Sunday, January 10, 1999
Maris' Hall hopes gone with Mark
BY TIM SULLIVAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The Roger Maris movement has lost its momentum. The warm wave of nostalgia for the late slugger crested last Sept. 8 with Mark McGwire's 62nd home run.
Once deposed as baseball's single-season home run champion, Maris' marginal case for the Hall of Fame lost most of its remaining relevance. Without the most cherished mark in sports, Maris is another guy who had a pretty good career year. He ceases to be an icon and starts to become a trivia question.
That Maris' candidacy for Cooperstown did not survive the screening process for the March 2 vote of the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee might seem a harsh blow on the heels of McGwire's obliteration of his old record. Yet the issue here is not timing, but timelessness. Enduring greatness requires more than empathy, more than short-term excellence.
“Immortality is not a gift,” wrote Edgar Lee Masters. “Immortality is an achievement.”
Simply put, Roger Maris doesn't qualify. He was the American League's Most Valuable Player in 1960, before he hit 61 home runs in 1961, but his lofty peak was followed by a steep decline. He retired with 275 homers, 851 runs batted in and a .260 batting average — career numbers decidedly short of Hall of Fame standards.
Colavito trumps Maris
Compared to his right field contemporaries, Maris barely rates a mention with Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente, and his credentials are also inferior to those of Tony Oliva and Rocky Colavito. Neither Oliva nor Colavito has come close to Cooperstown. If not for 1961, neither would Maris.
“One of the most dependable patterns in Hall of Fame voting,” says Bill James, the celebrated baseball numbers cruncher, “is that players who have big seasons are much more likely to be selected than are players of equal overall accomplishment, but greater consistency.”
In his book, The Politics Of Glory , James points out startling statistical similarities between Maris and Minnesota outfielder Bob Allison. Allison's highest Hall of Fame vote total was zero.
Bobby Bonds was a more productive player than Roger Maris. So, too, was Dave Parker. Babe Herman and Carl Furillo have at least as strong a claim to Cooperstown. The list of outfielders with more lifetime homers than Maris would include such low-level luminaries as Frank Howard, Dave Kingman, George Foster, Don Baylor, Willie Horton, Roy Sievers, Reggie Smith and Greg Luzinski.
Sports measures careers
Career achievement cannot always be measured by cumulative numbers, of course. Orson Welles would have been considered a colossus of his craft had he never directed after Citizen Kane. The genius of John Keats and Wolfgang Mozart could not be concealed by their relatively short runs.
Yet the standard in sports has always been sustained brilliance. A single knockout can be rationalized as a lucky punch. A breakthrough season is often disparaged as a “contract year.” The athlete who reaches a historic milestone is expected to approach it again before his victory is fully validated.
The year after Roger Maris struck 61 homers, he hit only 33. This was a fine season by normal standards, but it marked the last time Maris would hit 30 homers or drive in more than 71 runs. Burdened by injuries and expectations, he finished his career in St. Louis, hitting singles.
“I never wanted all this hoopla,” Maris said in 1961. “All I wanted is to be a good ballplayer, hit 25 or 30 homers, drive in around a hundred runs, hit .280 and help my club win pennants. I just wanted to be one of the guys, an average player having a good season.”
Roger Maris was a lot better than average. But better than average doesn't make the cut at Cooperstown.
Enquirer columnist Tim Sullivan welcomes your E-mail at tsullivan@enquirer.com.
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