Books in Brief: Sixty-One: The Team, the Record, the Men

Sixty-One: The Team, the Record, the Men, by Tony Kubek and Terry Pluto (Macmillan, 269 pp., $19.95)

There was nothing surprising about the New York Yankees’ winning another pennant in 1961, but it was still a most remarkable season for two reasons: 1) the powerhouse Yankee lineup, regarded by some as the greatest in history, set the current record for team home runs (240); and 2) Roger Maris hit 61 of those Yankee homers to break Babe Ruth’s longstanding and hallowed mark of 60. This slightly belated 25th anniversary salute by the ’61 Yankees’ shortstop, Tony Kubek, continues the neo-appreciation of Maris’s feat, which is finally becoming widely recognized as one of the greatest achievements in all of sports history. Although Kubek’s interviews with his former teammates in the last third of the book effectively delineate each man’s contributions to the team’s success and update their lives since the big year, the overall emphasis is on Maris, whose big year was actually a hellish ordeal, enflamed by controversy. For most of the season Maris and Mickey Mantle chased the Babe—injuries dropped the Mick out of the derby near the end—and many people, including the Yankee players, wanted the golden boy, Mantle (who had been with the team much longer than Maris), to be the one to knock off Ruth, if anybody was going to. Commissioner Ford Frick’s infamous asterisk decision turned up the pressure and touched off a giant controversy in the press (involving comparisons between Ruth and Maris as ballplayers and men and between all facets of baseball in the Twenties and Sixties) that degenerated into the questioning of whether the quiet Maris even had the right to challenge the legendary and beloved Ruth. Even though Maris was the consummate team player and never put his pursuit of the record ahead of the good of the team, the more vicious sportswriters gloated when Maris, despite a valiant effort in game 154, did indeed fail to set a new record within Frick’s time frame. Yet, if anything, the pressure from a swarming, badgering, insensitive, and often hostile press intensified over the Yankees’ remaining eight games, and Kubek’s book clearly shows that Maris’s ability to hit two more homers (number 61 on the last day of the season) in the face of such pressure was nothing short of heroic. The book also makes us feel the sadness of the hero never returning to Yankee Stadium on Old Timers’ Day until he was dying of cancer, for fear of being booed, as he was so many times during 1961, when he had the temerity to do his job to the best of his ability, better than any other man in baseball history.

Sixty-One: The Team, the Record, the Men, by Tony Kubek and Terry Pluto (Macmillan, 269 pp., $19.95)

There was nothing surprising about the New York Yankees’ winning another pennant in 1961, but it was still a most remarkable season for two reasons: 1) the powerhouse Yankee lineup, regarded by some as the greatest in history, set the current record for team home runs (240); and 2) Roger Maris hit 61 of those Yankee homers to break Babe Ruth’s longstanding and hallowed mark of 60. This slightly belated 25th anniversary salute by the ’61 Yankees’ shortstop, Tony Kubek, continues the neo-appreciation of Maris’s feat, which is finally becoming widely recognized as one of the greatest achievements in all of sports history. Although Kubek’s interviews with his former teammates in the last third of the book effectively delineate each man’s contributions to the team’s success and update their lives since the big year, the overall emphasis is on Maris, whose big year was actually a hellish ordeal, enflamed by controversy. For most of the season Maris and Mickey Mantle chased the Babe—injuries dropped the Mick out of the derby near the end—and many people, including the Yankee players, wanted the golden boy, Mantle (who had been with the team much longer than Maris), to be the one to knock off Ruth, if anybody was going to. Commissioner Ford Frick’s infamous asterisk decision turned up the pressure and touched off a giant controversy in the press (involving comparisons between Ruth and Maris as ballplayers and men and between all facets of baseball in the Twenties and Sixties) that degenerated into the questioning of whether the quiet Maris even had the right to challenge the legendary and beloved Ruth. Even though Maris was the consummate team player and never put his pursuit of the record ahead of the good of the team, the more vicious sportswriters gloated when Maris, despite a valiant effort in game 154, did indeed fail to set a new record within Frick’s time frame. Yet, if anything, the pressure from a swarming, badgering, insensitive, and often hostile press intensified over the Yankees’ remaining eight games, and Kubek’s book clearly shows that Maris’s ability to hit two more homers (number 61 on the last day of the season) in the face of such pressure was nothing short of heroic. The book also makes us feel the sadness of the hero never returning to Yankee Stadium on Old Timers’ Day until he was dying of cancer, for fear of being booed, as he was so many times during 1961, when he had the temerity to do his job to the best of his ability, better than any other man in baseball history.