61*

Directed by: Billy Crystal
Starring: Barry Pepper, Thomas Jane, Anthony Michael Hall and Richard Masur

You know, it’s kind of funny that a guy like me who doesn’t like sports at all (except for MMA fighting) just happens to love baseball movies for some reason. I really don’t know why but I watch almost every baseball movie that gets released. I can’t help it, I hate baseball but I have this uncontrollable compulsion to watch baseball movies. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy most baseball movies but it just seems so darn incongruous to me. Now, having said all that I also have to admit that, along with a huge percentage of America, I have a real fascination with Mickey Mantle. Once again, I don’t really know why since I really don’t like baseball but Mickey just had something about him that made people just love him.

Maris and Mantle

And on that note we begin the review. 61* is the story of the home run race between 2 teammates, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, in 1961. At that point Babe Ruth had held the record at 60 home runs in a single season for years and everyone thought that it would never(and some even thought SHOULD never) be broken. But as the saying goes, records were made to be broken and if they weren’t then we would have ended up with a pretty boring film. Mickey and Roger were both playing for the New York Yankees with Mickey being the team veteran, and OBVIOUS crowd favorite, and Roger being the new guy having joined the team the season before. Everyone LOVED Mickey because he was a good looking, charismatic guy who loved to party and Roger, while very good friends with Mickey, was an average looking guy who never quite learned how to handle the press and crowd the way Mickey naturally seemed to be able to. On the other hand Mickey lived a very hard lifestyle with heavy drinking and lots of women while Roger was low key and faithful to his wife.


I can swing a bat...


...or bust a cap.

Early on in the season, Maris was having a hard time hitting and there was talk of him being traded but when the team manager switches Mickey and Roger in the line up Roger’s hitting turned around in a big way. At that point, the race was on. The media started hyping the situation immediately pointing out that both Mickey and Roger had several more hits at that point in the season than Ruth had in his record breaking year. Mantle managed to keep the press happy in his way but Maris, frustrated with the cutthroat and misquoting sports writers, managed to alienate them all which of course meant that most of them crucified him in their columns. Through their writing they managed to turn the entire city of New York against Maris. They even went so far as to invent a major rift between Mantle and Maris when in reality they were very close friends. As a matter of fact, Mantle lived with in an apartment with Maris in New York for most of them season. Long story short, (and this is a matter of history so it’s not like I giving out spoilers here) despite being despised by both sports writers and fans and being fought against by the commissioner of the league, Maris beat of Mantle due to injury on Mickey’s part yet Maris was still forgotten for the most part because of the vindictiveness of the press until the MacGuire/Sosa homerun race of the 90’s. THey even put an asterisk on the end of his record because his season was longer than Ruth's and he wasn't able to break the record in the same amount of games thereby establishing two seperate records. It’s amazing that a man who held one of the most coveted records in baseball for over 30 years was largely unheard of until his record was broken.


Yep...


...me too.

Anyway, 61* is a really engrossing movie made by a man who is a real fan of baseball AND was a close, personal friend of the late great Mickey Mantle in the last years of his life. If you enjoy sports films at all then you would be remiss to not see this one.


- Mike

Want to share an opinion about this movie or review? To the forums!