Roger Maris and the Cleveland Indians

Before the back-to-back MVP awards in 1960 and 1961 and the glaring fame that accompanied the magical number 61 in the latter year, with or without the asterisk, Roger Maris was merely another top minor-league prospect-for the Cleveland Indians, as it happens, with whom he began his career as a highly touted outfield hopeful.

Branded with the “can’t miss” tag, Maris didn’t disappoint the Cleveland brass during his rapid four-year ascent through the Indian farm system, leading Keokuk and Reading to the playoffs and Fargo-Moorhead and Indianapolis all the way to a league championship. “In the minor leagues with Cleveland, they always stressed fundamentals. They always looked for those ballplayers that could do everything, and Roger was that kind of ballplayer,” Jim “Mudcat” Grant, a teammate of Maris with the Indians in 1958, said. “Everybody in the organization knew that out of the three or four hundred ballplayers in the system, Roger was in the top five.”

Herb Score, the one-time Indians pitching great and longtime broadcaster for the club, said in a 1996 interview: “I saw Roger when he first signed, at spring training and through the minor leagues. Roger was just one of those fellows that you … knew was going to be a big leaguer.” Kerby Farrell, who replaced Al Lopez at the Indians’ helm following the 1956 season, told the Associated Press in March 1957 that Maris would “get a long look” at spring training in Tucson, Arizona, adding, “Maris has a chance to be a great ballplayer.

“I’d like to give Maris a good shot in left field,” Farrell, Maris’s Triple-A manager at Indianapolis, continued. “The kid’s going to be great someday. Wait until you see him. He can run, he’s got a fine arm and he came along great last year after a slow start. If determination and desire count, he’ll be somewhere with us.”

And in a feature in The Sporting News (March 1, 1957), Cleveland correspondent Hal Lebovitz wrote that “Maris has the tools to become another Mantle, lacking only the powerful arm Mickey owns. The job in left field is his to win.”

The hype surrounding Maris didn’t stop there. The April 1957 issue of Sport carried a feature on rookies with a chance to reach the majors, with Maris listed as the Tribe’s number-one outfield hopeful. In his preview of major league rookies for Look, New York sportswriter Tom Meany tabbed Maris as one of the top four outfield prospects. Sports Illustrated ran a story (March 25, 1957), citing Maris as one of its top ten rookie selections. Of Maris, SI stated, “Here is the youth who could add needed speed to a lead-footed Cleveland offense. Extremely fast, he can bunt-or pull the long ball to right.”

To hear reporters of the day tell it, the only thing that could keep Maris from starting the season with Cleveland was himself. Those stories of a brooding, moody Roger Maris didn’t start in New York. Lebovitz observed in The Sporting News that “Maris is a brooder who might be upset with a slow start, which seems to have plagued him in his four years of professional baseball, all on pennant winners.” (Tulsa, where Maris began the 1955 season, did not win the pennant in the Texas League that year, although Lebovitz’ s characterization of the teams Maris had played for up to then is largely accurate.)

In his column in the Fargo Forum, Maris’ s hometown daily newspaper in North Dakota, published the week of April 3, 1957, Eugene Fitzgerald concurred:

Maris is a brooder, and once in a batting slump he has a tough time shaking it. … A typical Maris brooding period right now could be costly to the  chances of the Fargoan making the majors as a    regular …. Regardless of what anyone wishes to  read into opinions expressed here, no one would  be happier than I would be if Maris went all the way …. But I don’t like the reports I hear about his temperament. I hope they’re untrue.

Such fears proved unfounded, inasmuch as Maris not only made the jump to the majors but also laid claim to the vacancy in left field. A notorious slow starter throughout his minor-league days, Maris broke in with a bang when the Indians hosted the Chicago White Sox on Opening Day, April 16, 1957. Maris clubbed three singles in five at-bats off White Sox ace Billy Pierce and scored a run in the fourth inning of a game won in eleven innings by Chicago, 3-2.

Two days later, Maris hit the first of his 275 career home runs, a grand slam in the top of the eleventh inning off Tigers reliever Jack Crimian that gave the Tribe an 8-3 victory in Detroit.

