Number Nine
Roger Maris, #9 (number retired on July 21, 1984)
If you asked the average fan which Yankees players had their single-digit uniform numbers retired by the team, it would likely be Roger Maris who would be the most difficult one for fans to remember. Maris wasn’t in the stratosphere of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Bill Dickey, or Yogi Berra, and wasn’t as notorious as Billy Martin or as recent as Derek Jeter and Joe Torre.
Maris was good, though. He was traded to the Yankees by the Kansas City Athletics in December of 1959. At the time, it often felt like the A’s were a Yankees farm team, even though both were competitors in the American League. The Yankees acquired a number of good players from the A’s, with Maris being one of the best. In his first season with the Yankees, he led the league in RBI and slugging percentage and won the AL MVP Award.
The next year, 1961, put Maris in the media spotlight because of his epic home run chase with Mickey Mantle. Both players had a shot to eclipse the single-season home run record of 60 home runs, held by the great Babe Ruth. At the All-Star break, Maris had 33 homers to Mantle’s 29. By the end of July, his lead was down to one, 40 to 39. Heading into September, Maris had 51 home runs and Mantle had 48. Maris hit 10 more home runs through the end of the season, finishing with 61. Mantle was injured for the last half of September and finished with 54.
Breaking Babe Ruth’s record came with some controversy. Maris hit his 61 dingers when the Yankees had a 162-game schedule, while Ruth’s Yankees had played just 154 games. The commissioner at the time, Ford Frick, had been a friend of Babe Ruth and worried during the season that Mantle or Maris would break the Babe’s record. In July, Frick held a press conference and said:
"“Any player who has hit more than 60 home runs during his club’s first 154 games would be recognized as having established a new record. However, if the player does not hit more than 60 until after his club has played 154 games, there would have to be some distinctive mark on the record books to show that Babe Ruth’s record was set under a 154-game schedule.”"
According to Maury Allen, sportswriter Dick Young shouted out, “Maybe you should use an asterisk on the new record. Everybody does that when there’s a difference of opinion.” This is how the myth that Maris’ record had an asterisk attached to it came to be.
The reality was that baseball did not have an “official” record book at the time, so there was no specific place for the two records to be listed separately, or with an asterisk for Maris. Frisk was simply trying to put the idea out there that any mention of the home run record should show both records, one for a 154-game season and one for a 162-game season.
Frisk himself wrote in his 1973 autobiography that no asterisk ever appeared in the official records. Of course, by that time, everyone thought there was an asterisk. Almost 20 years later, in 1991, Commissioner Fay Vincent appointed a Committee on Statistical Accuracy and the committee voted to remove an asterisk that never existed in the first place. The 2001 Billy Crystal movie about the Maris/Mantle home run race was titled “61*”, which furthered the myth of the asterisk.
With all of the talk about home runs in a certain number of games played, it’s rarely mentioned that Maris hit his 60th home run in his 684th plate appearance. It took Ruth 689 plate appearances to hit 60. Not that it really matters now.
Unlike many of the single-digit Yankees who have had their numbers retired, the number nine worn by Maris continued to be worn by other players after Maris retired. Steve Whitaker and Dick Simpson each wore it for one season. Ron Woods wore it from 1969 to 1971. In 1973, third baseman Graig Nettles joined the Yankees and took number nine, which he wore until his time with the Yankees ended with the 1983 season. The number was retired for Roger Maris in July of 1984.