Spring training is in full swing and that ever hopeful time of year reminds me that baseball, above all other sports in the United States, is kept alive more by the stories told from generation to generation than by the endless string of spectacular plays broadcast over sports media.
So, gather around kids. Pull up a chair and let your old Uncle Daniel tell you about the time he saw the great Willie Mays play.
I was only fortunate enough to go to two baseball games when I was a boy. Someday, I will tell you the story of Sudden Sam. Today, let me tell you about the June night I spent in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park in 1967.
Now, June 16, 1967 dawned a sultry summer day in Hayward, California (my hometown during the Summer of Love). This, of course, meant that spending the evening in Candlestick Park would be the rough equivalent of huddling between sundry tractor parts in Sarah Palin’s backyard on the coldest night of the Alaskan winter.
My brother and I watched the various degrees of frostbite work their way up our fingers as the San Francisco Giants took the field against the eventual 1967 World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals.
The “Stick” was known for two unique points of interest. First was “heart attack hill,” a steep rise leading into the stadium that had been known to kill the weak of heart. The second was the fact that it pointed toward the world’s largest swamp cooler, the Pacific Ocean and, at any point after five in the afternoon, it was subject to swirling arctic winds that could take several layers of skin off your face at a blast.
As my brother and I crouched between the seats, whimpering softly, my dad asked one of the folks in our party for a pair of binoculars. He held the binoculars up for us saying, “I want you boys to look at that player down there, the one coming up to bat. I want you to be able to tell your grandkids that you saw Willie Mays, the greatest player to ever play the game of baseball.”
We were in the very top row of the stadium. So, the players looked as if they might be in another county and I scanned the field looking in earnest for the greatest player to ever play the game.
“You know,” my father continued, “if anyone is going to beat Babe Ruth’s home run record, it’s going to be that man.”
Another person in our party noted, “Hey, you should have them check out Roger Maris. He’s playing for the Cards and he already broke Ruth’s single season home run record.”
The immediate and ferociously stated reply from some unremembered fan sitting nearby exploded at us like a curse.
“Maris? Are you kidding? He only broke that record because the season was longer. He’s nothing. He’s never done anything else.”
And, that, my friends, is half of everything you need to know about Roger Maris.
On a cold summer night, three thousand miles and a lifetime of social upheaval away from the stadium of his greatest triumphs, Roger Maris was still the unwanted pretender to the throne. His was a name to mutter with disdain---not really a Yankee, a Kansas City Athletic who got lucky that Mickey Mantle could not complete the 1961 baseball season and show him for the fraud he was.
But, that, as I said, was only half the story.
The other half revolves around why Maris was wearing a Cards uniform. We expect old has been pretenders to end their careers in another team’s uniform. But, Maris ended his in the uniform of the dominant National League team of its day.
In fact, Roger Maris holds a unique distinction, a record all to himself. During the decade of the 1960s, he played in more World Series than any other player in baseball. 1960-1964, he played in five with the Yankees. 1967-1968, he played in two with the Cardinals.
In recalling the 1967 season, more than one Cardinal has made the comment that “it seemed like we always started the game one run ahead . . . Brock would get on first, steal second, Flood would move him to third and Maris would drive him in with a long fly ball . . . one up before the game even began.”
In baseball’s age of the pitcher, a 1-0 lead was a formidable advantage. Roger Maris was an integral part of that advantage.
For the record, the Cards were even better on that cold June evening in 1967. St. Louis jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first inning. Of course, Roger Maris led the scoring (you don’t think I’d be telling this story if he didn’t).
As the game got underway, Lou Brock and Curt Flood struck out. Maris doubled to left field. Orlando Cepeda walked. Tim McCarver moved the runners over with a single. And, Mike Shannon singled to bring Maris in for the first run of the evening.
The Cards ran up three more runs before the inning was over. The game remained 4-0 until the fifth inning. As if to prove the old Cardinal memories true, Brock opened the fifth with a walk. Flood moved him to second with a ground out. Maris drove Brock in with a single.
Roger the pretender was instrumental in every Cardinals score that frigid evening. That is one reason why the Cardinals had traded for the aging right fielder. With a dominant pitching staff in the era of the pitcher, the Cardinals needed a player who could threaten teams with power and move players around the bases, even when he was not hitting home runs.
More than that, the Cards needed the sort of player who knew what it was like to play in five World Series and who knew what had to be done (and would willingly do it) to help another team make it to two more. The team’s leadership knew the only other thing you ever need to know about Roger Maris.
All right, put those chairs back where you found them and you kids keep out of trouble today. Story time’s over. Don’t mess with the cat.
Oh, and as you watch the latest highlights on ESPN tonight, remember this, the moral of this too-long story.
Be careful what you wish for, sports fans. If you wish for your team to have the latest, flashiest, sexiest, Kardashian-dating star, that is what you will get. You’ll have a great time watching him on the nightly highlights. Beyond that, good luck.
Roger Maris was not a flashy sexy star. But, without a single dose of HGH, smoking Camel cigarettes like a chimney, Maris was exactly what the Cardinals needed most in those near-forgotten summer days of 1967.
Roger Maris was a winner.
And, that’s everything you ever needed to know about Roger Maris.
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