Mythological Signs

I’ve been thinking a lot about asterisks. You know, the little symbol that can be tacked onto a word or piece of text to indicate there’s more to the story.

To my mind, the most famous asterisk of all-time is one widely believed to have appeared in baseball’s record books, but never really did.

In 1961, Roger Maris of the New York Yankees hit 61 home runs, breaking Babe Ruth’s single-season mark of 60. But it wasn’t until three decades later, after Maris had died, that he was officially recognized as the record-holder.

Why the hold up? Here’s how Murray Chass summed it up in The New York Times in 1991:

“When Maris was en route to hitting 61 homers in 1961, Ford Frick, then the commissioner, ruled that he had to break Babe Ruth’s record of 60 homers in no more than 154 games, the length of the schedule in Ruth’s era, for Maris to be recognized as the new record holder. The season grew to 162 games in 1961. Because Maris didn’t make it within the designated game limit, his name was listed in the various record books with the notation that he hit 61 home runs in a 162-game season.”

In case you don’t give a flying fig about baseball, all you really need to know is that Maris’s accomplishment had a giant cloud hanging over it — or, more precisely, a mythological asterisk attached to it.

There was no actual asterisk in the record books denoting — many would say delegitimizing — Maris’s feat. There was, as Chass put it, a notation. A separation. The records…