With prodding from writers, MLB commissioner Ford Frick announced if the record was not broken in 154 games, there would be an additional entry for a 162 game record. Thus, the term “asterisk” entered sports lexicon.
Maris suffered from intense stomach pains and lost hair in clumps due to the stress the glaring media coverage created. Mantle, who also put up numbers placing him in pursuit to pass the Babe, missed the last part of the season after suffering a leg infection, leaving Roger alone in the chase.
On the last day of the season, before a little over 23,000 fans, Maris lined a solo homer in the fourth inning off Boston’s Tracy Stallard for the only run of the game. The Yankees went on to defeat the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series four games to one with Roger hitting a home run in the top of the ninth inning to win game three.
7. 12/28/58, The Greatest Game Ever Played—The NFL championship game for 1958 is the first league game to go into sudden death overtime, with Johnny Unitas leading his Baltimore Colts to victory over the New York Giants.
NBC’s broadcast of the game to a national television audience helps push the NFL into becoming the most popular professional sports league in the United States.
In a back and forth affair, Unitas drives his Colts 86 yards in the last two minutes to tie the game with a 20-yard field goal by Steve Myhra with only seven seconds left.
With players unsure what was going to happen next, the officials call the team captains out for another coin toss. The Giants win the toss to begin overtime but the Colt defense forces a punt.
Unitas again drives his team down the field, this time 80 yards in 13 plays and the game is punctuated by a one-yard dive into the end zone by Alan Ameche.
This contest featured 15 future hall of fame players and coaches; including Giants offense coordinator Vince Lombardi, defensive coordinator Tom Landry, and Colts head coach Weeb Ewbank.
6. 6/22/38, Louis vs. Schmeling—While Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany elbowed their weaker European neighbors, Joe Louis faced off against Max Schmeling in a rematch after Schmeling's victory from two years before.
Propaganda was being laid on thick as the Nazi Party was “explaining” how this was going to be another demonstration of one of their basic tenants—the superiority of the white man over the black man (conveniently forgetting the exploits of Jesse Owens two years earlier in the Berlin Olympics.)
So in addition to wanting to avenge his previous defeat, Louis would also be fighting for his race and his country.
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