Roger Maris

American Catholic History

Noelle & Tom Crowe

History, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Education

5 • 724 Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Roger Maris was a lifelong Catholic. He was born in Minnesota and grew up in North Dakota. He was an excellent athlete, and after breaking into the majors with the Cleveland Indians in 1957, he eventually made it to the New York Yankees, where he broke Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record in 1961. Ruth’s record was one of the most hallowed in baseball, so anyone breaking it was a big deal. But Yankee fans wanted it to be the face of the franchise through the 1950s, the great Mickey Mantle, who broke it. Maris had only been a Yankee for one full season, so he was considered an interloper, usurping what was rightly Mantle’s record. Add to that, the commissioner of baseball, Ford Frick, suggested that if the record were not broken within 154 games (the season was now 162 games), then a mark, like an asterisk, should be added to it in record books. The stress of all of this weighed heavily on Maris. After breaking the record in 1961, he played seven more seasons, most with the Yankees and two with the St. Louis Cardinals, before retiring after the 1968 season. He had his number retired by the Yankees in 1984, but he has not yet been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Roger Maris died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 1985. Maris was never a flashy player, and he was a very private person. His faith, always with him, was similarly private, though the testimony of his teammates and his family indicate that he lived a virtuous life, and cared for those around him.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to American Catholic History, brought to you by the support of listeners like you.
0:11.0	If you like this podcast and would like to support our work, please visit American Catholic
0:16.0	History.org slash support. I'm Noelle Heister Crow. And I'm Tom Crow.
0:21.5	Today, as baseball season begins, we're talking about a Catholic major league baseball player
0:26.9	once again.
0:28.1	This year is the longtime single-season home run king, Roger Maris.
0:32.6	Now, the record books will show that during the 1998 through 2001 seasons, Barry Bonds, Mark
0:38.8	McGuire, Sammy Sosa, all had higher single season totals than Maris. But they all used
0:44.9	performance enhancing drugs. So for my money, Roger Maris still deserves credit for the record.
0:49.3	But it's kind of ironic that there's controversy over those guys surpassing Maris,
0:53.6	given that there was all that controversy over Maris those guys surpassing Maris, given that there
0:54.4	was all that controversy over Maris breaking the previous record. Yes, and some added
0:58.8	texture to this story is the very different ways in which Bonds, Sosa, and McGuire were treated
1:03.3	versus how Maris was treated. Yes, as those three were pursuing baseball immortality,
1:08.3	they were treated with hopeful expectation. The chase was applauded,
1:12.2	and they were basically adored in the press. Maris, on the other hand, had a very, very different
1:17.7	experience. So let's start with Maris's story and give his background. He was born Roger Eugene
1:23.0	Maras, spelled M-A-R-A-S in 1934 in Hibbing, Minnesota.
1:28.7	He was the younger of his parents, two children, both boys.
1:31.9	His parents were Rudy and Connie, and his older brother was Rudolph Jr.
1:35.9	Rudy and Connie were Catholic, and they were the children of immigrants from Croatia and Serbia.
1:40.0	But they were both apparently hot-headed and querulous.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Noelle & Tom Crowe, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Noelle & Tom Crowe and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.