Aaron Judge, seen here at bat for the New York Yankees against the Baltimore Orioles in 2017, has surpassed Roger Maris’ American League single season home run record. *Photograph by* ***Keith Allison.***

The Promethean struggle of Roger Maris

October 4, 2022

Sixty one in ’61. And now 61 years later, 62.

New York Yankees right fielder Aaron Judge has surpassed the American League record of onetime New York Yankees right fielder Roger Maris for most home runs in a single season, which Maris set on Oct. 1, 1961 against Tracy Stallard of the archrival Boston Red Sox. (The Major League Baseball record is held by Barry Bonds, who hit 73 in 2001 amid the steroids era.)

There’s a symmetry in some of the Judge-Maris numbers – Judge wears 99 on his jersey; Maris wore 9 -- but not in their narratives.

Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris – the best of rivalries

May 26, 2015

One of the fellow customers I met in the jewelry store said I should write about baseball on my blog.

Well, here it is, a post inspired by a Sunday New York Times’ column by presidential historian Michael Bechloss about a friendship/rivalry – should that be frivalry? – between the New York Yankees’ Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.

In the summer of 1961, the “M & M Boys,” as they were known, electrified the nation as they pursued Babe Ruth’s single season home-run record, 60, together. It helped that they were teammates who had a lot in common. (Although not all teammate rivals are friendly: Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, anyone?)

Both Mantle and Maris were big corn-fed blonds from the Middle West, Mantle from Oklahoma and Maris from North Dakota. But they were also complements. Mantle, whose father had died young, lived a life of reckless abandon in the big city. Maris never lost his small-town, family roots. Long before “The Odd Couple,” Mantle and Maris roomed together with outfielder Bob Cerv in Queens – cooking out and shopping local. Once a stock boy was so stunned to see the diamond demigods doing something as mundane as grocery shopping, that he took out a row of cans as he fell off the ladder. The M & M Boys had that effect on people, who would reach out to touch them everywhere they went. ...

Oh, captain, their captain

September 29, 2014

How do you fall out of love?

Does it happen all at once? Or subtly over time until one day you realize that your heart no longer skips a beat when you look at the box score?

I had loved the New York Yankees and, by extension, all of baseball from the time I was about 6 years old. That’s when I first saw the old, old Yankee Stadium, all blue and white. To me, it looked like a wedding cake. The first time I walked inside and saw the field fanning out to embrace infinity, I had only one thought: “I belong here.”

Over the years, I had many memorable moments there – particularly watching the magical teams of the late 1970s – and I would go on to write about the Yanks during their magnificent run at the end of the 20th century.

But also over those years, I found myself so emotionally invested in the Bombers that I couldn’t take their defeats. Then my Aunt Mary, my beloved Tiny, who would’ve been 92 on Oct. 1, became fatally ill, and even winning became painful. Indeed when the team won the World Series in 2009, the gulf between its euphoria and my despair seemed unbreachable.

After that, Tim Tebow and Colin Kaepernick happened to me, and I made the journey that America has...

The best of frenemies at the Olympics

February 18, 2014

The triumph of Meryl Davis and Charlie White of the United States over Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada in the Olympic ice dancing competition marks the latest and perhaps last chapter in one of the best rivalries in sports.

Rivalry has gotten a bad rap. Cain and Abel, for starters. And who can forget Tonya and Nancy? Certainly not NBC, which has a Mary Carillo documentary airing later during the Olympics as we recall the 20th anniversary of Nancy’s knee-whacking at the hands of Tonya cohorts.

But true rivals can be friends, intimates – and in my just-released novel, “Water Music,” even lovers – as long as they respect each other and leave the competition on the field of “battle.” As my rivals discover, that’s easier said than done.

But it can be done. Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were true rivals. During the glorious summer of 1961, they chased Babe Ruth’s single season home run record – while sharing an apartment. (They even shopped and barbecued together.)

Davis and White and Virtue and Moir are rivals in that tradition. Read More

Rafanole revisited

November 18, 2013

With the Czech Republic’s defeat of Serbia to retain the Davis Cup Nov. 17, the men’s tennis season draws to a close – except not really. There’s Abu Dhabi right after Christmas and then the Hopman Cup, which I had the pleasure of watching from my sickbed in Jakarta last New Year’s Eve. (Hey, not every woman can say she spent New Year’s Eve with Novak Djokovic, but there we were, so to speak – me, Nole and Pippa. No, not Middleton. My sister Jana’s Black Lab.)

Anyway, as I said to Pippa, who concurred, the Hopman Cup is like a party and not just ’cause it falls during Christmas week. There’s men’s singles, women’s singles and mixed doubles. Nole played mixed doubles with Ana Ivanovic, who looks like a young Princess Caroline. The men in my family were smitten.