American baseball player
Sixty-one must have been Roger Maris' lucky number. In the last game of 1961, the New York Yankee hit his 61st home run of the season, entering Maris permanently into the baseball record books. With that 61st homer, Maris broke professional baseball's single-season home run record, previously set by Babe Ruth in 1927. Maris' record remained unbroken for twenty-seven years, until the St. Louis Cardinals' Mark McGwire bested it in 1998. Although qualified by the infamous, and invisible, asterisk—a verbal mark on the record added by then-Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick to note that Maris had played a longer season than Ruth—the feat instantly rendered Maris a baseball legend.
Sketch by Kristin Palm
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