He stopped talking to the writers. He kept signing for the fans.

It is worth separating the two things, because collectors often run them together.

What 1961 did to him

Maris arrived in New York from Kansas City before the 1960 season and won the American League's most valuable player award in his first year. In 1961 he and Mickey Mantle both chased Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs, and a good part of New York wanted it to be Mantle.

The press corps around Maris grew by the week. Reporters treated his answers like testimony, and he was blunt and uncomfortable with celebrity, which made it worse. Accounts of the season describe fans in right field throwing things at him. By September his hair was coming out in clumps, and his closest friend in New York later said it was worse than the papers printed: some days he could not eat.

Then the commissioner, Ford Frick, a friend of Ruth's, ruled in July that a record set after the 154th game would need a distinguishing mark in the books. He never said asterisk, and no asterisk ever appeared, but the word stuck. Maris hit his 61st on 1 October, in the last game of the season, in front of only 23,154 people.

After one writer burned him, by several accounts, he more or less stopped talking to the rest.

What it did not do

Here is the part that matters to anyone holding his signature.

PSA's reference on his autograph describes Maris as very accommodating to fans, both in person and through the mail. The writers got the silence. The people asking for his name did not.

It fits the man in the other accounts: a mild-mannered player from North Dakota who hated being a spectacle and had no quarrel with the people who liked watching him play.

So a signed item from the 1960s is not suspect because he was miserable. It may be suspect for a far more ordinary reason.

The volume problem

The same PSA reference is direct about it. For a period during the 1960s, a clubhouse attendant regularly signed Maris's name on team balls, and a secretary often handled his mail requests.

That is not a mark against him. After 1961 he was one of the most asked-for names in the country, playing for the most famous club in the sport, and the requests arrived in quantities no player could answer alone. It is the same arrangement we described in the piece on clubhouse signatures on team balls, and the same answer Roberto Clemente's club found for his fan mail in Pittsburgh.

But it means the two formats most likely to have come back from Yankee Stadium in the 1960s, a team-signed ball and a reply to a letter, are exactly where a Maris signature is most likely not his.

The signature itself changed in New York

One more detail from PSA, and a nice one. By the time Maris reached New York his early signing style had largely gone. He began signing with more authority and more pressure on the pen, and that pressure often shows most clearly when his name sits on a piece next to Mantle's.

Make of that what you will. It is at least a reminder that a signature is a record of a moment, and that his moments in the early 1960s were rarely relaxed.

Why his signatures are scarcer than his fame

Three things limited the supply.

He was not a regular on the show circuit. PSA notes he attended only occasionally.

He died in December 1985, aged 51, just as the paid autograph show was becoming an industry. Mantle, who lived until 1995, signed through the boom that followed; Maris never had the chance.

And some of what circulates from his peak years was signed by someone else.

Collectors discussing his market have long put it bluntly: a Maris signature is less common than a Mantle, a Ted Williams or a DiMaggio, dearer, and forged just as often.

What our own records show

The results this index records for him are single-signed items only, and the dearest of them are tied to the chase itself: a signed stub from the game in which he hit his 61st, and a signed bat attributed to his 60th. A ball carrying the inscription 61 Home Runs In A Year 1961 sold for roughly twice two plain single-signed balls.

The season that made him miserable is the season the market pays for.

What to check before buying

Be most careful with 1960s team balls and mail replies. Those are the channels where PSA says others signed for him.

Prefer items with a story of being signed in person, or material from before 1961 or after his playing days, when the volume was lower.

Treat a Maris-and-Mantle pairing as two authentication questions, not one. Both names were heavily requested, both were signed for by others at times, and both are widely forged.

And buy it certified. On a signer this forged, the difference between a genuine late-1960s mail reply and a secretarial one is a judgement for somebody who has seen hundreds of both.

The thing worth sitting with

The worst year of his life produced the most valuable things he ever signed.

He went quiet with the writers, took the booing, lost his hair, and kept signing for the people who asked. Baseball removed the qualification from his record in 1991, six years after he died.

The signatures were already his. The record took a little longer.

This index records documented sales of his signed material. You can read how we work the numbers out.

Sources