The Roger Maris Trade: Wrong Team, Too Soon

 

Until a young Roger Maris was traded by the Cleveland Indians to the Kansas City Athletics on June 15, 1958, after hitting 14 home runs during his rookie season of 1957, fans of the Indians hoped that his offensive contributions to the team would become more significant as he became more experienced. After the trade with the Athletics was consummated, how-ever, some thought that a more extended stay with the Indians by Maris would have been beneficial to Maris personally and even more so to the immediate and long-term futures of the Cleveland organization. Optimists imagined a very potent batting order featuring relative youngsters Rocky Colavito and Maris. This article will explore effects of the trade on the Cleveland franchise and Maris as separate entities, and consider developments that were relevant to the futures of both.

One overriding question is whether the Indians would have traded Maris to the perennially pennant-contending New York Yankees or another club between 1957 and 1960 if the much weaker Athletics (a club that frequently delivered desirable players to the Bronx Bombers) had not existed as what would end up being Maris’s temporary residence. Other trading options available to the Indians’ front office must also be considered, along with year-by-year statistics from 1957 through 1960 for Maris and the Indians.

Broad effects of the Indians’ trade with the Athletics and the Athletics’ subsequent transaction with the Yankees are also notable because the differences between the fan bases and media markets of New York City and Cleveland challenged Maris’s ability to cope with the effects of fame and affected his demeanor on and off the field. Furthermore, structural differences between Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium and Yankee Stadium altered Maris’s annual and career home-run totals, and uncomplimentary comparisons to Mickey Mantle were detrimental to perceptions of Maris’s character and reduced his popularity. (Comparisons to Rocky Colavito in Cleveland’s less intensive setting would have likely been less stressful for Maris and might have enabled him to be a more content person and athlete.) And, finally, Maris’s status as a drawing card would have increased attendance at Indians games.

Because Maris had been identified as a very promising prospect prior to his promotion to Cleveland’s major-league roster, the Indians’ front office would have had several options to trade him. An article in the March 1957 edition of Baseball Digest described his potential as follows:

Opinions about Maris did, however, occasionally vary in the two years following publication of Baseball Digest’s assessment. He was described in the 1958 baseball edition of Sports Illustrated as “really untested” but, only one year later (when he was with the Athletics), the magazine’s writers were singing a different tune:2

Maris in right field is a talented young man with unlimited potential. He hits with power and could be one of the future stars…The continued burgeoning of Maris would help enormously.”3

COMPARING RUNS PRODUCED

Since Maris’s primary value to the Indians would have been as a run-producer, the numbers of RBIs generated by players remaining on Cleveland’s rosters after the trading of Maris are significant. From the 1957 season through 1960, the following men ranked highest on Tribe teams in RBIs.

 

 

Maris’s most relevant offensive totals during this four-year span were:

 

 

As Maris’s levels of performance during his initial four years in the major leagues became the basis for evaluating his potential in the three seasons that followed, several clubs undoubtedly considered acquiring him while the Athletics and Yankees jumped to the front of the transaction market’s “check-out” line. Although it would become more difficult to project his value beyond those early years, his seasons from 1960 through 1962 were exceptional as the Yankees rode a high tide of success and publicity. Then, as his career evolved after 1963, he experienced both good and bad moments on baseball fields and emotionally until retiring as a St. Louis Cardinal at the conclusion of the 1968 campaign. However, for at least six seasons (1957 through 1962), Maris adjusted to circumstances impressively and performed well in an athletic sense.

But, to return again to our original question, what if Maris had spent those six years—or more—with the Indians and fewer (or none at all) with another team?

ORGANIZATIONAL PRIORITIES

Given dire conditions facing Cleveland’s front office when decisions regarding Maris were being made, the focus of the Indians’ organization was likely directed as much to game attendance as the club’s competitive standing within the American League. In 1954, the Cleveland franchise drew 1,335,472 fans into their huge stadium before a sudden reversal occurred. Attendance dropped to only 865,467 in 1956, to 722,256 in 1957, and to 663,805 in 1958 due to lack of support from a lackluster farm system, General Manager Hank Greenberg’s preference for veteran players who were past their primes, and a local press that constantly criticized the team’s deficiencies.4 Colavito was the only truly effective player, and Maris had been dealt away midseason before reaching stardom. When a sale of the franchise was finalized with a syndicate linked to Cleveland businessmen, Greenberg was replaced as general manager by Frank “Trader” Lane who announced on June 15, 1958, that he had dealt Maris, pitcher Dick Tomanek, and first baseman Preston Ward to Kansas City in return for first baseman Vic Power and shortstop Woodie Held. The transaction was sharply denounced by several American League teams because it sent the slugging prospect to a club that operated as a major-league affiliate of the Yankees. (Lane, who had rejected a couple of direct offers from New York for Maris and never entered into a single trade with the Yankees during his stay in Cleveland, responded that he was not responsible for Kansas City’s future dealings.)5

