After 30 Years, 61* Might Stand Alone : Baseball: Maris’ home run record won’t need asterisk if statistical committee agrees with commissioner.

The asterisk next to Roger Maris’ 61 home runs will be removed next month if a baseball committee agrees with Commissioner Fay Vincent’s recommendation to drop Babe Ruth’s 60 homers from the record book.

Vincent said Thursday that the eight-man committee for statistical accuracy will meet in early September to consider the issue. The panel, chaired by Vincent, is composed of three baseball officials, a statistician, two reporters and two professors.

“I’m inclined, to the extent there is a single record, to support the single-record thesis, and that is Maris hit more home runs in a season than anyone else,” Vincent said.

The issue was decided by commissioner Ford Frick on July 17, 1961, when Maris had 35 homers and was three weeks ahead of Ruth’s pace. The decision to reconsider the issue, first reported Thursday by Newsday, was somewhat surprising.

“We’ve never looked at it like there was an asterisk,” 32-year-old Roger Maris Jr. said Thursday. “We know what it is. It’s something someone put up there to diminish what he did.”

Maris hit his 61st home run in the Yankees’ final game of the season. It was the first year of the expansion era and the schedule was expanded to 162 games from 154, its length when Ruth hit 60 in 1927.

“If the player does not hit more than 60 until after his club has played 154 games,” Frick said in his ruling of July 17, 1961, “there would have to be some distinctive mark in the record books to show that Babe Ruth’s record was set under a 154-game schedule and the total of more than 60 was compiled while a 162-game schedule was in effect.”

In reality, there is no asterisk in baseball’s two record books, although the three-decade debate usually has referred to an asterisk. Both books list Ruth and Maris’ records next to each other with the notation that Maris hit his 61 in a 162-game schedule.

Charlie Segar, baseball’s secretary-treasurer under Frick, said he would approve of the proposed change.

“I think if Mr. Frick were still around, I think he would have advised taking away the asterisk,” Segar said. “Things have changed so much. As things turned out, I don’t think he would have felt so strongly.”

Frick, who was a friend of Ruth, died in 1978 and Maris died in 1985. Maris was upset with the asterisk and felt teammate Mickey Mantle was more appreciated because he came up through the Yankees’ farm system.

“I didn’t make the schedule,” Maris once said. “And do you know any other records that have been broken since the 162-game schedule that have an asterisk? I don’t.”

Serving with Vincent on the committee are Rich Levin, director of public relations for the commissioner’s office; Michael Bernstein, manager of publishing of Major League Baseball Properties; Seymour Siwoff, general manager of the Elias Sports Bureau; Jack Lang, executive secretary of the Baseball Writers Assn. of America; Joe Durso, a reporter for The New York Times; George Kirsch, professor of history at Manhattan College in New York, and David Voigt, professor of sociology at Albright College in Reading Pa.

Siwoff publishes one of baseball’s two record books and The Sporting News publishes the other.

“If the commissioner feels 30 years later that there’s no necessity for it, we would certainly change it,” Siwoff said. “Now, we’re all smart 30 years later and we can say, ‘What did we need this for?’ There’s nothing wrong with that. I have to give Fay credit.”

Vincent said he got the idea to drop the asterisk from an article written by Roger Angell that appeared in the New Yorker in its May 27 issue.

“I told Rich Levin that I was inclined to do that and to find out what the process was,” Vincent said.

The committee on statistical accuracy was established by the late A. Barlett Giamatti, Vincent’s predecessor.