Maris opened his rookie campaign with a nine-game hitting streak. All was going well for the young outfielder until he suffered two broken ribs while trying to break up a double play against the Kansas City Athletics on May 10. Maris was hitting .315 at the time. By June 1, his average had slipped to .258.

A month after he returned to the lineup, Maris took two foul tips off his right instep and spent nearly another two weeks, June 29 through July 10, on the shelf. The ninth inning of back-to-back games against Boston in mid-June illustrated the ups and downs Maris was experiencing. On June 18, Maris’ s home run keyed a 7-6 win over the Red Sox, while a 3-for-5 performance hiked his average to .270. Twenty-four hours later, Maris was accidentally struck on the left temple when Red Sox catcher Sammy White was returning the ball to pitcher Frank Sullivan. Maris dropped to the ground but was able to walk off the field. X-rays showed no fractures, and Maris returned to the lineup the next day.

“Roger was a very good teammate,” according to Herb Score,

and a very intense ballplayer; he played hard. I would consider him a hard-nosed ballplayer. People tend to focus on the home runs, but he was an outstanding outfielder, and in his younger days, he could run very well.

For the remainder of his rookie year, what was essentially a two-month slump took Maris’s average from .271 on July 17 to .235 at season’s end. He contributed 14 home runs, 51 RBIs, and eight stolen bases to the Indians offense despite missing 37 games due to injuries.

The upheaval that took place within the Cleveland organization during the 1957-58 offseason didn’t bode well for Maris. After the Indians finished sixth with a 76-77 season, 21. games behind the pennant-winning New York Yankees, Farrell was fired and replaced by Bobby Bragan. Later, in a move that would have long-range repercussions on the franchise, General Manager Hank Greenberg was sacked and replaced by “Trader” Frank Lane on November 12, 1957. With Lane in charge, no player in the organization was safe. Roger Maris would learn soon enough the difference between playing for a manager who believed in his abilities (Farrell) and one who was indifferent (Bragan).

Maris began 1958 as the Indians’ right fielder. As in 1957, he started off well. He was hitting .280 with three home runs and six runs batted in when he pulled a lower back muscle during a pregame workout in early May. Bragan constructed Maris’s hesitation to play with the injury as an attempt to malinger, thus earning the second-year outfielder a permanent residence in Bragan’ s doghouse.

For the remainder of his stay in Cleveland, Maris’ s playing time was sporadic. When he hit a pair of two home runs in a game at Detroit on May 14, Maris was batting .275, a figure that dropped to .225 with nine home runs and 27 RBIs as the June 15 trading deadline approached.

Considering the combination of Lane’s itchy trigger finger and Bragan’ s disposition, it was only a matter of time before Maris would find himself wearing a new uniform. In an attempt to showcase Maris for a possible trade, he was returned to the Cleveland lineup as a leadoff hitter.

After a proposed deal with the Yankees fell through as the trading deadline approached, Lane dialed up Kansas City and unloaded Maris, infielder Preston Ward, and pitcher Dick Tomanek to the Athletics for infielder Vic Power and utility man Woodie Held.

“No matter what they got, if you traded Roger Maris you had to get had, because Roger was a complete ballplayer,” Mudcat Grant said.

We had an idiot for a general manager in Frank Lane that could not see the talent, but always criticized Roger for his attitude. With a ballplayer like that who could really play and was sitting on the bench, I would’ve had an attitude also. Lane didn’t see the attitude as something positive, so he traded Roger and that was a big mistake.

In his June 18, 1958, column in the Fargo Forum, Eugene Fitzgerald wrote:

It was somewhat surprising that Maris was dealt to Kansas City. It was generally believed the Shanley High product … would wind up with the New York Yankees. There is no secret that Maris hasn’t been happy at Cleveland, not an uncommon situation with the Indians. There is no secret that the Yankees would like to have Maris. His transfer to Kansas City may delay his arrival at Yankee Stadium. Whether the charges are true or not that Kansas City is a [major-league] farm club for the Yankees, it must be recognized that Maris has a better chance now to join the Yankees than he had while in the employ of the Cleveland club.

It took a year and a half, but Fitzgerald’s prognostications eventually came to pass—on all counts.