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The M&M boys would still fire up their bats over the next few years, creating bursts of home run power and RBIs here and there. But their respective careers would level out some, and after a few years, their life paths would also diverge. As for Maris-Ruth home run comparisons, some baseball historians note that it took Ruth 689 plate appearances (i.e., all at bats) to hit 60 home runs, while Maris hit his 60th after 684 plate appearances. Roger Maris, haunted by Babe Ruth all year, shown at the Babe's monument, then behind Yankee Stadium's center field. Mickey Mantle, frustrated at first base after grounding into a force play during Chicago game, afterwhich he would assess his HR record chances as poor, but he then had an infected hip. On September 14th, after the Yankees had dropped a doubleheader to the Chicago White Sox in Chicago, Mickey Mantle, who had gone hitless in both games, made a surprising statement after the game.
Failing that, and anyone hitting more than 60 during the 162 game schedule would have to carry some special mark or notation indicating that it was done during the longer schedule. Still, as the competition heated up between the M&M boys, the buzz among fans and press was increasingly about one or both of them breaking Ruth’s record. At the first All-Star game break of July (there were two All-Star games played at the time, the second coming in August), Maris was in the lead at 33 home runs with Mantle at 29. In Yankee Stadium on June 11th, Mantle hit an impressive upper deck home run against the Los Angeles Angels in the first inning of a second game doubleheader, giving Mantle the home run lead at 18 – but only momentarily. Two innings later, in the same game, Maris hit his 19th home run, followed by another in the seventh inning, raising his total to 20.
Mantle becomes sixth player to reach 500 home runs
At this point, the combined total of home runs hit by Maris and Mantle, 109, eclipsed the previous record set by a pair of teammates — Ruth and Gehrig at 107 –set back in 1927. Some of the media had also fabricated a rivalry between Maris and Mantle that didn’t exist. That was obviously good for selling newspapers and gaining TV share, but it wasn’t true. Mantle and Maris, along with Bob Cerv, a Yankee friend of Maris’s, lived together in a Queens apartment for most of the 1961 season. Maris and Cerv had in effect, rescued Mantle from his more freewheeling lifestyle and Times Square hangovers, when he lived downtown at the St. Moritz hotel.
The heavy winds from nearby Hurricane Esther denied him his 59th home run. One reporter angered him by asking, “Do you play around when you’re on the road? ” When Maris went home to meet his new son, Randy — born on Aug. 21, one day before his father hit his 50th home run — a Kansas City newspaper printed their home address, attracting fans seeking autographs. Mantle hit his 53rd home run on Sept. 10, then went nearly two weeks before hitting his final one of the season.
Chicago – Pitcher: Billy Pierce, Chicago White Sox –
Inside the magazine, a several-page story featured Mantle and Maris in separate photos, each swinging mightily for the fences. On August 11, Mantle hit his 44 and Maris his 42 in Washington, D.C. Game against the Senators, as the Yankees had won nine in a row. The Yankee win streak ended the next day, as they lost to the Senators, but Maris hit his 43rd. By August 13th, with Maris homering twice and Mantle once during a doubleheader with the Senators, the Yankee duo were then tied at 45 home runs a piece and still ahead of Ruth’s pace. Maris was then having a bit of a hitless stretch over some 19 at-bats in six games.
The first main series #7 card not issued to Mantle or a Yankee was to shortstop Orlando Arcia of the Milwaukee Brewers in 2021. Although he was a feared power hitter from either side of the plate and hit more home runs batting left-handed than right, Mantle considered himself a better right-handed hitter. In roughly 25% of his total at-bats he hit .330 right-handed to .281 left. His 372 to-164 home run disparity was due to Mantle having batted left-handed much more often, as the large majority of pitchers are right-handed. Overall, he hit slightly more home runs away than home . Mantle hit .237 with 18 home runs and 54 RBI during his final season in 1968.
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In getting out of DiMaggio's way, Mantle tripped over an exposed drain pipe and severely injured his right knee. This was the first of numerous injuries that plagued his 18-year career with the Yankees. The Yankees were playing a twi-night doubleheader at the re-named Shibe Park in Philadelphia against the Philadelphia Athletics.
Over the course of time, however, Mantle had learned to deal with the New York media and had gained the favor of the press. Maris did not follow suit, and many in the press viewed him as surly. In the 1961 season, the press appeared to view the Yankees as Mantle's team, with Maris often belittled and ostracized as an outsider and not a true Yankee. Mantle was hospitalized with an abscessed hip resulting from a flu shot that he had received late in the season, leaving Maris to break the record . Mantle finished with 54 home runs while leading the American league in runs scored and walks. For the second consecutive year, he narrowly missed winning his third MVP award, finishing four points behind repeat winner Maris.
650 feet (6/11/53,
Mantle, still recovering from his infected hip, made a few appearances in two of the games with one hit. Maris played all five games, went 4 for 19, with a home run and double, scoring 4 runs. October 2, 1961, New York Daily News headlines and photos show Roger Maris coming out of the dugout to tip his hat to Yankee Stadium fans after hitting his 1961 season record 61st home run.
Despite his accolades on the field, Mantle's private life was plagued with tumult and tragedy, including a well-publicized bout with alcoholism that led to his death from liver cancer.
But those present in St. Louis April 28, 1953 acknowledge it as perhaps the longest ball ever hit at the old St. Louis ballpark. Mickey came to the plate in the fifth with the score tied at 3-3 and a man on base. Mickey launched another left-handed homer, this one into the right-field bleachers, a 450-foot blast. The Yankees swept the doubleheader, much in thanks to Mickey and his prodigious home runs.
On the next day at Baltimore, however, Maris hit No. 59. And with that day’s performance, Maris had once again moved into rarefied home run territory – now only the second player in major league history to hit 59 home runs, that also set by Ruth in 1921, six years before he hit 60. By the time the Yankees traveled to Baltimore for a three-game series, September 19-thru-21, Mantle only made one appearance as a pinch hitter. At the Yankees’ next stop in Boston on September 24th, Mantle made a surprise start and also hit his 54th home run – a three-run, first inning blast that helped the Yankees win that game. The next day in Boston, Mantle went hitless, and the day after that he could only play one inning.
In 1964, Mantle hit .303 with 35 home runs and 111 RBIs, and played center field in the All-Star game. In the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 3 of the 1964 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, Mantle hit Barney Schultz's first pitch into the right field stands at Yankee Stadium, which won the game for the Yankees 2–1. The home run was his 16th in a World Series, breaking Babe Ruth's record of 15.
Maris soon went on one of the greatest power surges in history, crushing 24 home runs in 38 games. Hitting in the 3-hole, Maris — who wasn’t issued an intentional walk all season — enjoyed the protection of Mantle at cleanup, following a lineup switch manager Ralph Houk made early that season. After an 18-year career that propelled him into the same star orbit as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, it is understandable that Mantle wasn’t eager to quit. His father had him switch-hitting at age four; baseball was embedded in the fiber of his being, from day one.
The Yankees were already 11 games into the 1961 season before Maris hit his first home run. Mantle had a productive April, but Maris picked up the pace in May, hitting 11. In March 1961, during Mantle’s first spring training season under new Yankee manager Ralph Houk, Mantle blasted a towering home run shot against the Dodgers at their Dodgertown stadium in Vero Beach, Florida.
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