April 19, 1960: Maris stars in Yankee debut; Williams passes Gehrig on all-time homer list

The 1959 New York Yankees (79-75) posted the franchise’s lowest win total since 1925, finishing a distant third behind the first-place Chicago White Sox (94-60) and the second-place Cleveland Indians (89-65). It was a significant dip in the Yankees’ fortunes after 10 American League pennants and 8 World Series titles in the previous 12 seasons.

Retooling their lineup for 1960, the Yankees made the biggest trade of the offseason on December 11, sending veteran outfielder Hank Bauer, pitcher Don Larsen, outfielder-first baseman Norm Siebern, and first baseman Marv Throneberry to the Kansas City Athletics for outfielder Roger Maris, infielder Joe DeMaestri, and first baseman Kent Hadley.

Maris, who batted left-handed and threw right-handed, was an All-Star in 1959 despite missing a month after undergoing an emergency appendectomy in late May. In his third season in the big leagues, he was leading the AL with a .344 batting average on July 27 but slumped thereafter and finished the season at .273.1 He hit 16 home runs for the Athletics, but only two came after July.

Kansas City had discussed trading the 25-year-old Maris with several clubs, including the Cleveland Indians, Pittsburgh Pirates, and St. Louis Cardinals. After a deal with the Pirates fell through, the trade with the Yankees was made.2 Whitey Ford, the ace of New York’s pitching staff, was quoted later as saying, “I thought Roger Maris was the one guy we needed. He was a complete player who could field, throw and run.”3

The trade drew sharp reactions from the two teams that finished ahead of the Yankees in 1959. “It’s shocking that there should be so much traffic between two clubs,” said Cleveland general manager Frank Lane, who had dealt Maris to the Athletics in 1958. “This is their fifteenth deal [between the A’s and Yankees since 1955], and certainly you’d have to say that’s more than coincidental.”4

Bill Veeck, the president of the White Sox, considered asking Commissioner Ford Frick for an investigation of the “unhealthy alliance” between the Yankees and Kansas City.5

New York, after posting its worst-ever spring-training record (11-19), opened on the road, in Boston on April 19.6 The Red Sox had lost to the Washington Senators, 10-1, the day before in Washington, in the traditional start of American League play. As Washington’s Camilo Pascual set an Opening Day record with 15 strikeouts, Ted Williams provided Boston’s only run with a second-inning home run, the 493rd of his career, tying Lou Gehrig for fourth on the all-time list behind Babe Ruth (714), Jimmie Foxx (534), and Mel Ott (511).

On a clear but chilly Boston afternoon, a crowd of 35,162, the second largest for a Fenway Park Opening Day game, watched Boston Mayor John F. Collins, a polio survivor, throw out the first pitch from his wheelchair.7 Tom Brewer (10-12, 3.76 ERA in 1959) took the mound for the Red Sox. A 19-game winner in 1956, the 28-year-old right-hander had won 10 or more games in each of his six seasons with Boston.

New York manager Casey Stengel chose 27-year-old right-hander Jim Coates to start for the Yankees.8 Coates had posted a 6-1 record (2.87 ERA) in 1959, his first full season in the big leagues, but had started only four times in 39 major-league appearances.

Stengel also decided to stack his Opening Day lineup with right-handed batters to take advantage of Fenway Park’s close left-field wall. He shifted Maris, the lineup’s only left-handed hitter, to the top of the batting order.9

Maris doubled to left to start the game. Bobby Richardson walked. After Gil McDougald flied out to right, Héctor López grounded into a double play, ending the visitors’ scoring threat.

One-out singles in the home half of the first by Pete Runnels and Frank Malzone put Red Sox at first and third. Gene Stephens’ sacrifice fly to deep right gave Boston a 1-0 advantage.

Brewer kept the Yankees off the scoreboard the next two innings, helped by another double play in the second. Mickey Mantle and Bill Skowron had singled to put runners at first and second with no outs. Malzone fielded Elston Howard’s sharply hit groundball, stepped on the bag at third, and threw to second to complete the double play.10

Boston threatened to add to its lead in the third inning. Don Buddin’s one-out double and a single to left by Runnels put runners at the corners. Malzone grounded to third baseman McDougald, who threw Buddin out at home, keeping the score at 1-0.

The Yankees went ahead in the fourth. McDougald singled to start the inning. He scored one out later on Mantle’s double over the head of Bobby Thomson in center. After Skowron’s dribbler for an infield single, Mantle scored on Howard’s single up the middle for a 2-1 lead.11 Tony Kubek grounded into the Yankees’ third double play of the game, ending the inning.

New York broke the game open in the fifth. Coates blooped a single to right. Maris hit a drive 400 feet into the right-field bleachers for a two-run homer.

Two outs later, a two-base error, a wild pitch, and a walk put runners at first and third. Skowron doubled down the third-base line, driving in both runners and increasing New York’s lead to 6-1.12  Frank Sullivan relieved Brewer and got the inning’s final out on a drive to deep center by López.

Boston scored one run in the bottom of the fifth. Malzone’s two-out liner to left, misplayed by López,13 went for a double, scoring pinch-hitter Marty Keough, who had walked leading off the inning.

New York answered in the top of the sixth against Boston reliever Nelson Chittum. After Kubek’s single and a throwing error on Coates’ bunt, Maris singled, driving in Kubek to make the score 7-2.

