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Around the league, Maris is known as a "loner" who shuns locker-room monkeyshines, rarely displays emotion on or off the field. After a ball game, still in uniform, Maris sits quietly on a stool in front of his locker for an hour or more, slowly consuming cans of beer and smoking cigarettes. "I just have to get the game out of my system," he says. Maris never answers fan mail personally ("I got enough work to do without writing letters"), makes few charity appearances. "The club shouldn't expect you to go to hospitals. They don't ask, and I don't go." He avoids the autograph hounds who cluster daily outside the players' gate. "Kids have gotten too rough. They show no appreciation. They walk on your shoes and half tear your clothes off. I just walk away—I don't want to get one of their pencils in my eye."
In only his fifth major league season, Maris was already assured of making about $67,000: some $42,000 in salary and World Series bonus, another $25,000 in fees for personal appearances and "testimonials" for such assorted products as Camel cigarettes, Infra-Rub and Aqua Velva after-shave lotion. But his busy agent, Frank Scott (other clients: Mantle, Warren Spahn, Willie Mays), estimates that movie and magazine rights to Roger's life story, royalties from a "Maris" candy bar and TV appearances (at $7,500 each) may boost his income by as much as $250,000.
With all that money, Maris could easily afford to pay the $2,500 "ransom" demanded last week by the Baltimore fan who caught the ball the Yankees' new hero hit for his 59th homer. But like a true big league ballplayer, Maris was not about to shake loose a single nickel. "I'll give him no more than another ball, autographed, in exchange," said Maris firmly. "That ball means nothing to him—only to me and the Hall of Fame."