Roger Maris didn’t like being criticized. Rogers Hornsby didn’t like being snubbed. Subsequently, Maris and Hornsby didn’t like one another.
On March 22, 1962, in the usually relaxed setting of spring training, an impromptu encounter between Maris, the Yankees’ outfielder, and Hornsby, the Mets’ hitting coach, turned ugly before an exhibition game at St. Petersburg, Fla.
Maris, who broke Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record five months earlier, refused to pose for a photo with Hornsby, who holds the mark for top career batting average by a right-handed hitter.
The incident went public when Hornsby, stung by Maris’ disrespect, lashed out at him in comments to newspaper reporters.
Though eventually linked by their prominent roles in Cardinals championship success _ Hornsby was the manager and second baseman for the 1926 World Series champion Cardinals, and Maris was the right fielder on Cardinals World Series clubs in 1967 and 1968 _ their differences kept them apart.
Mantle fan
In 1961, when Maris and teammate Mickey Mantle were in pursuit of Ruth’s home run record, Hornsby, scouting big-league clubs for the Mets in Chicago, publicly supported Mantle because he considered him a better player than Maris.
“I told a writer that there was only one thing Maris could do better than the Babe _ that was run,” Hornsby said to The Sporting News. “I also said Mantle has all types of ability Maris doesn’t have. I said I’d like to see Mantle lead in home runs.”
In the book “Roger Maris: Baseball’s Reluctant Hero,” authors Tom Clavin and Danny Peary wrote that Maris “took it personally” when Hornsby criticized him.
Hornsby was a career .358 hitter who batted better than .400 in a season three times for the Cardinals and led the National League in hitting seven times. He preferred a player such as Mantle, who hit .317 with 54 home runs in 1961, to Maris, who batted .269 in 1961 and never hit .300 in the big leagues.
“I’ll give Maris credit for hitting all those homers,” Hornsby told The Sporting News, “but he has the advantage of playing in Yankee Stadium. He’s got the short right field there and he’s a right field hitter.”
Maris, who hit 31 of his 61 home runs away from Yankee Stadium in 1961, silently bristled at Hornsby’s remarks. Hornsby wasn’t alone in his criticism and, as spring training neared in 1962, Maris had heard enough.
“This stuff about not hitting for an average gets me,” he told The Sporting News. “Eighteen more hits would have brought me to .300. Lots of guys bloop in that many or more.”
Bad vibes
Mets manager Casey Stengel, 71, put Hornsby, 65, on his coaching staff in 1962. Stengel had managed the Yankees to seven World Series championships and 10 American League pennants before he was fired after the 1960 World Series.
When the defending World Series champion Yankees, featuring Maris and Mantle, came to St. Petersburg to play Stengel’s expansion team Mets in March 1962, it drew a lot of attention.
Joel Schrank, an enterprising photographer for United Press International, got the idea to pose the two rajahs, Hornsby and Maris. Schrank approached Hornsby, who agreed to the request. Hornsby grabbed a bat and followed Schrank to the Yankees dugout, where they found Maris.
According to the St. Petersburg Times, when Maris was asked to pose with Hornsby, he said to Schrank, “Why should I? He’s done nothing but run me down. He says I can’t hit.”
Maris turned his back on them and walked away, the Associated Press reported.
“That bush leaguer,” Hornsby said to The Sporting News. “I’ve posed for pictures with some major league hitters, not bush leaguers like he is. He couldn’t carry my bat.”
According to the Associated Press, Hornsby also called Maris a “little punk.”
By comparison, Hornsby told The Sporting News, Yankees first baseman Bill Skowron approached Stengel before the same game and asked him whether Hornsby could share advice about hitting.
“There were a few things he thought I could straighten out for him,” Hornsby said. “We talked for about 15 minutes. That’s the difference between a high-class fellow and a swelled-up guy.”
