LIFE Magazine
Reporter from 1961 to Reflect on
Home Run Derby
between Mantle and Maris
Aug. 13
Presentation Caps Pittsfield’s 2-year Baseball
Celebration
PITTSFIELD, Massachusetts, July
28, 2007 -- In the current climate of obsession with
records, Pittsfield’s Art Of The Game project
reflects on one of the most important, Babe Ruth’s
single-season record 60 home runs, in a special
presentation on Monday, Aug. 13. One-time LIFE
Magazine writer Joe Bride, who covered the famous
1961 home run derby between New York Yankee sluggers
Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, will discuss the
players, the climate, and the thrill of the chase in
a public presentation at the Underground Pub in the
Crowne Plaza Hotel, starting at 6:30pm. The event is
free and open to the public.
In 1961, Babe Ruth’s 60 home
runs, dating back to 1927, represented one of the
longest-standing and most cherished of personal
records, Bride recalls. He said that both Maris and
Mantle were the subject of public disdain, even
hatred, for threatening the record, just as occurred
a generation later when Hank Aaron would break
Ruth’s career record of 714 home runs.
As part of his assignment,
Bride, then a young writer with LIFE Magazine,
traveled for six weeks with the Yankee team, and
wrote the Aug. 18, 1961 cover story with the
memorable photo of Mantle and Maris, back to back,
with a black-and-white photo of the long-departed
Babe in the background. That issue of LIFE Magazine
is now a collector’s item, and copies have been
selling for $75-$150 on eBay.
“My chase started with a double
header on Sunday at Yankee Stadium against the
Indians,” Bride said, “and finished on the last day
of the season, when Maris hit number 61. A great
part of the story is Maris tying the record in the
154th game. That night the Yankees
clinched the pennant and some of Roger’s comments
only to us are classic.”
Baseball can be a game of
irony, and Bride is no exception. He now lives in
Cincinnati, and the Yankees played the Cincinnati
Reds in the 1961 World Series, his first of many.
“The only game the Reds won was due to a home run by
a guy I went to high school with.”
The Underground Pub is normally
closed on Monday, and will be open for this event;
light pub fare will be available. This rare public
presentation will be a fitting cap to Pittsfield’s
two-year Art Of The Game project, which celebrates
the City’s heritage as the “Garden of Eden” of
baseball.
Historical records date back to
a 1791 Pittsfield ordinance prohibiting the playing
of baseball within 80 yards of the new Meeting House
“for the Preservation of the Windows,” the first
baseball bylaw, and perhaps the first written record
of baseball, in America.
In 1859, the first
intercollegiate baseball game played at North and
Maplewood Streets in Pittsfield, pitting Williams
vs. Amherst. (Amherst won in 26 innings, 73–32.)
In 1872, Pittsfield Old Elms
team was formed, and eventually became known as the
“best local team.” In fact, the Elms won over 80% of
games before disbanding in 1892; however they did
lose 65-19 to the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the
first professional baseball team in history.
Yankee greats from another
generation, Lou Gehrig, and Casey Stengel, both
played at historic Wahconah Park in Pittsfield. A
timeline of the City’s and the park’s baseball
legends can be found at
www.artgamepittsfield.org.
Art Of The Game is sponsored by
the MASS Cultural Council, the Legacy Banks
Foundation, Berkshire Bank, the Greylock Federal
Credit Union, and the Berkshire Eagle. Co-chairs of
the celebration are Mary Rentz and Brian Johnson.
# # #
Media contact: Edward Bride,
413-442-7718 [ebride@berkshire.rr.com]
