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Roger Maris, card #1 in the 1962 Topps set
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Roger Maris and the Hall of Fame
Because I operate a baseball web page, I get a lot of baseball questions through the e-mail. Since I've gotten this same question several times now, I thought I'd deal with it here once and for all.
The question is: why isn't Roger Maris in the Hall of Fame?
I was born in 1955, and when I started following major league baseball, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle were the two most celebrated stars in the game. Mantle was a three-time Most Valuable Player award winner, but Maris was the MVP in 1960 (when the Yankees lost the Series to Pittsburgh) and 1961 (when the Yankees had what some call the greatest team of all time).
Maris also did that one thing that Mantle couldn't do. He broke the most important record in baseball, Babe Ruth's standard of 60 homers in a season.
So, why isn't this 61-homer-hitting, two-time MVP in the Hall of Fame?
There's a very simple explanation. Maris didn't last very long, and those two terrific seasons in 1960-61 were the only great ones of his career.
Maris started his career with Cleveland and Kansas City, and was traded to the Yankees in December 1959 in one of the greatest out-and-out steals in baseball annals. In 1960 Maris, at age 26, hit 39 homers and beat out Mantle for the MVP Award. In the next year, which was an expansion year with a lot of rookie pitchers in the league, he belted 61 homers and drove in 142 runs.
However, Maris fell quickly. He dropped to 33 HR and 100 RBI in 1962, and never approached 30 HR in a season again. Part of the problem was an injured hand that kept him from gripping the bat properly after 1962. It must also be said that many players peak at age 27 or so and then drop off, and Maris did exactly that.
By 1966 Maris, at 32, was only a part-timer, and was traded to the Cardinals, where he played two more seasons and appeared in two more World Series. He retired after the 1968 campaign, and died at age 51 of cancer in 1985.
Roger gathered some support for the Hall of Fame; he debuted on the ballot in 1974 with 21.4 percent of the vote, but fell below 20 percent by 1983. His candidacy gathered steam after he died, with his total peaking at 43.1 percent in 1988, his last year on the ballot. He fell well short of the 75 percent necessary for election.
According to Baseball-Reference.com, the most similar player to Maris in baseball history was Bob Allison. Maris and Allison were power-hitting American League outfielders, born in the same year (1934). They started their major league careers within one year of each other, though Allison lasted two seasons longer than Maris. Both men were All-Stars (Maris four times, Allison three), noted for their defensive prowess. Here is how their stats match up:
Games HR RBI Avg Slug OPS+
OPS+ is a rating of on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, adjusted for era and home park, where a score of 100 denotes an average player. Though Roger's stats look slightly better, OPS+ shows both men as being 27% better than the average player.
Allison was a fine player, but never received a single vote for the Hall of Fame.
Roger Maris was a star who burned brightly for two seasons, but didn't put together a full career worthy of the Hall of Fame. He wound up with 275 homers and a .260 lifetime average in twelve seasons, in an era when many great players last for 20 years or more and hit 400-500 homers. That's why he's not in the Hall of Fame.
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