Regarding Hornsby, Maris said to the New York Daily News, “All last year I kept reading how he said I was a lousy hitter. So why should I pose with him? He says I’m a lousy hitter and a busher. Well, I think he is a lousy hitter, too _ that is, in my category, home runs.”
(Hornsby twice led the National League in home runs, with 42 in 1922 and 39 in 1925, and ranked in the top 10 in the league 14 times.)
Difference of opinions
New York Herald Tribune columnist Red Smith, who described Hornsby as the “mightiest of all National League hitters and the roughest right-handed bruiser in human history,” wrote that Hornsby was justified for being miffed by Maris’ slight.
Noting that Maris “has not yet learned to live with fame,” Smith advised the Yankees slugger to learn from the experience. “If, through stubbornness, he becomes embittered, it can warp what should be a productive professional life,” Smith cautioned.
Yankees manager Ralph Houk told The Sporting News that when he was a boy Hornsby “was sort of an idol,” but he said he disagreed with Hornsby’s characterization of Maris.
“He says Maris is a bush leaguer and a lousy .269 hitter. I know differently,” Houk said.
About three weeks after the incident, Hornsby’s book, “My War With Baseball,” was published.
In the chapter titled “There Won’t Be Any More .400 Hitters,” Hornsby said, “Maris, a left-handed hitter, is strictly a right field pull hitter … They didn’t pitch him very smart in 1961. Threw him too many inside pitches, which is all he’s looking for so he can pull the ball. He’ll never have a big average, let alone hit .400. He couldn’t hit .400 if he added all his averages together.”
(Maris remains the only big-league player to hit 61 home runs in a season without using performance-enhancing drugs. Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa all hit more than 61 but needed steroids to do it, and attempted to cover up their fraud. The Cardinals rewarded McGwire, a career .263 hitter, for the revenue his flimflam generated for them by putting him alongside Hornsby in their club hall of fame. Imagine what Hornsby would say about that.)
RetroSimba 
Kind of easy to hit .400 when you’re facing guys who top out at 90 and barely throw breaking pitches, Mr. Hornsby. This argument is tired. It’s not that hitters were “better” back in the Mesozoic Era, it’s just that they were facing guys that prob couldn’t sniff a roster spot on a High A team in modern-day. I have no doubt a guy like Brett Butler could have hit .400 in the 1920s. Hell, Ichiro might have hit a cool .500
Thanks, Gary. Eras change, sports egos and their self-absorption remain the same.
Excellent work Mark! Different times today for sure. I’m guessing most players from Hornsby’s era would not like what has happened to the game. Hell, even I don’t like it!
Thanks, Bob. It’s getting to the point where soon all baseball records set today will be irrelevant because the big-league version of the sport will consist of three exhibition seasons per year: spring training, regular season and the so-called postseason, or playoffs. It’s all just a gimmick to keep selling, keep generating revenue; quality and integrity be damned.
Not all great legendary players turn out to be great legendary managers. Some of them don’t even turn out to be people you’d want to hang out with. I guess Rogers Hornsby is a classic example. Roger Maris was a class act. It’s true that there are different eras and that the game changes. Right now though, I’m not very optimistic about the state of MLB. About the only thing that gives me hope are some things that Ted Simmons said during his induction speech.
Thanks, Phillip. Earl Lawson, who covered the Reds for 34 years for The Cincinnati Post, had an up-close look at the good and the bad among baseball people of various eras. He was assaulted twice by Reds players _ once by Johnny Temple and the other time by Vada Pinson _ but the person who offended him the most was Rogers Hornsby. In his memoirs, Lawson said of Hornsby: “Rogers Hornsby is recognized as the greatest right-handed hitter in history, but as a person Hornsby was one of the most prejudiced, uncouth, thoughtless individuals I’ve ever met. He also was the worst manager the Reds had during the 34 years I covered the club.”
Hornsby was lucky he never met Lenny Randle.
