Few baseball players have made as huge an impact on the sport in as little a time as Roger Maris. The young man from the Midwest joined the Yankees in 1960 after several good-but-not-great seasons in Cleveland and Kansas City, promptly slugging 39 home runs with an American League-leading 112 RBI. He came away with the 1960 American League MVP Award, edging out his teammate Mickey Mantle by a mere three points.

     As the 1961 season began, perhaps still stinging from a shocking loss to the Pirates in the 1960 Fall Classic, Mantle and Maris began hitting home runs at a prodigious rate. By the end of May the M&M Boys had a combined 26 round trippers. By September 1st, thanks to a period where Maris clubbed an unprecedented 24 home runs in 38 games, Roger sat on 51 homers while Mantle lurked just behind with 48. While Mantle fell of the record pace by the end of the season, Maris kept cranking moonshots until October 1st, when he finally hit the 61st home run of his 1961 season, becoming the only player in MLB history to surpass the 60 home run plateau. Fittingly, his 61st provided the only run in a 1-0 defeat of the Red Sox, as that five ounce sphere of hide and cork refused to share one iota of the hard-earned spotlight.

     The World Series that season was a mere formality, as the Yankees cruised to the American League pennant with a regular season record of 109-53, bolstered by their MLB-record 240 home runs. They trounced the Cincinnati Reds in five quick games, putting a fitting cap on one of the greatest baseball seasons in the history of the game. Maris won his second consecutive MVP Award, although he would only once more clear the 30 home run mark in a season.

     Although Maris’ star dimmed in his final seasons, he remained a key contributor to several World Series winning teams, claiming titles in ’62 with the Yankees and ’68, in his final MLB season, spent with the Cardinals. The home run king was done at 33, happily riding off into the sunset to live his final years managing a business in sunny Florida. In 15 attempts, Maris was never voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but for a few, brief years, Roger Maris brought joy back to baseball.

     This baseball is a Senior Little League ball manufactured by deBeer and Sons Inc. Maris signed the sweet spot in blue marker. His signature remains exceptionally clear as a testament to the man who signed it. This ball has been encapsulated by Beckett, who have deemed it authentic and graded the signature a NR-MT “8” (0009788902) and a LOA from JSA (Z24406).

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