A Word for Roger Maris, and About Baseball

In response to Chasing Babe Ruth: 6 Myths About 1961’s Home Run Race , my friend Mark Barrett wrote me:

Maris’s record never did have the asterisk but was recorded along with Ruth’s 1927 season in the record books. So many variables that changed from 1927 to 1961 that to focus on the number of games is rather silly. Ruth never faced black players, never had to travel to the west coast games, never had to play night games.

And as the Sabermetric folks would point out, the number of games a player plays is a fairly useless statistic. The number of his plate appearances actually tells you something. In that, as you see, Maris actually surpassed Ruth, hitting his home runs in fewer appearances at the plate.

Of course, an asterisk maybe is not a bad idea with Bonds/McGwire/Sosa. Check that, it is still a bad idea. These achievements only have the meaning that we attach to them because of some quality we admire.

For Ruth it was the sheer enormousness of the feat, which was larger than life, like the man himself. Outrageously oversized, quintessentially Roaring 20s. For Maris, it was the recognition of the struggle and the difficulty in reaching such a number under the immense pressure. For the McGwire and Sosa in 1998 it was about two people achieving something great while respecting each other and the history of the game.

Now, of course, we know it was all very, very different. Each of these things are less about baseball and more about the characters we admire. But these are the stories we tell ourselves about the game, while really telling stories about us, and we will tell different stories going forward.

So as much as I’m a devotee of (and, as you can testify,evangelist for) the sabermetric school of thought, the important things still can’t be translated into a spreadsheet or a number. Baseball remains the stories my Dad told me sitting in Yankee Stadium about Mantle and Maris, Chris Chambliss’ pennant-winning Home Run, and watching the ‘62 Mets bumble around at the Polo Grounds. And, God willing, someday I’ll tell my son about Mattingly, Jeter, the great Mariano Rivera, the “old” Yankee Stadium, and the miracle 2011 Pirates.

It’s about the stories we tell ourselves. The story of Roger Maris tells us something about what we would like to be, and the story of Bonds/McGwire/Sosa tells us something about what we are.