Sal Durante, who famously caught Roger Maris’ 61st home run ball, has passed away.
The news was announced on Twitter by Roger Maris Jr.
“Sal Durante the guy who caught my dad’s 61st home run died last night,” Maris Jr. tweeted Friday morning. “Sal was such a gentleman and loved his Yankees. Sal and my dad will always be connected to each other because of that historic day on October 1, 1961. Condolences to the Durante family from the Maris Family.”
It was on that fateful day in 1961 when Durante was on a double-date with his future wife, Rosemarie, to watch Yankees-Red Sox in the right field bleachers at the old Yankee Stadium.
“I heard the crack of the bat and saw it headed toward the right-field bleachers where we were sitting,” Durante told the Seattle Times in 2016. “I jumped up on my seat and stretched as high as I could, and the ball slammed into the palm of my bare hand.”
Roger Maris and Sal DuranteAPDurante was a 19-year-old truck driver in Brooklyn at the time and would later become a school bus driver. Rosemarie passed about eight years ago.
Maris’ 61 home runs stood as the major league record until it was surpassed by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1998. Barry Bonds would later hit 73 home runs in 2001. With those three players being heavily suspected of performance enhancing drug use, many considered Maris to be the true record-holder until Aaron Judge slugged 62 this past season.
Sal Durante catches Roger Maris’ 61st home runNew York Post Archives
Sal Durante holds up Roger Maris’ 61st home run ball on the 50th anniversary of the record, in 2011.Getty ImagesAfter catching the ball, Durante met Maris in the Yankees’ locker room at the game. The man who caught the ball would’ve been happy to hand it over to the slugger, but Maris advised him to keep it and sell it.
“Keep it, kid. Put it up for auction,” Durante remembered Maris telling him. “Somebody will pay you a lot of money for the ball. He’ll keep it for a couple of days and then give it to me.”
Sam Gordon, a restaurateur in California, bought the ball from Durante for $5,000 — worth about $50,000 in today’s money — and it eventually made its way to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
Sam Gordon and Rosemary Callabrese following their appearance on a television show in New York.AP
Roger Maris advised Sal Durante to sell his record 61st home run ball.Diamond Images/Getty ImagesIn September, when Judge was chasing Maris’ American League record, The Post spoke to Durante’s son, Tom, who said his 80-year-old father had been suffering from dementia.
“He still had — and still has — all his pictures of him and Maris through the house. He would talk about it,” the son said in September. “If we asked questions about it until recently, he would have known the answers. About one-and-half months ago, his mind completely shut off.”
“He had a nice run with this,” he continued. “In 1976, when they opened up the new-old Yankee Stadium, he threw out the first ball to Graig Nettles. Then at the 25th anniversary, they invited him up there with my mom. Then on the 50th anniversary he brought out the ball — that is now in the Hall of Fame — to the Maris family.”
