Last night, Yankee first baseman Mark Teixeira belted a two-run home run to left field off Jason Vargas in the first inning of what would ultimately become a 10-3 drubbing of the hapless Seattle Mariners. It was Tex's 27th blast of the season, tying him with center fielder Curtis Granderson for team lead. Given their lineup protection, favorable ballpark and productive second halves in 2010, both have an outside shot at 50 long balls (they're currently on pace for 44). That would mark the first time in half a century (and just the second time ever) that two teammates joined forces to clobber 50 baseballs out of the park apiece, and it would be an especially impressive accomplishment in a season dominated by pitching.
But even if they both get red hot and launch 23 more home runs apiece over the season's final two months, their achievement still can't stack up to the magical summer of fifty years ago when JFK had just been inaugurated, freedom riders challenged Jim Crow and baseballs were flying out of Yankee Stadium. Just to give you an idea of the kind of season these guys were having, on this day in 1961, Maris had already crushed 40 homers and Mantle would blast his 39th that afternoon at the Stadium against the White Sox.
1961 marked a time of change in baseball. The American League had just expanded, adding the Los Angeles Angels and Washington Senators (your current Texas Rangers) while tacking on eight games to the regular season schedule in order to accommodate them. With the pitching now diluted by the addition of two replacement level staffs, offense was expected to receive a boost and did, with runs per game spiking from 4.39 to 4.53. The M & M Boys feasted off these weaker teams; Mantle socked 16 home runs and Maris drilled 13 against the Angels and Senators. The other Yankees joined the party, too, as the team slammed 240 home runs, a new record that quickly became a footnote to history when Maris shattered a much more significant record; Babe Ruth's hallowed mark of 60 home runs in a single season that had stood for 34 years since it was set in 1927. It had been seriously challenged by Jimmie Foxx and Hank Greenberg, who both whacked 58 home runs during the offense-friendly Great Depression years, and before the season several pundits believed the record could be threatened again.
Mantle himself had been the latest to put 60 in jeopardy when he cranked 52 moon shots just five years earlier, but the Yankees did not concern themselves with such bold predictions, for they came to spring training with a singular goal; winning the 1961 World Series.
New York entered the '61 season a hungry bunch, eager for another crack at the title after losing in heartbreaking fashion on light-hitting Bill Mazeroski's (career .367 slugging percetage) walk-off homer in Game 7 of the 1960 Fall Classic, a series in which they outscored the underdog Pittsburgh Pirates 55 to 27 but came home empty handed. They returned with their roster virtually intact and were favored to run away with the league again, although the talented Detroit Tigers were expected to put up a fight. The fiery Ralph Houk, a former Yankee scrub known as "Major," took over the managerial reigns from 70 year-old Casey Stengel and provided more stability than his inconsistent predecessor.
Roger Maris, a 26 year-old soft spoken farm boy from North Dakota, had been traded from the Kansas City Athletics after the 1959 season and took his game to another level in his first season in the Big Apple. Using a compact swing to pull the bull into short porch in right, Maris enjoyed a torrid start to his Yankee career and finished 1960 with 39 home runs, 112 RBI and a .581 slugging percentage, the latter two figures enough to lead the league and earn him AL MVP honors over Mickey Mantle by the slimmest of margins (a three point difference--talk about a photo finish). A complete ballplayer with a strong arm, Maris firmly established himself as one of the best all-around players in the league without requiring a season to acclimate himself to the pressure and attention that comes with playing in New York. Baseball fans agreed 1960 seemed to be a career year for Maris and wanted to see what he could do for an encore.
Mantle, the reigning AL home run champ fresh off his third 40 homer season in five years, enjoyed a hot beginning to his season. Locked in as the team's cleanup hitter and perhaps trying to prove that he was still the best player in the league, the Commerce Comet jacked seven homers in the season's first two weeks and picked up the slack when Maris slumped. Opposing pitchers began to pitch around him, though, and as a result his pace slowed to eight taters over 38 more spring games. Once Maris started swinging a hot bat in the beginning of the summer, though, the power became contagious and Muscles ripped two dozen home runs, drove in 53 runs and triple slashed a scorching .373/.505/.880 over his next 46 games through July 26th, today's date. The team took off and by then the boo-birds who had jeered him through his first ten seasons, five World Series championships, two MVP awards and 1956 Triple Crown season, the ones who called him "draft-dodger," "coward," and "hick" were silenced by his prodigious display of might. Even better, he had turned his enemies in the stands and press box into full-fledged supporters by joining Maris in the thrilling home run chase. The Yankees were on a roll, too, having won 49 of their last 72 games and on the brink of sweeping the North Siders.
