Baseball History: Roger Maris Recognized as Official Home Run Leader

In 1961, Roger Maris had hit the most home runs in baseball history in a single season, but was not recognized as the official home run leader. That changed on this day in 1991, when the asterisk was removed.

As Roger Maris was chasing Babe Ruth‘s home run record down the final days of the 1961 season, there was a great deal of debate as to where the accomplishment would stand in baseball history. After all, Ruth accomplished his record in a 154 game schedule, but Maris had eight extra games to work with. It was quite the conundrum to sort through.

As such, Commissioner Ford C. Frick, who had been a friend of Ruth’s, decreed that Maris would need to break the record in the same 154 games that Ruth had. However, by that point, Maris only had 59 homers. While he did finish the year with 61 home runs, Frick put an asterisk next to the number, allowing Ruth to remain in the record books.

That changed on this day in 1991. Major League Baseball put together a committee to go over the various statistics, appropriately referred to as the Statistical Accuracy Committee. The highest profile ruling came when they declared that Maris, not Ruth, was indeed the all time single season home run leader.

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In a way, that ruling was fairly superfluous. Back in 1968, the Special Baseball Records Committee had ruled that single season records would be held on their own merit. As such, no asterisks or other special designations would be allowed to keep Maris from being the actual home run leader. And yet, the mythical asterisk had persisted until this day in 1991.

However, they did make one important change. No hitters now had to last at least nine innings, and the game had to end without a hit being allowed. With that now being the case, 50 games were no longer considered to be no hitters, including Harvey Haddix‘s 12 perfect innings, or David Palmer‘s five inning perfect game.

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It took far longer than it should have, but Roger Maris got his due on this day in 1991 when he was recognized as the player with the most single season homers in baseball history.