In Summer of ‘61, Coverage Didn’t Match Today’s Hysteria

When Roger Maris broke the home run record, one New York newspaper didn’t even put the story on the front page.

There weren’t hundred of reporters. There wasn’t a pack of TV crews.

“Amazingly, nobody showed up and no press showed up,” said Phil Pepe, who covered the game for the New York World-Telegram and The Sun. “It boggles my mind.”

Attendance at Yankee Stadium was just 23,154 on Oct. 1, 1961. Nearly all the reporters at the ballpark that Sunday afternoon were the regulars who followed the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.

“It wasn’t conceived as a major media event,” said Bill Shannon, who was in the press room that day and is now an official scorer and a stringer for The Associated Press. “At the time, it didn’t seem to be as significant as it is.”

Commissioner Ford Frick had announced July 17 that to break Babe Ruth’s record of 60, a player would have to do it within 154 games, the schedule’s length before eight games were added with AL expansion in 1961. Maris got his 61st on the final day of the season.

“Ford Frick cut the legs out of everybody’s enthusiasm by saying it wouldn’t be a record,” recalled Pepe, whose paper didn’t put the story on page one.

If Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa breaks the record, more than 600 reporters are expected at the stadium along with dozens of minicams. National TV coverage has been hastily arranged, and banner headlines will splash across papers in much of the nation.

For Maris, the crush came in game No. 154 in Baltimore.

“Game 154 was the most dramatic game of the season,” said Maury Allen, who covered Maris for Sports Illustrated during the final week of the season. “He had 58, he hits his 59th, he hits two long fly balls but he doesn’t have 60.”

After tying Ruth at 60 with four games left, Maris took a day off.

“By Sunday, the attitude was, ‘Roger doesn’t seem to care,’ which was the general feeling at the ballpark that day,” Allen recalled. “My memory is he wanted it to be over. The tension was so enormous. He was so burned out by then. There was very little joy in the clubhouse after he did it. He was nice. He was friendly. He answered all the routine questions but he basically was totally exhausted.”

Many of the leading writers in New York didn’t go to the final game. Red Smith was in Pittsburgh to write about the Pirates, who won the NL pennant. Arthur Daley also skipped it.

In St. Louis, Maris’ 61st didn’t even make the front page. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch carried a wire-service account in the sports section.

“I don’t remember a single television camera at the game,” Pepe said. “There wasn’t a special room set aside for interviews.”

By Monday afternoon’s papers, Maris was the No. 2 story in New York. The sports headline in the final edition of The World-Telegram and The Sun was: “Mantle doubts he’ll play in Series opener.”

Even if they didn’t treat it as a record, most New York newspapers gave it prominent coverage. The New York Post’s Milton Gross even went around town with Maris that night.

“For 34 years, we’ve been told about Babe Ruth’s health-defying diet of hot dogs, pigs’ knuckles, sour pickles and peanuts,” he wrote in a front-page story. “This is what Roger Maris ate last night after becoming the first man in baseball history to hit 61 home runs in a major league season.

“He had a shrimp cocktail, a steak medium, a mixed salad with French dressing, a baked potato, two glasses of wine, a sliver of cheese cake, two cups of coffee and three cigarettes.

“When he had finished his meal and sat back for a moment to enjoy a smoke, he said: ‘I really needed that. I was starved. That’s the first thing I’ve had in my mouth today.’ ”

There’s an impression these days that Maris was surly. But accounts written at the time show that wasn’t true. It wasn’t until the following spring training, when Jimmy Cannon of the New York-Journal American and Oscar Fraley of United Press International criticized Maris, that he became difficult to deal with.

“His answers weren’t always the greatest,” Pepe said. “He wasn’t great copy. But he was always cooperative. . . . It was like it was a nuisance. He just didn’t want the attention, didn’t know how to deal with it, and wished it would go away.”

Still, Maris answered questions after every game in 1961, often spending hours talking to the Yankees beat writers.

“His usual ritual was to take his shirt off, take his hat off, sit in front of his locker, grab a beer, grab a cigarette and talk,” Pepe said. “Roger got a little testy later on, when they ripped him when he was injured. But not during the home run thing.”