The real Roger Maris struggled with greatness, but the Mountain Goats version of his life really asks some deeper questions.

Track: “Song for Roger Maris”
Album: Unreleased

John Darnielle told a crowd in New York in 1999 a story about how “Song for Roger Maris” came to be. The real Roger Maris hit 61 home runs in 1961 for the Yankees, but people were conflicted on if this should be a record or not as the previous home run king, the immortal Babe Ruth, did it in fewer games because seasons were shorter in his day. Roger Maris, then and in his later years, seemed to consistently say that he wasn’t trying to make some kind of statement of greatness or anything, he was just hitting dingers because that was his job. Darnielle was fascinated by the fact that even being, for a brief time, the best in the world at what you do can still leave you in that state. It’s a very Mountain Goats problem to have.

He joked that he cared so much he wrote a two-minute song and then never released it, which is tongue-in-cheek but also just how he works. The only other recording I can find is this one in 2001 at The Olde Club, where a fan asked for it and told Darnielle he knew the first line. Both recordings include Darnielle laughing about the song and stumbling over a line, but that’s fitting for something like this. As always, I am most interested in that fan who came to a show in 2001, where it would have been so hard to have heard this in any way, and asked for it by quoting a line from it to the man who wrote it. The story of the song is great, but that fan’s story has to be worth hearing, as well.