Best known for allowing historic HR
Tracy Stallard, who became a footnote in baseball history for throwing the pitch that the Yankees’ Roger Maris hit for his 61st home run on the last day of the 1961 season — breaking one of the game’s most cherished records, Babe Ruth’s 60-homer season for the ’27 Yankees — died Wednesday in Kingsport, Tenn. He was 80.
Stallard, a right-hander, was in his first full major-league season when he started for the Red Sox on Oct. 1, 1961, at Yankee Stadium.
Stallard retired Maris on a flyball on his first trip to the plate. But in the fourth inning, Stallard threw a fastball on a 2-0 count that Maris drove into the lower right-field seats, where it fell a few rows deep into the lower deck.
Maris circled the bases slowly to a standing ovation, then emerged from the dugout several times, tipping his cap to the fans at the behest of teammates.
“I’m not going to lose any sleep over it,” Stallard said after the game, in which he pitched the first seven innings in a 1-0 New York victory. “I’d rather he hit the homer off me than I walk him.”
Stallard pitched seven seasons in the big leagues — three with Boston, two with the Mets and two with St. Louis — and had a 30-57 career record with a 4.17 ERA.
Stallard turned 61 in the summer of 1998 when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were en route to breaking Maris’ record — albeit in what came to be known as baseball’s steroid era, which tarnished their achievements.
“I don’t mind talking about it,” Stallard said of his fateful pitch to Maris during an interview with the New York Times from his Virginia home in September 1998. “I don’t have any shame at all. I lost the game 1-0, and I didn’t feel anything about it. People are always trying to read something into it. But it has never bothered me to talk about it.”
On the 30th anniversary of Maris’ 61st home run, Stallard told the Long Island newspaper Newsday, “I’m glad it happened.”
“I’m happy for Roger and I’m happy for me,” he said. “If it weren’t for that home run, it would be like I was buried in one of those coal mines out here. You’d never hear about me.”