What 2 Watch: ’61*’

What 2 Watch: ’61*’

By Calvin Connors Posted February 19, 2012

The true story of two New York Yankee teammates chasing Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record in the 1960s was made into a fantastic film by long-time Yankee fan Billy Crystal in 2001.

At the beginning of the movie, Roger Maris’ family is huddled around the TV watching Mark McGwire tie their father’s home run record of 62. McGwire hits the home run to tie Maris; the family is on their way to go see Mark when all of a sudden Patricia Maris collapses. She goes to the hospital and grabs a scrapbook that she made of Roger and Mickey, the movie transitions to Roger catching a pop fly in Yankee Stadium.

The film takes place in the 1960s where Roger Maris (Barry Pepper) and Mickey Mantle (Thomas Jan) are both chasing Babe Ruth’s home run record of 61. In the movie, it’s Roger’s first year as a Yankee player. He previously won Most Valuable Player in the 1960 season. Mantle and Maris start off the season hot, hitting home run after home run, the crowd loves the two and they get the name “The M&M Boys.”

Mickey has a bad habit of drinking a lot of alcohol and cheating on his wife with many women. One night Mantle had a lot to drink and got into a car accident, this really made an impression on Maris. Roger sees this and invites Mickey to leave his very nice suite at a fancy hotel and live with him at his apartment. Mickey is hesitant at first and then he gives in. Life seems to be going great for the two great ballplayers until an incident happens where Roger is asked to sign a ball for a young kid; Maris signed the ball with an X. The papers found out about this and made Roger seem like a real jerk, after this happened he went into a hitting slump and the whole town of New York seem to hate Maris and love Mantle. During this whole process, Roger would call his wife Patricia and talk about all the things that have been going wrong for him.

The stress kept building for Maris, it was a sure sign of stress when he went into the bathroom and noticed his hair was falling out. It didn’t help when Roger was standing in right field and a furious fan was heckling him and all of a sudden he threw a chair off of the upper deck and almost hit Maris. It all seemed to be going south for Roger until his coach made a lineup change in the batting order, where he would switch Mantle to the fifth spot and Maris to the fourth spot.

Maris came out of his slump and began to hit the ball as he did at the beginning of the season, and he was back in the home run race with Mantle. The two went back and forth hitting home runs left and right, it all seemed good until Mantle got really sick from an infection on his hip. Out of nowhere, it turned from being Mantle and Maris chasing the Babe’s home run record, to just Maris chasing the magical number of 62 home runs. The Yankee fans still seemed to hate Maris even after Mantle had dropped out. The hate-fueled Roger to play better.

Baseball had added four more games to its season, when the Babe played, his season was 154 games. The Major League President was great friends with Ruth and felt that the record should never be beaten by anybody so he declared that Maris would have to hit the 62 home runs in the same time Babe Ruth hit his home runs in.

Roger’s last chance to hit his 62nd home run within the new rule that the MLB president set was going to have to be against the Orioles. In the first two games of the three-game series, Maris doesn’t hit his magical 62nd home run. His luck would run out in the last game against the Orioles, when it was his last at-bat the Orioles head coach brought in a pitcher that only throws a knuckleball. The knuckleball is one of the hardest pitches to hit in baseball; also the wind was blowing against the way he was hitting. Maris did get a hold of one that was caught on the warning track.

Although Roger didn’t hit the home run within the rule, he finally hit his 62nd home run in the four games that were added on to the season. Mark McGwire ended up hitting 70 home runs in the 1998 season. Sammy Sosa also was in the home run race with McGwire but fell just short in the 1998 season.

Leave a Reply