Sal Durante: "I caught Roger Maris' 61st Home Run"
1n 1961, the effort by Roger Maris to break Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs in a single season was THE baseball story in the final weeks of the season. Many were rooting for Maris, but many others wanted to see Ruth's record stand. Maris hit his 61st home run on October 1st, on the last game of the season, but that did not end the controversy. Since Maris played in a 162-game season, and Babe Ruth's 1927 season only had 154 games, fans and supporters of Ruth (which included at the time baseball commissioner Ford Frick) felt that there should be some recognition that Maris had more games to set his record. This became known colloquially and in baseball lore as the "asterisk," though no asterisk ever actually appeared in the record books. The 2001 film 61*, complete with the non-existent asterisk and directed by die-hard Yankees fan Billy Crystal, covers this territory, including the competition between Maris and popular superstar Mickey Mantle (
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) as the season progressed.
Special Guest Rhonda Fleming
This episode has not been reviewed. Information comes from alternate sources. The Secret above is probably not an exact quote.
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