Major League baseball player. For 12 seasons (1957 to 1968) he played right field for the Cleveland Indians (1957 to 1958), Kansas City Athletics (1958 to 1959), New York Yankees (1960 to 1966), and the St. Louis Cardinals (1967 to 1968). He is best remembered for breaking Babe Ruth's single-season record of 60 home runs with 61 home runs in 1961, although he did it when the season was expanded to 162 games versus 154 when Ruth set the previous record in 1927. Born Roger Eugene Maras (he later "Americanized" his last name to Maris) to parents of Croatian origin, he grew up in Fargo, North Dakota where he attended Shanley High School and excelled at sports. After graduating from high school, he attended the University of Oklahoma at Norman but returned home after one semester and signed a minor-league contract in 1953 with the Cleveland Indians. He excelled in the minor leagues and in four seasons, he batted .303 with 78 home runs. He made his Major League debut with Cleveland on April 16, 1957, and hit 14 home runs in his rookie year. In the 1958 season, he was traded to the Kansas City Athletics and hit 19 home runs in 99 games. The following year, he hit 16 home runs and represented Kansas City in the All-Star game despite missing 45 games due to an appendectomy. He was then traded to the New York Yankees and in his first season, he hit 39 home runs and led the American League in slugging percentage, runs batted in, and extra-base hits, winning the American League's Most Valuable Player Award along with a Gold Glove Award. In 1961 he began his trek to break Babe Ruth's home run record. After 154 games, he had 59 home runs and in the last game of the regular season, held at Yankee Stadium, he hit his 61st home run off Tracy Stallard of the Boston Red Sox. This would remain the American League home run record for 61 years until it was finally broken by Aaron Judge, also of the Yankees, who hit 62 round-trippers during the 2022 season. The Yankees went on to defeat the Cincinnati Reds in 5 games in the 1961 Word Series in what many people consider to be the best Yankees team of that era. His remaining five years with the Yankees were often plagued with injuries and in December 1966 he was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals, where he helped them to win the 1967 World Series and 1968 National League Pennant before retiring at the end of the 1968 season. Over the course of his Major League career, he played in 1,463 games with 826 runs scored, 1,325 hits, 275 home runs, 850 runs batted in, and a .260 batting average. He played on seven pennant-winning teams (1960 to 1964 for the New York Yankees, 1967 and 1968 for the St. Louis Cardinals), two world champion teams (1961, 1962 for the New York Yankees and 1967 for the St. Louis Cardinals), an American League All-Star (1959 to 1962), American League Most Valuable Player (1960 and 1961), and was named the Sporting News Major League Player of the Year in 1961. After leaving baseball, he and his brother owned and operated Maris Distributing, a Budweiser beer distributorship in Gainesville and Ocala Florida. In 1983 he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and he died of the disease two years later at the age of 51. Although he was never elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, in December 2014 he became eligible to be identified as a Golden Era (1949 to 1972) candidate for possible election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2015. His uniform number (9) was retired by the New York Yankees on July 21, 1984, and a plaque was dedicated to his honor in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium. Also in 1984, The Roger Maris Museum, dedicated to his life and career, opened at the West Acres Shopping Center in Fargo. His home run record was surpassed by three players in the National League: Mark McGwire (70) and Sammy Sosa (66) in 1998 and Barry Bonds (73) in 2001, although those players were accused of using performance-enhancing drugs. He appeared in the films "Safe at Home!" (1962), "That Touch of Mink" (1962), and "It's My Turn" (1980).