![]() “For him to persevere and still do what he did, it’s amazing. “It was against all odds for what he had to endure, and a lot of people think that’s why he’s in the grave, truthfully, because of the stress of what he had to go through in New York and the toll it took on his body,” Roger Maris Jr. Above the bat is “61.” Below the bat is “’61.” Farther down is an inscription: Below the engraving of his name, Maris is pictured in the middle of his most legendary swing. Some leave a cap, a bat, a glove or 61 cents. It is Maris.Īt the base of the headstone, visitors place baseballs. It stands out without screaming out for attention. The surrounding stones are all some version of the same uneven rectangle, failing to differentiate McLaughlin from Stine from Quarve.Ī large black diamond towers over its granite neighbors. The grounds’ main attraction warrants a small green sign, pointing from the edge of the pavement to Maris’ spot in the middle of the section. Beside Maris is former teammate Ken Hunt, who requested the plot next to his longtime friend. So is Ronald Norwood Davies, the judge who ordered the desegregation of schools in Little Rock, Ark. New York Postįormer Brooklyn Dodgers (NFL) fullback Stan Kostka is buried there, too. Reminders of Roger Maris and his career are not hard to find in Fargo, North Dakota, among them the Roger Maris Museum, located inside the West Acres Mall. ![]() A few miles north is the Roger Maris Cancer Center at Sanford Hospital. Along Roger Maris Drive sits Lindenwood Park, where a memorial of the two-time MVP sits at the entrance. The Roger Maris Museum is housed inside West Acres Mall. He didn’t take much to the acclaim and adulation of the hero.”įargo still celebrates its most famous son. He was a private man who wanted to go home after the game, be with his family. “Roger electrified the baseball world and the nation in 1961, and it should have been, and deserved to be Roger’s finest moment,” Richardson said at the service. He was forever plagued by the brilliant legacy that would long outlive him. Funeral attendees received programs, featuring a picture of Maris in pinstripes, in the midst of his 61 st home run swing of 1961. Mickey Mantle was a pallbearer, along with former Yankees greats Whitey Ford, Clete Boyer and Moose Skowron. Governor George Sinner ordered all flags to be lowered to half-staff. ![]() ![]() He had requested to return to his hometown, to be interred where the family of his wife - and high school sweetheart - had been buried. It was snowing, and the temperature barely broke zero, when Maris arrived at his final resting place on Dec. “Roger Maris still gets a lot of visitors,” said a part-time bookkeeper at Fargo’s Holy Cross Cemetery, whose North Dakota DNA and Maris-like aversion to publicity demands he request anonymity. Tourists come from all over - from the Great Plains, from New York, from the major league city a 3½-hour drive away (Minneapolis) - to visit the Midwest monument. The crowds swell in the summer, when the sun accepts a starring role and baseball is most firmly entrenched in our identities. “Sixty! Count ’em, 60! Let some other son of a bitch match that!” Six decades after Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle dueled for Babe Ruth’s hallowed single-season home run record, the legacies of that 1961 season endure and its scars remain
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