hope it doesn't offend anyone to post this, but it says it so much better than i can...
Crystal's '61*' A Moving Tribute
Mantle-Maris Race, Relationship Examined In HBO Movie
Pat Sangimino, Staff Writer
Mickey Mantle was the golden boy. He had the name that rolled off your tongue, the posterboy good looks and the perpetual smile. He loved people. He loved New York.
Heck, like Ruth and Gehrig in the 1920s and '30s and DiMaggio in the 1940s, he epitomized the New York Yankees of the 1950s.
He could hit for average and power from each side of the plate. He roamed center field like a gazelle. And when he was young, the sight of him running was something to behold.
So graceful. So efficient. So damn fast.
Not surprisingly, he was idolized by an entire generation of baseball fans.
Roger Maris, on the other hand, was a wonderful baseball player. His only flaw was that he wasn't Mickey Mantle. In comparison, he was a thick-armed, heavy-legged ballplayer. If Mantle was 100 percent charisma, Maris was pure pablum.
Frankly, that didn't bother him. His job was to play baseball and he did it well -- perhaps not as charismatically as Mantle. Still he was a two-time American League most valuable player. But while Mantle stood out, Maris blended in. While Mantle sought out the spotlight, Maris shied away from it.
Mantle was an exclamation point, while Maris was an asterisk -- a notation later used by baseball commissioner Ford Frick to diminish Maris' shining moment.
Try to imagine the summer of 1961, when Maris and Mantle waged a two-man race against the ghost of a Yankee legend -- the Yankee Legend, actually.
Who do you suppose the fans were rooting for that summer?
* * * * *
Sadly, Maris was the odd man out that summer. Nobody wanted him chasing after the single-season home run record. More sadly, when it was he and not Mantle who wound up hitting 61 home runs in 1961 to set a record, he wasn't exactly greeted with open arms. Then again, he didn't exactly embrace the feat.
Longtime Yankees fans and sportswriters wanted Babe Ruth's 60 homers in 1927 to remain the standard. Young Yankee fans wanted Mantle to set the mark. And Maris, well, he was just supposed to be the bat behind Mantle in the New York batting order serving as protection -- a means of making sure American League hurlers didn't pitch around Mantle.
Instead, it was Maris who turned into the unwanted -- and unwanting -- hero. Maris' hair fell out and he was scared by hate mail and death threats. Meanwhile, an infected hip forced Mantle, who finished with 54 homers, to sit out the final few weeks of the season, leaving Maris to cope with the pressure on his own.
Frick, the most powerful man in baseball, issued a mandate that an asterisk be put next to Maris' 61 homers because he had accomplished the feat in a 162-game schedule while Ruth did it in 154 games. The blemish on Maris' achievement wasn't lifted until 1991.
During their chase for immortality, Maris -- like it or not -- was cast into an unfamiliar place, an uncomfortable role. Meanwhile, Mantle enjoyed the ride. They had captured the fancy of a nation, but Mantle wanted no part of the residual effects of it all. He thought what he did on the field should have been enough.
He gave his all for the Yankees, but it wasn't nearly enough for anyone outside of the Yankees clubhouse because he refused to play the game within the game. He had no idea how to deal with the media and often came off as rude. Mantle knew how to play the game. He knew how to give the answers he thought the fans wanted to hear -- which explains their adoration toward him.
Maris was routinely portrayed as the surly, unworthy challenger to Babe Ruth by New York newspaper reporters who fawned over golden boy Mantle. As a result, Maris might have been the first underdog in the history of America who didn't capture the hearts of the nation.
Make no bones about it -- going against "The Babe" and "The Mick," Maris was the underdog. Most Americans root for records to be broken, but they didn't root for Maris to do it. George Herman Ruth, 34 years after setting the record, still garnered cult-hero status in New York, while Mantle wasn't far behind.
* * * * *
Billy Crystal was a 13-year-old New Yorker in the summer of 1961. Like all of his friends, Mickey Mantle was his hero.
