Let \(\Omega \in L^1(\mathbb {S}^{n-1}) \) and consider the maximal function \(M_\Omega f(x)=\sup _{r>0}\frac{1}{r^n}\int _{|y|<r}| \Omega (y/|y|)||f(x-y)|dy,\ \ x\in \mathbb {R}^n.\) We prove that \(M_\Omega \) is of weak type (1, 1) if the rough kernel function \(\Omega \) belongs to the block space \(B_2^{0,0}(\mathbb {S}^{n-1})\) . The main result substantially extends a classical result of Christ and Rubio de Francia (Invent Math 93:225–237, 1988).