Edition: U.S. / Global

BASEBALL; Simply Recalling Mr. Maris

Published: September 6, 1998

Roger Maris was not a subtle man but he might have appreciated some of the nuances of the current home run derby, particularly the controversy over Mark McGwire's use of testosterone-boosting pills and the second-banana status of Sammy Sosa. As a decent man, Maris would not have wished the Curse of the Bambino on the next home run king, although he would have appreciated having it finally lifted from his own crew-cut head.

''I often wonder what my baseball career would have been had I not hit the 61,'' Maris said in 1984, a year before he died. ''Because after that point, it was no fun anymore. It's not even fun to talk about.''

I asked him why he was talking about it.

Thoughtful, earnest, he nodded and said: ''You know, there's going to be other kids who will go into the game like I went into the game, thinking you're going to get credit for what you do. I think a lot of times how much nicer things could have been if I got a fair shake. But this is the real side, and there's a lot of kids that can learn from this. You got to have a tough skin if you want to survive.''

The villain in his story was ''the media,'' which made him ''a whipping boy,'' for not being Mickey Mantle. Like Sosa, Maris was swinging in the shadow of a designated hero. Mantle, only three years older than Maris but by then a Yankee for 10 years, was supposed to finally fulfill his promise as heir to Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio. Maris, who had been touted as ''a future Mickey Mantle'' when he came up with Cleveland in 1957, became a Yankee three years later.

In the glorious 1960 season, he hit 39 homers to Mantle's league-leading 40 and was voted most valuable player as the so-called M & M boys led the Yankees to the pennant. In those days, fans booed Mantle and cheered Maris, who thought life could only get better. And it did, at first.

''You know, '61 was an easy season,'' Maris said. ''It was fun. It was exciting. How could it not be?'' At 26, Maris was a complete ballplayer and a cooperative if colorless interviewee. He just wasn't as glamorous as the country-slick Mantle, whose mean streak and unprofessional life style were rarely acknowledged.

The writers dismissed Maris as ''unworthy'' of wearing the ''Ruthian'' crown. Commissioner Ford Frick, a former sportswriter who had been the Babe's chief ghost, announced that any record broken beyond the 154 games of Ruth's schedule would bear a notation.

Was he protecting his own legacy as well as Ruth's? Whatever the reason, Maris wore the so-called asterisk like a scarlet letter.

''It bitters me up,'' he said 23 years later.

In a sport that has seen so many performance-enhancing and diminishing changes, including movable outfield walls, night games, jet travel, expansion, improved bats and balls, not to mention such chemical advances as androstenedione, the asterisk seems silly. One could as easily be affixed to McGwire's final number.

By 1962, Maris's career was joyless. He hated the winter banquet circuit that took him away from his wife and children, and he began responding sourly to ''rips'' in print. He was steaming from such criticism when he blew off a spring training interview with Jimmy Cannon. The dyspeptic columnist then wrote that Maris was ''a whiner'' and ''a thrilling freak'' and implied, incorrectly, that Mantle was now disgusted with him.

This gave permission to writers around the league to vent their anti-Maris or anti-Yankee or anti-superstar rage, which, said Maris, ''spread like the old cancer.'' Fans punctuated the stories by throwing chairs, nuts and bolts, empty bottles at the outfielder.

''It drove me into something of a shell,'' Maris said. ''I just didn't enjoy being at the ball park like I did. It was very difficult every day to say, 'Well, here we go again.' I mean, it was almost like going into a snake pit. It's sort of interesting though, with the reputation the media gave me over the years, people are afraid of me before they meet me. And then, after awhile, they say, 'I just can't believe you're anything like you are.' And that's gratifying.''

This was at his beer distributorship in Gainesville, Fla., over several days of interviewing for the CBS Sunday morning show with Charles Kuralt. While he told the producer Kathy Sulkes and me that his lymphatic cancer was in remission and that his prognosis was hopeful, there was the sense that he wanted to set the record straight while he could. The Maris of those days was affable and wry, obviously happy in the cocoon of a warm family.

Maris's office walls were a reflection of his nostalgic priorities. All the baseball photographs, including the famous shot of the 61st swing, were behind his back, visible to visitors. He faced his future, pictures of him swinging a golf club with family members, customers, old Yankees, politicians. It was not a long future; he was 51 when he died. Roger the whiner had waited five years before sharing his symptoms with a doctor.

Many of the people who treated him shabbily are gone, but so are many of the people who might be motivated to make amends. That Roger Maris belongs in baseball's Hall of Fame is too obvious to belabor. This season's carnival proves that breaking the record -- and it is still Babe Ruth's record in most minds -- is qualification enough.

What a good time to give a decent man credit and a fair shake.

Photo: Roger Maris sitting in the Yankee dressing room on Sept. 30, 1961, after a victory. (Associated Press)