Maple Grove, MN -- (SBWIRE) -- 06/13/2014 -- Maple Grove, MN – While Roger Maris’ professional baseball career was short, he packed a record-breaking sixty-one home runs and a wealth of other achievements into just twelve seasons. As a native of Fargo, North Dakota, Maris’ career gripped the region at the same time many major global events played out to the rest of the world. In a compelling new book, fellow Fargo native Gregory Rom chronicles Maris’ career within the context of wider Major League Baseball from 1957 through 1968.

‘Roger Maris and a Cast of Hundreds’ fuses a valuable baseball historical narrative with a look at how Major League Baseball evolved and shaped American society during this pivotal decade. The story will delight those who lived through the period, as well as younger fans who never want to lose sight of their sport’s gripping history.

Synopsis:

In his historical narrative, "Roger Maris and a Cast of Hundreds", Gregory Rom describes the events in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the years 1957 through 1968. This was a simpler time when there were fewer teams playing in MLB. The American and National League pennant pursuits seemed to unfold with more apparent drama over the course of the summer. In his unique approach, Rom reports on individual games of the leading teams in each pennant race. In those years, the League pennant pursuits led directly to the World Series. Rom summarizes the key games and player performances of each World Series of the twelve-year period. In the midst of his game-by-game narrative, Rom skillfully interweaves background information to provide a historical baseball context about the most successful players of the era, which he calls interludes, and even references important historical events in the world, which took place on the same days when some of the important games were played.

“I’m incredibly close to and personally invested in this story,” admits Rom. “I was born in Fargo and attended public schools from 1957 through 1968; the same years that spanned Maris’ career. Due to this alignment and synergy, I truly feel that I have been led in a spiritual way to write this narrative baseball history. The Fargo-Moorhead community still celebrates the life and legacy of Roger Maris through an annual golf tournament; but I wanted to be able to reach more people through writing this narrative.”

Continuing, “My parents took me to my first Major League Baseball game in Chicago in 1958 and then, beginning in 1961, also brought me to the Twin Cities for games of the Minnesota Twins. I dedicate this book to them. I have so many happy baseball-centric memories of our time together and know that the sport resonates in this way with millions of other families around the globe. They can now strengthen their knowledge and passion through the published history I have compiled.”

‘Roger Maris and a Cast of Hundreds’, published by Over the Moon Books, is available now: http://amzn.to/1pJxChU.

About Gregory Rom
Gregory Rom is a 37-year resident of Maple Grove, MN. He was born in Fargo, ND and is a 1968 graduate of Moorhead High and later a graduate of Concordia College. The MLB career of Fargo's own Roger Maris spanned the twelve years from 1957 through 1968. In that time, Maris appeared in seven World Series with the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals. People in the Fargo-Moorhead area followed his outstanding baseball career on a daily basis and were greatly saddened by his death from cancer at the early age of 51. In his heart, Rom believes that the convergence in time of his twelve years in public school with the twelve-year baseball career of Roger Maris has in a spiritual way led him to write his narrative. By describing those baseball games from some fifty years ago, Rom hopes that readers of this narrative can imagine themselves attending them in a spiritual way.