Maris capped the Yankees’ scoring and his own big debut game in the eighth. Facing left-hander Ted Bowsfield, Boston’s fourth pitcher of the game, Maris hit his second home run, a one-out, bases-empty drive into the right-field bleachers. It was the third two-homer game of his career.

Williams came up to bat against Coates in the eighth with two outs and no one on base. He was 0-for-3 so far after grounding out in the first inning and flying out in the fourth and sixth. Despite the 8-2 score in favor of the Yankees, most of the fans stayed to see if he could pass Gehrig in career home runs. They were rewarded when Williams lined his 494th homer into the right-field grandstand.14

Williams was replaced in left field by Jim Busby to start the ninth. Many of the fans, having witnessed the future Hall of Famer’s historic home run, had left by the time the Red Sox added an unearned run in the bottom of the inning.15 Coates went the distance for the Yankees in their 8-4 victory, with Brewer taking the loss.

Skowron drove in two runs on four hits (three singles and a double), but Maris was the star of New York’s 17-hit attack. In six plate appearances he singled, doubled, homered twice, and walked, driving in four runs. “He’s doing so well in that spot,” Stengel said of his new leadoff hitter, “I’m going to keep him there.”16

Postscript

The 1960 AL pennant race was a three-team battle between the Yankees, a young Baltimore Orioles club, and the White Sox for most of the summer. New York pulled away from second-place Baltimore and third-place Chicago by winning its last 15 games of the season.

Maris was named the AL’s Most Valuable Player, leading the junior circuit with 112 RBIs. He hit 39 home runs, trailing only his teammate Mantle, who led the league with 40. The Yankees lost the World Series to Pittsburgh despite outscoring the Pirates 55-27 over seven games. Stengel was replaced by Ralph Houk after the Series.

In an article for Baseball America, baseball historian David Fleitz characterized the trade that sent Maris to the Yankees as “one of the most lopsided trades in history.”17 The 37-year-old Bauer, who had started the majority of games in right for the 1959 Yankees, was near the end of his career and hit only six homers in limited action during his two years in Kansas City. Larsen went 1-10 (5.38 ERA) for the A’s in 1960 and was traded the next year. Siebern had four solid seasons in Kansas City before being traded, but his 25 home runs in 1962 marked the only time he hit more than 20 for the A’s. Throneberry, after being traded by Kansas City during the 1961 season, became better known as “Marvelous Marv” with the 1962 expansion New York Mets. 

Maris won a second MVP award in 1961 with his record-breaking 61-homer performance. He played in five straight World Series as a Yankee (1960-1964). Traded to St. Louis after the 1966 season, he played in two more fall classics with the Cardinals before retiring after the 1968 campaign. Maris appeared in a total of 41 World Series games in his career, the most of anyone during the decade of the ’60s.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Thomas J. Brown Jr. and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources 

The author accessed Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. for box scores/play-by-play information, player, team, and season pages, pitching and batting game logs, and other data.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS196004190.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1960/B04190BOS1960.htm

Notes

1 Arthur Daley, “Maris, as Yank, Hopes to Shake Slump,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 15, 1959: 30.

2 Ernest Mehl, “A’s Lashed, Lauded for Swapping Maris,” The Sporting News, December 23, 1959: 5, 6.

3 David M. Kritzler and Alan P. Henry, “1959 – Winds of Change,” The Winter Meetings, Volume 2 (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, 2017), 13.

4 Hal Lebovitz, “Frankie Fumes Over Bombers’ Swap for Maris,” The Sporting News, December 23, 1959: 6.

5 Jerry Holtzman, “Unhealthy Alliance, Snorts Sportshirt; May Ask for Probe,” The Sporting News, December 23, 1959: 6. A request was never made for a formal investigation of the NY-KC relationship.

6 “Yank Citrus Mark of 11-19 Poorest in Club’s History,” The Sporting News, April 20, 1960: 18. After leaving their St. Petersburg, Florida, training camp, the Yankees also lost two more exhibition games played in New York against the Red Sox.

7 John Drebinger, “Maris Sets Pace for 8-4 Triumph,” New York Times, April 20, 1960: 46.

8 Stengel saved the left-handed Ford for the home opener at Yankee Stadium on April 22, starting right-handers Bob Turley and John Gabler in the next two games in Boston. He made a similar decision in the World Series that fall against the Pirates, bypassing Ford in the first two games in Pittsburgh so the left-hander could pitch the third game at Yankee Stadium.

9 Rober Birtwell, “Stengel Has Reason to Use Maris as Leadoff Man,” Boston Globe, April 20, 1960: 34. Elston Howard started at catcher, the first time in 14 years Yogi Berra, a left-handed batter, was not New York’s Opening Day catcher.

10 “Opening Day Gate Near Record Mark,” Boston Globe, April 20, 1960: 34.

11 Joe Trimble, “17 Yankee Hits Win Hub Opener, 8-4,” New York Daily News, April 20, 1960: 80.

12 “17 Yankee Hits Win Hub Opener, 8-4.”

13 “17 Yankee Hits Win Hub Opener, 8-4.”

14 Hy Hurwitz, “Yankees Go Home,” Boston Globe, April 20, 1960: 33.

15 “Yankees Go Home.”

16 “Yankees Go Home.” Maris batted leadoff in the next day’s game, but spent most of the rest of the season in the third or fourth spot in the lineup.

17 David L. Fleitz, “The Yankees and the A’s,” Baseball America, accessed December 28, 2022, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/corner/c042001b.shtml.