Maris & Mantle

Product Description

THE M&M BOYS: A PROFILE IN CIVILITY is how presidential historian Michael Beschloss described them more than half a century later, harkening back to a golden age in baseball and America that Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle helped define every bit as much as John F. Kennedy.

MARIS & MANTLE: Two Yankees, Immortality and the Age of Camelot is t
he first, epic and true story of the Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle friendship forever intertwined in baseball history thanks to the unforgettable 1961 season, when the two Yankee icons spurred each other to new heights in pursuit of Babe Ruth’s home run record. History has largely overlooked the bond between the two men not as titans of their sport, but as people.

Guided by Tony Castro, bestselling author and foremost chronicler of Mantle, readers will journey into history, from the Yankees’ blockbuster trade for Maris, whose acquisition re-ignited Mantle’s career after a horrendous 1959 season, to the heroics of 1961 and far beyond. This dual biography is a thoroughly researched, emotionally gripping portrait that brings Yankees lore alive.

Few figures in American sports have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Roger Maris. Castro’s biography gives Maris his due and sets the record straight, deftly illustrating that his slugging and baseball greatness were the result of Roger’s countless sacrifices to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. “To repudiate his legacy,” Castro writes, “is, in many ways, to repudiate the modern home run hitter.” Castro’s portrait of Roger is a Maris far more human than we’ve encountered before–from his rise as the son of Eastern European immigrants to his fiery aspirations to beat Yankee fan favorite Mickey Mantle to the most cherished record in all sports.

Review

Like the Arthurian years at Camelot, the Sixties constituted a breakthrough, 

a fleeting moment of glory, a time when a significant little chunk of humanity 

briefly realized its moral potential and flirted with its neurological destiny, 

a collective spiritual awakening that flared brilliantly until the barbaric 
and 

mediocre impulses of the species drew tight once more the curtains of darkness.  

                                   Tom Robbins

From the Author

To be accurate, there never was an asterisk on Roger Maris’ 1961 home run record that surpassed Babe Ruth’s mark that stood for thirty-four years. The notion of an asterisk was a myth created by the country’s sportswriters looking for the simplest explanation of then baseball commissioner Ford Frick’s mid-season ruling that Ruth’s record would have to be broken in the same number of games, 154, that existed in the Babe’s season in 1927. Never mind that those same sportswriters were tripping over themselves in the frenzied reporting that continued on Roger’s chase of the record even after that season’s game 154 came and went. Baseball’s record books, what there was of them, never placed anything remotely resembling an asterisk on what Maris ultimately accomplished in 162 games. The asterisk, though, became part of the game’s mythology, unfortunately misleading many to look upon Roger Maris as some kind of second-class home-run record holder. He was not.

In the years after 1961, that asterisk 
—
 again, an asterisk that never existed 
— haunted Maris and his legacy. When Maris died, the invisible asterisk was a centerpiece of his story and how his legacy was weighed and measured. The fact of the matter is that Ruth and Maris were recognized separately. But with no asterisk anywhere. Just acknowledgment by the Elias Sports Bureau, official record keeper for Major League Baseball, of the Babe as the home run record holder for the 154-game season and Roger as the home run record-holder for the 162-game season. That designation remained in place for three decades. Then in 1991, nearing the 30th anniversary of Maris’ 61-homer