"That was the greatest summer of my life," he recalled. "I was 13 years old and I must have gone to 20 games that summer. I'd ride into Yankee Stadium on the train from my home. It was just a miraculous summer."
Crystal has been given an opportunity few of us are afforded. He was allowed to relive his past. He was given the chance to replicate the greatest summer of his life in film. If only we all could be so privileged -- to be able to direct a wonderful time in our lives and not only share it with the world, but also ensure that it would live in posterity.
"61*" (take note of the asterisk) is the story of Maris and Mantle's chase with immortality through the eyes of a young sports fan. Its highly anticipated premiere is Saturday on HBO and, if the film critics are even close on their reviews, this is a film to see, not just for sports fans, but also for people just in the mood to be entertained by the re-creation of one of baseball's shining moments.
"I've thought about this since 1961," Crystal said of the film, which he directed. "It's more than a sports story. It's about two guys who lived together that summer chasing the ghost of Babe Ruth."
He met Mantle in 1975 and a friendship blossomed.
"We became very good friends over the years," Crystal said. "We had a lot of laughs together and he told me a lot of stories, many of which I've been able to use in the movie."
Mantle died in 1995 of complications from a liver transplant. Years of alcohol abuse, we now know, caused irreparable damage to his system, but they couldn't change the way a generation felt about him.
"Mickey was my big, big hero when I was growing up," Crystal said. "And when you get to know (a hero's) humanity and weaknesses, that's when you come to appreciate him even more."
When Mickey Mantle died, a nation mourned. It was front-page news and his funeral was televised nationally. Conversely, when Maris died in 1985 after a long bout with cancer, it registered nary a blip to the non-baseball fan. His name came back to the fore in 1998 when Mark McGwire broke his single-season record by belting 70 home runs.
* * * * *
I am a big fan of Billy Crystal's and not just because he has the ability to make me roar with laughter or touch my sensitive side. His roles on the silver screen are usually ones to which I can relate, be it the man searching for a love that was right in front of him all along in "When Harry Met Sally," or as a basketball official trying to juggle a career on the road with a long-distance relationship in "Forget Paris."
But it goes deeper than his on-screen presence. I appreciate Crystal because he just seems like a nice guy -- a real person, who has made painstaking efforts to maintain reality in spite of all that he has accomplished.
And while some celebrities say they're sports fans and have the courtside seats at Lakers or Knicks games to prove it, you get the feeling Billy Crystal truly is just that. He goes to Clippers games, which is just another reason to have a soft spot for this man.
The summer of '61 was just a tidge before my time, but the ability to witness it through the eyes of someone with such a vested interest -- is there a more cherished treasure than one's childhood? -- makes me want to see this movie.
Author David Halberstam once wrote about the most amazing year of his youth, "Summer of '49," in similar fashion. His summer featured a frenzied pennant race between the Yankees and his Boston Red Sox.
His book oozes with passion, drama and nostalgia. I suspect "61*" will evoke the same kinds of emotions. It will touch us in many ways. It will show America during the Cold War. It was a time where when we feared what was on the other end of the globe, but not what was in our own backyard.
America was still innocent. We were still years from being shaken out of this innocence by the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. We were still years from all the hatred that shaped the 1960s.
It was a time when baseball mattered. And for one summer, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were the centers of the baseball world -- even if one of them had no desire to be there.
"It's a sad story," Crystal said. "Roger didn't want the attention and he couldn't handle it."
* * * * *
For every hero, there has to be a villain. It's sad that most of us don't have room in our hearts for more than one hero.
For most, that hero was Mickey Mantle. As a result, Maris was shunned.
He was a decent and honest man who was determined to be himself. It's too bad that his personality did not match the magnitude of his heroic deeds, but it really wasn't his fault. Give him credit for maintaining his sense of self.
Roger Maris was no villain. He deserved better. The only black mark in this story, we will soon learn, was the asterisk.
