Sal Durante was 19 years outdated in 1961 when he caught Roger Maris’ record-breaking 61st residence run ball, and it was an expertise he cherished for 60 years.
Durante was along with his girlfriend, Rosemarie, who would change into his spouse, on a double date in the suitable area bleachers for Yankees-Pink Sox — and he or she paid for the tickets.
“I used to be broke on the time, and Rosemarie loaned me $10 so I may purchase 4 tickets at $2.50 every,” Durante defined to the Seattle Instances in 2016. “Rosemarie by no means let me neglect the mortgage.”
With Aaron Choose trying sure to go Maris’ mark — which many baseball followers and media contemplate to be the true single-season residence run file, given the PED utilization by which Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds had been implicated — the magical 1961 season is getting revisited from each angle.
“I heard the crack of the bat and noticed it headed towards the right-field bleachers the place we had been sitting,” Durante stated in 2016. “I jumped up on my seat and stretched as excessive as I may, and the ball slammed into the palm of my naked hand.”
Pink Barber, calling the sport on WPIX, implied that the fortunate fan who caught the ball would obtain $5,000.
Durante was glad to return the ball and obtain nothing however a “thanks” from Maris in return. As a substitute, he recalled Maris telling him, “Hold it, child. Put it up for public sale. Someone can pay you some huge cash for the ball. He’ll preserve it for a few days after which give it to me.”
That someone was California restaurateur Sam Gordon, who did simply that.
In keeping with the CPI calculator, which measures the tides of inflation, the $5,000 Durante obtained in 1961 is the equal of almost $50,000 at the moment. It’s arduous to fathom what the ball would fetch in an public sale at the moment.
Durante was a Brooklyn-based truck driver on the time he caught the ball; he would later drive a faculty bus for 30 years till his retirement on the age of 62. About 20 years in the past, Sal and Rosemarie moved from Brooklyn to Staten Island.
Rosemarie handed about eight years in the past. As of the previous a number of months, Durante, now 80, is hospitalized and affected by dementia, his son, Tom, a 58-year-old New York Metropolis actual property dealer, knowledgeable The Publish.
“He nonetheless had — and nonetheless has — all his footage of him and Maris by means of the home. He would discuss it,” the son stated. “If we requested questions on it till lately, he would have recognized the solutions. About one-and-half months in the past, his thoughts utterly shut off.”
The memorabilia Durante held onto included a ticket stub signed by Maris from that day, Maris’ personal Zippo lighter that the 2 each used to gentle cigarettes within the locker room and a ball signed by Maris, Durante and Tracy Stallard, the Pink Sox pitcher who gave up the house run.
“He had a pleasant run with this,” Tom Durante, the son, stated. “In 1976, once they opened up the new-old Yankee Stadium, he threw out the primary ball to Graig Nettles. Then on the twenty fifth anniversary, they invited him up there with my mother. Then on the fiftieth anniversary he introduced out the ball — that's now within the Corridor of Fame — to the Maris household.”
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