SALARY FACTORS

If Maris had been retained and other steps had been taken to improve the on-the-field product, increased activity at the turnstiles would not have required significant adjustments to the salaries of Cleveland’s players. Available salary information indicates that Maris’s 1959 salary (with the Athletics) was $15,000 and that he received only $18,000 from the Yankees in 1960. Miñoso’s salary in 1958 was $40,000 and Doby’s was $36,000. The compensation of 1958 American League batting champion Harvey Kuenn, who had been obtained by the Indians from the Detroit Tigers prior to the 1960 season in exchange for Colavito, was $40,000.6 The club’s accountants would presumably have been able to resolve such a financial situation.

 

 

ANALYZING MARIS

The effects of the 1959 trade upon Maris are more clearly defined than those experienced by the Indians because his adjustments as an individual were generally psychological or emotional in nature. Money was apparently not an important factor to Maris, and even his fluctuating thoughts and moods are less complex to analyze than the workings of a large franchise with a variety of personalities and goals.

Moving from the relatively predictable environment that surrounded him in Cleveland to rather passive surroundings in Kansas City did not require a major adjustment from Maris, but he landed in an entirely different setting in 1960 and abruptly became an obsession (and target) of both the intense Yankees’ fan base and New York’s competitive and aggressive media market. The extent of his personal challenges as a man in pinstripes struggling to cope with fame were comprehensively summarized by Don Nelson in an article published in the Fall 1982 edition of SABR’s The National Pastime:

Whether justified or not, Maris’s commitment to competition and his general demeanor were called into question, especially in the latter seasons of his career. Sportswriter George Vass referred to these concerns in an article that appeared in the May 1967 issue of Baseball Digest:

MARIS AND BALLPARK FACTORS

Because Maris was a run-producer, one other statistic is relevant to the topic of this article. Although the dimensions to various outfield barriers of Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium differed drastically from those in Yankee Stadium, “ballpark factor” ratings available from reputable sources indicate a “slight advantage to pitchers” in both stadiums.9 Nevertheless, the short distance to the right-field stands in the “House That Ruth Built” (and Maris inherited) was obviously more beneficial to a left-handed power hitter than the more symmetrical layout of the often-referred-to “Mistake on the Lake” would have been. Therefore, one can assume that the career totals of Maris’s home runs and RBIs would have been reduced if he had not been traded to the Yankees.

CONCLUSION

The baseball career of Roger Maris demonstrated how the imperfections, challenges, and misunderstandings of a talented athlete can affect the performance and reputation of the individual. Developments relating to Maris also serve as evidence that the Cleveland Indians of the late 1950s and 1960s—to a degree that can be reasonably debated—suffered financially and competitively from the organization’s decisions concerning him.

FRANCIS KINLAW attended his third major league game at the age of eight on August 19, 1953, and watched the Cleveland Indians play the Detroit Tigers in Briggs Stadium. Although the Indians were the better team in the early 1950s, the Tigers won the game by a score of 4-2 to end Early Wynn’s streak of 11 consecutive pitching victories against the Detroit club. He resides in Greensboro, North Carolina, and writes extensively about baseball, football, and college basketball.

 

Notes

1. “American League Scouting Reports on 1957 Rookies,” Baseball Digest; March, 1957, 14-15.

2. Sports Illustrated, April 14, 1958, 73.

3. Sports Illustrated, April 13, 1959, 68-69.

4. Baseball Reference, https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CLE/index.shtml.

5. Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella, Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball Teams (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1993), 220-21.

6. Baseball Reference, https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/k/kuennha01.shtml.

7. Don Nelson, “A Tale of Two Sluggers: Roger Maris and Hack Wilson,” The National Pastime (SABR: Fall, 1982; Volume 1), 32-33.

8. George Vass, “Problems Worth Having,” Baseball Digest, May, 1967, 6.

9. Baseball Reference, https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/NYY/attend.shtml.