This is the author’s account day by day of the 1961 season which his favorite ball player for the Yankees Roger Maris is attempting to break Babe Ruth’s record which we all know he did. Here though he not only takes you through the baseball season but also his life as a thirteen-year-old and the goings on around him at school and in the World at that time. I found that I was able to relate to this story very much though I was going through all of his things in the seventies but some of the same questions about the World I would have then as well. I found this to be an enjoyable read, especially the epilogue.

My 1961 is a memoir relating how the author experienced the events of the 1961 home run race between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees and reflected on the impact of other world events of that time. I wasn’t born until August of that year, so my knowledge of that era comes from reading baseball biographies and history books, or watching films.


The author turned 13 during 1961, and since most Yankee fans were rooting for Mantle to break Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record, he chose Roger Maris as his favorite player. As he approached tying and then breaking Ruth’s record, Maris was put under intense pressure from the fans and media as the chase for 61 home runs brought the nation’s interest to a fever pitch.

Besides Mantle and Maris, My 1961 gives readers a look at life in New York City in the 1960s plus a young boy’s thoughts about baseball cards, music, and girls. I gave My 1961 five stars on Goodreads. It’s a sentimental snapshot of a simpler time when newspapers, magazines, tv, and radio were the only media available.

I absolutely devoured this memoir by Andy Strasberg. He was 13 in 1961, the year that Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were competing to break Babe Ruth's single year home run record set in 1927.

This memoir is about baseball, but it is also about a boy, one who loved his family and friends in White Plains, New York, who also lived and breathed baseball, devoted to his hero Roger Maris. This memoir is also about 1961 - the year of the freedom riders, the Berlin Wall, the Peace Corps, growing tension between the US and the Soviet Union and the space race.

If you enjoy baseball, you will love this book! I sure did! In fact, the day it published I bought a copy and sent it to my brother who was also 13 in 1961. The illustrations and photographs are marvelous.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this opportunity to read and review "My 1961" by Andy Strasberg

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

This is the author’s personal day-by-day account of the 1961 calendar year, focusing on Roger Maris’ chase of Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record. While described as coming from the author’s diary of that year, it is obvious that research after the fact was completed, but it does not take away from the story.

I’ve been following baseball since 1973, and consider myself a baseball nerd, yet Mr. Sternberg provided some baseball facts regarding that season which I never knew, and that made the book all the more interesting.

Interspersed with the Yankees/Maris stories, Andy also weaves in personal anecdotes from his life, along with social observations and commentary on that pivotal year of 1961, and the many newsworthy events that occurred.

The book can get quite mundane at times, but the payoff comes in Andy’s December 31st entry, and then the epilogue and notes. Hang with it, those last sections are fascinating, touching, and emotional.

Review cross-posted to Goodreads.