Even before remembering the race to break Babe Ruth’s home run record, when I saw this ad on the back of an old TV Guide magazine I immediately thought of John Kruk. He played major league baseball for several teams, but I remember him best for his time with Philadelphia Phillies.
Before a game, he was standing outside the stadium, casually smoking a cigarette, when a woman admonished him for his habit. The always quotable Kruk responded with:
“I ain’t an athlete, Lady. I’m a baseball player.”
It was a reply that was obviously overheard. It caught traction and was repeated so often that when the former ballplayer wrote his book, he used the first part of the quote for his title.
Roger Maris, on the other hand, was a lot more athlete and a lot less quotable. In fact, he was considered almost surly by the New York news media during his Yankee days. In all likelihood, he was more straightforward with his answers than he should have been, and never kowtowed to the press like some of his teammates did. Some of the questions from the media had to do with the string of injuries that plagued Maris in the years following his 1961 season. You can click on the image to read his quote for R.J. Reynolds. The date across his face is courtesy of the Postal Service, which cancelled the wrong side of the magazine during the mailing process.
The Minnesota native hit more home runs than Babe Ruth – 61 in ’61 – as the media recorded it, but the media attention took a toll. At the time, there were a number of folks associated with baseball, as well as fans, who thought Ruth’s record should stand forever. Roger Maris related later that the stress in 1961 was so great that – at times – his hair fell out in clumps.
Interviewed at an All-Star game twenty years later, Maris still harbored ill-feelings about the negative attitudes.
“They acted as though I was doing something wrong, poisoning the record books or something,” he said. “Do you know what I have to show for 61 home runs? Nothing. Exactly nothing.”
Who knows whether smoking was a factor? Roger Maris died in 1985 of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a form of cancer. He was 51.
Times change. You don’t see a lot of celebrity endorsements of tobacco products. In fact, you don’t see a lot of cigarette ads these days.
For that matter, you don’t see as many magazines near the checkout stands any longer, but the venerable TV Guide is still hanging on, and will celebrate its 60th birthday in April.