My 1961

Sixty years after Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth’s “unbreakable” home-run record, author Andy Strasberg shares his obsession with baseball, life, and a remarkable era in American history in a new memoir, My 1961.


My 1961 recounts a thirteen-year-old’s infatuation with baseball in a season dominated by Roger Maris’s bid to break Babe Ruth’s single-season home-run record in the midst of the New York Yankees’ pursuit of a World Series championship. In selecting Maris as his personal idol—his boyhood friends, and seemingly much of the world, favored Mickey Mantle—he discovered values that would redirect his path toward adulthood, detailed in daily entries throughout the course of an unforgettable year.


Bronx-raised author Andy Strasberg re-creates that year of adolescent challenges and growing self-awareness in this intriguing combination journal-memoir-scrapbook. Strasberg’s passion for baseball goes beyond that of a devout fan—he chronicles the events of ’61 through a captivating blend of firsthand observations, diligent research, and humorous personal anecdotes. 

You’ll spend 1961 escorted by an earnest student of life who confronts authority wherever he meets it—whether in the classroom, on the city’s streets, or in a synagogue.


Along with a vivid account of Roger Maris’s chase of the home-run record, you’ll witness Strasberg’s devious money-making schemes to collect baseball cards, his abrupt departure from religious studies to devote his life to baseball, an ill-fated attempt at a life of petty crime, and his exhilaration at snagging a baseball in Yankee Stadium. You’ll also witness a thirteen-year-old’s growing awareness of the world around him, trying to make sense of developments like the Cuban missile crisis, the Cold War, and racial integration.


My 1961 captures the transition of a boy from childhood to adolescence, a boy deeply influenced by a nation’s pastime that he claimed all to himself.