Times Square hangovers, when he lived downtown at the St. Moritz hotel.
Less than two weeks earlier, he’d gone seven straight games without homering. As the Yankees battled the Orioles in The Bronx, Maris went shopping with his wife in Manhattan. The infamous asterisk was never official, erroneously earning infamy after a question to Frick from sportswriter Dick Young.
Chicago – Pitcher: Billy Pierce, Chicago White Sox –
Inside the magazine, a several-page story featured Mantle and Maris in separate photos, each swinging mightily for the fences. On August 11, Mantle hit his 44 and Maris his 42 in Washington, D.C. Game against the Senators, as the Yankees had won nine in a row. The Yankee win streak ended the next day, as they lost to the Senators, but Maris hit his 43rd. By August 13th, with Maris homering twice and Mantle once during a doubleheader with the Senators, the Yankee duo were then tied at 45 home runs a piece and still ahead of Ruth’s pace. Maris was then having a bit of a hitless stretch over some 19 at-bats in six games.
The first main series #7 card not issued to Mantle or a Yankee was to shortstop Orlando Arcia of the Milwaukee Brewers in 2021. Although he was a feared power hitter from either side of the plate and hit more home runs batting left-handed than right, Mantle considered himself a better right-handed hitter. In roughly 25% of his total at-bats he hit .330 right-handed to .281 left. His 372 to-164 home run disparity was due to Mantle having batted left-handed much more often, as the large majority of pitchers are right-handed. Overall, he hit slightly more home runs away than home . Mantle hit .237 with 18 home runs and 54 RBI during his final season in 1968.
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He was selected an AL All-Star and pinch-hit at the All-Star Game on July 11. Mantle was selected an All-Star every season during his 18-year career except 1951 and 1966, and did not play in the 1952, 1963, and 1965 seasons. After a brief slump, Mantle was sent down to the Yankees' top farm team, the Kansas City Blues. However, he was not able to find the power he once had in the lower minors.
The crowds swell in the summer, when the sun accepts a starring role and baseball is most firmly entrenched in our identities. Tourists come from all over — from the Great Plains, from New York, from the major league city a 3½-hour drive away — to visit the Midwest monument. But after his last two seasons in 1967 and 1968, in which he saw a significant dip in batting average, runs scored, home runs and slugging percentage, a slugger who had once seemed larger than life was starting to seem more human. Red Patterson, the same PR director who measured Mickey's epic Griffith Stadium shot 11 days earlier, also paced off this homer. However, he measured it only from the base of the house the ball struck. That distance is 494 feet, but the ball hit the porch at least 15 feet above the ground.
Mantle, still recovering from his infected hip, made a few appearances in two of the games with one hit. Maris played all five games, went 4 for 19, with a home run and double, scoring 4 runs. October 2, 1961, New York Daily News headlines and photos show Roger Maris coming out of the dugout to tip his hat to Yankee Stadium fans after hitting his 1961 season record 61st home run.
On August 30th and 31st, Mantle got back on track, hitting home runs Nos. 47 and 48 in back-to-back games at Minnesota. Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were much alike on one level, both coming from the Midwest, raised in working class families, with similar high school athletic stardom, and both marrying their high school sweethearts. Yet, in terms of personality and lifestyle, they were quite different. Mantle was more outgoing and gregarious than Maris, and liked being in the limelight.
Paul Borders, a Brooks employee, saw exactly where the ball landed. Susman and fellow researcher Robert Schiewe calculated the distance through Schiewe's use of the Pythagorean Theorem. This is the longest home run to have actually been measured from the point it was hit to the point at which it landed. Although it was measured after the fact, the point of impact was well-known and we believe this distance to be completely reliable. This is the distance the ball traveled in the air from home plate to the place where it landed.
After fouling off a few pitches, he hit a towering home run over the 402-foot sign by the bullpen. During the 1957 World Series, Milwaukee Braves second baseman Red Schoendienst fell on Mantle's left shoulder in a collision at second base. Over the next decade, Mantle experienced increasing difficulty hitting from his left side. In 1950, Mantle was promoted to the Class-C Joplin Miners of the Western Association. Mantle won the Western Association batting title, with a .383 average. He also hit 26 home runs and recorded 136 runs batted in.
A fan favorite, he was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974. His first, in May 1951 against the White Sox, was estimated at 440 feet. Estimates of his longest home run range as high as 700 feet, with stories of tape measures being used to calculate home runs such as a 565-foot home run against the Senators in 1953. Mantle’s most home runs against any team are the 77 he hit against the Athletics. His most as a visitor in another ballpark are the 42 he hit at Briggs Stadium in Detroit, followed by the 38 he hit at Fenway Park.
Roger Maris settled in for a more middling career during the next seven years of his baseball life. Continuing with the Yankees in 1962, Roger Maris hit 33 homers, 100 RBIs, and batted .256. He was also named to the All-Star team for a fourth straight year. In 1963 in 90 games, he hit 23 homers and 53 RBIs as the Yankees won their fourth straight pennant. The following year, Maris had some improvement, hitting .281 with 26 homers and 71 RBIs, meeting the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. Still, as the season began, no one was flatly predicting that either Maris or Mantle, or anyone else, would hit 61 home runs that year.
Comiskey Park,
Mantle was a prized guest at baseball-card shows, commanding fees far in excess of those of any other player for his appearances and autographs. Mantle insisted that the promoters of baseball-card shows always include one of the lesser-known Yankees of his era, such as Moose Skowron or Hank Bauer, so that they could also earn money for their appearances. During the 1961 season, Mantle and teammate Roger Maris, known as the M&M Boys, chased Babe Ruth's 1927 single-season home run record.
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