Yep, as Frank Lucchesi discovered, that would not have been a good mix. Probably drove Rogers Hornsby crazy, though, that he had to try to work on hitting with Marv Throneberry and Choo Choo Coleman with those 1962 Mets.
Hornsby was a grumpy old guy before he got to be an old guy. On Sept. 2, 1935, while managing the Browns, he got into a shoving match with pitcher Dick Coffman on a train headed out of St. Louis. He kicked Coffman off the train in Edwardsville, Illinois.
Hah, good line _ grumpy old guy before he got to be an old guy. I can relate sometimes. I didn’t know the Dick Coffman story. Thanks for sharing.
funny or fitting that the two adversaries end up in the Cardinals HOF. It’s amazing to me how Maris managed to be productive at all in NY considering his emotional condition there. Something outside the Hornsby/Maris difference of opinion is something that i can’t figure out. Maris hit only 16 doubles in his famous 1961 season and yet the following year, he hit 34. that gets me figuring he was a launch angle hitter to better profit from Yankee Stadium dimensions, but as you point out, he hit 31 homers on the road in 1961. Great write up Mark.
Thanks, Steve. That’s an astute observation about Roger Maris hitting just 16 doubles in 1961. By comparison, in 1927, when Babe Ruth hit 60 homers, he had 29 doubles, and in 1921, when Ruth hit 59 homers, he had 44 doubles.
Letting Dexter Fowler wear Big Mac’s number was a tragedy in my book. McGwire had his flaws- but he was a major part of the revival of this franchise. So giving a hobbled outfielder who can’t hit/field and cries all the time- was a disgrace to #25. Any Fowler jerseys should be burned, covered with salt, and buried under 10 feet of cement.
Ken: Thanks for commenting and for reading. I respect your opinion but disagree with it. In my book, McGwire didn’t revive the franchise. It won no pennants and no World Series championships in his 5 years as a Cardinals player. He did revive their cash register. In McGwire’s first 3 Cardinals seasons, his biggest home run years, the Cardinals were 73-89, 83-79 and 75-86. In 2000, when the Cardinals finished first in their division, McGwire played in only 89 games. It was Will Clark who replaced him and sparked the Cardinals. In 2001, when the Cardinals edged into the playoffs as a wild card entry, a broken-down McGwire hit .187 for the season was lifted for a pinch-hitter, Kerry Robinson, in the playoffs.
Dexter Fowler underperformed in comparison to the salary he received, but to my knowledge he never cheated. It was McGwire who disgraced uniform No. 25.
[…] who “couldn’t carry Ruth’s jock” — within the scornful phrases of Rogers Hornsby, a brilliant hitter turned mean old cuss — daring to problem the parable by erasing that […]
Question: Do you have an explanation for what happened in this year’s NL playoffs? How four really good teams all got bounced (to include the Cardinals)? And won only three games total?
I’m working on a fix. :-)
Thank you for asking.
I blame it on an expanded playoff system that rewards, even encourages, mediocrity. The Dodgers spent the regular season proving they were better than the Padres. The Braves spent the regular season proving they were better than the Phillies. In the playoffs, I think the Dodgers and Braves had nothing to prove, and all the motivation was on the side of the Padres and Phillies, who couldn’t believe their good fortunate in even qualifying for the playoffs.
As for the Mets and Cardinals, I don’t mean to be harsh, but those clubs finished third and fourth in the league, and I don’t think there was that much difference between them and the Padres and Phillies.
In 2022, either the fifth-place finisher (Padres) or sixth-place finisher (Phillies) in the National League will win the pennant. It makes a mockery of the regular season.
In 2021, the World Series champion was the fifth-place finisher (Braves) in the National League. In 2019, the World Series champion was the third-place finisher (Nationals) in the National League. The teams that were the best in the regular season just don’t have the motivation or incentive in the playoffs as the also-rans.
The regular season is being devalued, and the expanded playoffs have become just a glorified exhibition season.