Fifty years ago today, on Oct. 1, 1961, Roger Maris sent a 2-0 fastball from Tracy Stallard into the right-field stands at Yankee Stadium, sparking a debate that remains unresolved a half-century later.

Yankees broadcaster Red Barber was at something of a loss for words.

“You’re seeing a lot today,” he managed. “Well, you haven’t seen anything like this, have you?”

“Nobody ever has, Red,” replied his partner, Mel Allen. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like this.”

Forty years later, Billy Crystal turned it into a movie, the sentimental “61*,” which finally gave Maris his due in popular culture. Unfortunately, the least appreciated Yankees slugger of all time had been dead for 16 years.

While he was alive, many baseball traditionalists refused to give him credit for the single-season home run record he set that day. For one thing, the mark he broke belonged to Babe Ruth, the greatest Yankee of them all. For another, Maris required a 162-game schedule to hit 61, while Ruth hit his 60 in a 154-game schedule. Perhaps most important, Maris wasn’t Mickey Mantle, his Yankees teammate, golden boy and rightful heir to Ruth’s legacy.

“They acted as though I was doing something wrong, poisoning the record books or something,” a bitter Maris said at the 1980 All-Star Game. “Do you know what I have to show for 61 home runs? Nothing. Exactly nothing.”

In fact, baseball had long since decided that Maris was unworthy of his own achievement. Hence the asterisk in the title of Crystal’s movie. Baseball never actually used the symbol, but Ford Frick, the commissioner at the time, decreed that Ruth’s record would stand beside Maris’ because it had been accomplished in fewer games.

Thirty-seven years later, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa shattered both marks in the great home run race of 1998, baseball breathed an almost audible sigh of relief. At least now the game’s highest- profile record belonged again to a legitimate slugger and not some journeyman who caught lightning in a bottle.

“Just a couple of words to tell you how happy I am to be here today,” commissioner Bud Selig told reporters in St. Louis on Sept. 6, 1998, the day McGwire hit No. 62 on his way to 70.

“This has been another one of those almost hard to articulate enthralling moments in baseball history. As some of you have written this week, there is something in the pursuit of records that only baseball delivers in terms of emotion, in terms of its captivating the public, and I am proud the way that everybody has handled themselves, in particular Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and everybody else involved. It has been quite a summer in every way, and certainly they played a major role in that.”

Maris’ mark would be surpassed six times in a four-year span from 1998 through 2001 before the myth machine came crashing down in a wave of syringes and performance- enhancing drugs. Belatedly, Selig stopped gushing about better home run hitting through chemistry.

In a twist worthy of poetry, Maris became the last port in a storm for baseball’s traditionalists. For perhaps the first time, many came to see him as the rightful holder of the single-season home run record.

The six totals ahead of his, put up by McGwire, Sosa and Barry Bonds, deserve asterisks of their own. The Baseball Writers Association of America, which refused Maris election to the Hall of Fame while he was eligible, now denies that honor to the early nominees of the steroid generation as well.

Here’s a fun fact you might not know: In the 100 years that baseball has been giving the equivalent of the most valuable player award, 29 players have won it more than once. Of those, 22 are in the Hall of Fame.

Of the other seven, four are not yet eligible (Bonds, Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez and Frank Thomas) and three have been linked to steroids (Bonds, Rodriguez and Juan Gonzalez).

Only two multiple-MVP winners not linked to performance-enhancing drugs have been denied admission: Maris, who was American League MVP in 1960 and 1961, and Dale Murphy.

The Hall is constantly revising its procedure for electing members whose eligibility has expired. A new 16-member panel is scheduled to take up the cases of players from the “golden era,” of which Maris is one, next year.

It would be a surprise at this point if baseball ever gave Maris his due. Nor does it really matter, given the loss of credibility in baseball’s official pronouncements over the intervening period.

History has vindicated Roger Maris. A half-century later, his 61 in ’61 is immortal, whatever baseball says.

Dave Krieger: 303-954-5297, dkrieger@denverpost.com or twitter.com/DaveKrieger