Roger Maris Would be ‘Tickled to Death’ to be Matched by Aaron Judge

Yet Maris’s 61 stood as the record longer than Ruth’s 60, which had happened 34 years earlier. Maris reigned atop the single-season list for 37 years, until 1998, when McGwire and then Sosa toppled him. McGwire finished with 70 homers that season, four ahead of Sosa, and his last sold at auction for a record $3 million to Todd McFarlane, the comic-book creator and toy-company executive.

We may never know the value of Judge’s 61st. It caromed off the back wall of the Blue Jays’ bullpen and was retrieved, on a bounce, by the coach Matt Buschmann. Yankees reliever Zack Britton then retrieved the ball for Judge, who gave it to his mother, Patty.

When Maris connected, with a drive to right off Boston’s Tracy Stallard, the memorabilia craze was far off. The idea of paying for a milestone ball was so unusual that it was big news when Sam Gordon, a restaurant owner from Sacramento, offered to buy the ball for $5,000 from whomever happened to catch it.

That included the players, who were woefully underpaid at the time. Some Yankees, like the future Hall of Fame pitcher Whitey Ford, tried to strategically position themselves.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/sports/baseball/aaron-judge-roger-maris-yankees.html