A consumer’s guide to the best and...

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

What: Roger Maris on the Net.

He’s in the news every day now, mentioned every time Mark McGwire or Ken Griffey Jr. or Tino Martinez hits a home run and inches closer to his 36-year-old single-season home run record.

Yet, on the Internet, as he was for most of his playing career, the late Roger Maris is overlooked.

He pops up on a few sites where memorabilia is being hawked; there’s a black-and-white sketch of the Yankee slugger available for $750. But in you’re looking for insight into the tortured soul who broke Babe Ruth’s record and then was haunted by it the rest of his life, a scan of the Net will leave you half-suspecting Ford Frick of policing Maris websites from the grave.

Frick was the baseball commissioner who attached an asterisk to Maris’ record of 61 home runs in 1961 because Maris needed 162 games to break Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in an 154-game season in 1927. An asterisk is a tiny speck of punctuation, but it effectively overshadowed Maris’ achievement for decades.

That point is noted, ever briefly, in one Maris site (members.aol.com/wellcomein/Roger/Maris.html). The page features a single biographical paragraph on Maris along with three small black-and-white images of Maris in various poses. Most telling is a locker room shot of Maris, feeling the strain of his thankless pursuit of Ruth, clasping a hand over his eyes, as if he couldn’t bear to see what awaited him next.

The best feature of the site is an audio call of Maris striking his 61st home run on the last day of the 1961 season against Boston Red Sox pitcher Tracy Stallard.

The only other Maris link of note is provided by Total Baseball Online (www.totalbaseball.com). There, an reasonably comprehensive biography can be found, along with mug shot and career statistics. Decidedly low-tech in presentation, but at least the information digs deeper than the obvious.

Maris’ entry begins: “No record ever hung around a player’s neck more like an albatross than Roger Maris’s 61 homers in 1961. As late as the 1980 All-Star Game he fumed, ‘They acted as though I was doing something wrong, poisoning the record books or something. Do you know what I have to show for 61 home runs? Nothing. Exactly nothing.’ ”

And next to that on the Internet today, recent newsworthiness notwithstanding.