Although he stumbled in the middle of August when he cracked just one home run in a two and a half week period, Mantle entered September needing eleven home runs to tie the Sultan of Swat. He had already hit eleven in June and fourteen in July, so Mickey still had a reasonable chance of breaking the record. After a September 10th doubleheader, a recent hot streak had Mantle sitting on a career high 53 home runs with three weeks left in the season and his chances seemed even better. Unfortunately Mantle came down with the flu and he received a shot in his hip to try to play through it, but his hip abscessed and became infected. After gutting it out for two weeks and falling out of the race by clearing the fences only one more time, he shut it down for the season, leaving Maris behind without his lineup protection to pursue history alone.
Maris, on the other hand, got off to a slow start and seemed to be pressing, perhaps trying to live up to his MVP status. Yankee skipper Ralph Houk tried dropping him from fifth to seventh in the lineup to take some pressure off his struggling star, but Rajah still wasn't hitting. After going 0-4 on May 16th, his average sat at .208 and with just three home runs, he wasn't hitting for power either. Houk cemented him as the number three hitter (where he had been batting sporadically throughout May) ahead of Mickey, and Maris responded by swatting dingers in four consecutive games, the beginning of a ten week tear during which he launched 37 home runs, drove in 84 and slugged .784. He even hit .305 over that 68 game stretch to pull his average up to a more respectable .279. Naturally, he cooled off and only managed to hit one over the fences during the next two weeks, but then made up for lost time with seven in his next six games.
By then it was the middle of August, and Roger was only a dozen short of the Babe's record while Mantle was hot on his tail in the race that had gone back and forth all summer. Fans and reporters made it clear they wanted Mickey, now suddenly deemed a "true yankee" after playing in DiMaggio's shadow throughout the 1950s, to break the record, and some even went so far as to boo Maris in his home park. Rogers Hornsby, arguably the greatest right-handed hitter of all-time and proud owner of a .358 career lifetime batting average (second only to Ty Cobb), told the press it would be a real shame if a .270 hitter like Maris broke the Bambino's record. Roger lacked Mantle's charisma and struggled with the scribes that surrounded his locker after every game, and before long he grew to disdain them. The pressure mounted, the press swarmed him like flies, his hair started falling out in clumps, and his body began to wear down towards the end of a long season. He would only hit .218 the rest of the way, but the homers kept coming; Maris hit three more in August and nine in September to tie Ruth.
And so it came down to the final game of the season. The Yankees, with 108 wins, had long since wrapped up the pennant race and only 23,000 fans showed up at the Stadium for a relatively meaningless afternoon game against a mediocre Boston Red Sox squad featuring 22 year old rookie Carl Yastrzemski in left field. Yaz gloved a Maris liner, a shot that would have been an easy triple or potential inside the park home run, in Death Valley during the first inning. But Maris had hit the ball on the screws, and the crowd was buzzing when he dug in with one out and the bases empty in the fourth inning of a scoreless game. 24 year old Tracy Stallard, making just his fourteenth career start, threw a fastball. Maris swung, connected, and the rest, as they say, is history. Roger's record-breaking shot proved to be the difference, as the Yanks won 1-0 to earn their 109th victory of the season.
The Bronx Bombers would go on to pulverize the Cincinatti Reds in five games without much help from their pair of sluggers. Mantle's hip wound opened up and blood soaked through his pinstripes in Game 2, forcing him out of the series after only six at-bats. Maris, without the Mick's lineup protection once more, recorded just two hits (double and home run) in 23 plate appearances. He earned his first World Series ring, though, and would bring home another MVP trophy even though Mantle had a much better all-around season; he outhit Maris by 48 points, posted an OBP 76 points higher, outslugged him by 67 points and was worth 4.7 more wins above replacement! Yet Maris won; the voters must have been swayed by his more impressive home run and RBI totals. The most telling statistic was that Roger Maris did not receive a single intentional walk in the season he hit 61 homers and knocked in 142 runs; pitchers and managers would rather take their chances with him than face Mantle with a man on first. That just goes to show which bomber was more feared.
Some more food for thought; Mantle was a switch hitter, while Maris was a left-handed slugger. Teixeira is a switch hitter, and Granderson bats lefty. Granderson, like Maris was in '61, is in his second season in pinstripes after coming coming over from a midwestern team (Detroit Tigers in Granderson's case).
In all likelihood, neither Tex nor Grandy hits 50 this season and if anyone does, it's going to be that Jose Bautista guy again. Both strike out a lot and can be really streaky (to be fair, the same was said about Mantle and Maris), but the return of Alex Rodriguez in two weeks should help and I think they'll both clear 40 if they stay healthy. It will be interesting to see how they fare in the MVP race as well, since they've managed to keep New York and its shaky rotation in the division race for much of the year, although at this point Adrian Gonzalez is still the favorite and I can't imagine the award going to someone who doesn't play for the Red Sox.
I just hope they keep it up, because I have both of them (plus 40 HR candidate Mike Stanton and the aforementioned Joey Bats-talk about a loaded lineup) on my fantasy team.
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