For This Argument, It’s Roger, Over and Out

Regarding Arnold Regardie’s letter [May 5], I’m sorry, Mr. Regardie, but journeymen ballplayers don’t hit 33 home runs, much less 39 or 61. Journeymen aren’t voted the league’s MVP in consecutive years; they don’t drive in 100 runs three years in a row, peaking at 142, and they don’t help their teams reach the World Series seven years out of nine. (Although Scott Brosius could prove to be the exception to that one.)

Some journeymen hit a home run in their very first World Series at-bat, and Roger Maris did that too. But that’s where the comparison ends.

During his career, Roger Maris was one of the best defensive outfielders in the majors. In All-Star games when he wasn’t in right field, he was in center. And mostly what he was was a winner.

Whatever it is that any of us does, if we were to start doing it with the class exhibited by Roger Maris, the people around us would notice the improvement. ‘Nuff said.

Gene Miller

Huntington Beach

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Arnold Regardie’s belittling of Roger Maris was as clueless as it was classless. Regardie says, “Maris was a journeyman outfielder who found lightning in a bottle that one year, mainly because he was lucky enough to have [Mickey] Mantle batting behind him in the Yankee lineup. However more good pitches he got to hit for that reason we’ll never know.”

Fact is that Roger Maris was one of the best outfielders of his day, also blessed with an excellent arm. As for “good pitches,” well, Mantle played 18 years with the Yankees during some of their greatest years and no other Mantle-protected hitters produced like Maris. What we do know is that from 1958 through 1964, Roger Maris was one of the finest baseball players in the game, a terrific outfielder and a gamer with great power whose only shortcoming was that he did not hit for a high average.

What we truly don’t know is just what Maris may have done had his career not been cut short by a serious hand injury suffered in 1965. He was never the same after that. Maris belongs in the Hall of Fame, no matter how many petty whiners whose daddies preferred Mantle or others try to belittle his terrific career.

Kevin Turley

Valley Glen