It was the summer in which two Yankees, everybody's hero, Mickey Mantle, and a farm kid from South Dakota, Roger Maris, staged a stunning assault on Ruth's record.

61* expresses how The Sporting News covered that exciting summer. From its spring training dispatches, through each and every home run, through the controversial so-called 'asterisk' ruling, to the final record-breaking home run, 61* chronicles in week-by-week format the home run race, up to and including the Yankees' World Series victory that year.