Roger Maris height - How tall is Roger Maris?

Maris' children were in attendance at St. Louis, when Mark McGwire broke his home run mark in September, 1998.

Never lived as the sole single season home run champion. In 1991, Major League Baseball commissioner Fay Vincent removed the controversial asterisk from his single season home run record (61 in 1961), making him the home run champion. The record has since been broken by Mark McGwire (70 home runs in 1998) and Barry Bonds (73 home runs in 2001).

His number 9 was retired by the New York Yankees, in 1984, one of 14 numbers retired by the Yanks.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume One, 1981-1985, pages 545-547. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998.

Without a doubt the most famous baseball player ever to come out of North Dakota, Maris was a talent who was judged unfairly throughout his career because of one glorious season. He came up in the pros with the Cleveland Indians, and was soon dealt to the Kansas City Athletics, but it was his third team, the greatest of them all, the New York Yankees, where he would find fame, infamy and controversy. Sure, Maris nipped Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs by one in 1961, but what most casual baseball fans don't know is that he also won the American League Most Valuable Player award in 1960, and he was arguably the best right fielder in New York Yankee history, so he was far from a one-year wonder.

In 1961 when both he and his more popular teammate Mickey Mantle made the assault on the Babe's record, fans (and Yankee management) preferred Mantle to the reserved Maris to break the mark. When injuries prevented Mantle from reaching the record, Maris did so with the weight of not only the acerbic New York media on him, but the nation as well. Although the media coverage nearly drove him to a nervous breakdown, Maris did tie and break the mark, however was unfairly maligned with an asterisk besides his record because he had taken eight more games to break Ruth's record. This was the decree of then baseball Commissioner Ford Frick, who was Ruth's ghostwriter and one of his best friends. Maris would never really recover from the media onslaught after his record as injuries and perhaps the pressure from the media and fans took a toll on him. He finished his career with the St.

Louis Cardinals, and as a regular helped them to a world championship and two National League pennants in the late 1960s.

Played Major League Baseball for four different teams from 1957 to 1968.