'Mickey Charles Mantle' (
October 20,
1931 –
August 13,
1995) was an
American baseball player who was inducted into the
National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974.
He played his entire 18-year major-league professional career for the
New York Yankees, winning 3
American League MVP titles and playing for 16
All-Star teams. Mantle played on 12 pennant winners and 7 World Championship clubs. He still holds the records for most
World Series home runs (18), RBIs (40), runs (42), walks (43), extra-base hits (26), and total bases (123). Mantle died on August 13, 1995 at age 63 from
liver cancer after years of
alcohol abuse.
Youth
Mickey Mantle was born in
Spavinaw, Oklahoma. He was named in honor of
Mickey Cochrane, the Hall of Fame catcher from the
Philadelphia Athletics, by his father, who was an amateur player and fervent fan. Apparently his father was not aware that Cochrane's real first name was Gordon. According to the book ''Mickey Mantle: America's Prodigal Son,'' by Tony Castro, in later life, Mickey expressed relief that his father had not known this, as he would have hated to be named Gordon. Mantle always spoke warmly of his father, and said he was the bravest man he ever knew. "No boy ever loved his father more," he said. His father died of cancer at the age of 39, just as his son was starting his career. Mantle said one of the great heartaches of his life was that he never told his father he loved him.
When Mantle was 4 years old, the family moved to the nearby town of
Commerce, Oklahoma. Mantle was an all-around athlete at
Commerce High School, playing
basketball as well as
football (he was offered a football scholarship by the
University of Oklahoma) in addition to his first love,
baseball. His football playing nearly ended his athletic career, and indeed his life. Kicked in the shin during a game, Mantle's leg soon became
infected with
osteomyelitis, a crippling disease that would have been incurable just a few years earlier. A midnight ride to
Tulsa, Oklahoma, enabled Mantle to be treated with newly available
penicillin, saving his leg from
amputation. He suffered from the effects of the disease for the rest of his life, and it probably led to many other injuries that hampered his accomplishments. Additionally, Mantle's osteomyelitic condition exempted him from
military service, which caused him to become very unpopular with fans, (Castro 2002:61-70) as his earliest days in baseball coincided with the
Korean War (though he was still selected as an all-star the year his medical exemption was given, and was known as the "fastest man to first base.") This unpopularity, mainly with older fans, dramatically reversed after he finished second to
Roger Maris in the pursuit of
Babe Ruth's home run record in 1961.
Playing career
Mickey had played
shortstop in the minor leagues. His first semi-professional team was the Baxter Springs (Kan.) Whiz Kids. In 1948, Yankees' scout Tom Greenwade came to Baxter Springs to watch Mickey's teammate, third baseman Billy Johnson, in a Whiz Kids game. During the game Mickey hit two homers, one righty and one lefty, into a river well past the ballpark's fences. Greenwade wanted to sign Mickey on the spot but, upon finding out that he was only 16 and still in high school, told him he would come back to sign him with the Yankees on his graduation day in 1949. Good to his word, Greenwade was there right on schedule, signing Mickey to a minor-league contract with the Yankees Class D team in Independence, Kan. Mickey signed for $400 to play the remainder of the season with an $1,100 signing bonus. Tom Greenwade was quoted in the press release announcing Mickey's signing as saying that Mickey was the best prospect he'd ever seen. Because of his blinding speed, he was dubbed "The Commerce Comet."
On arrival at the Yankees April 17, 1951, he became the regular
right fielder (playing only a few games at shortstop and
third base in 1952 to 1955). In his first game with the Yankees, he wore uniform #6. In his first World Series Game, October 4, 1951, the Yankees were pitted against the Giants for what was Willie Mays' first World Series Game as well.
Mantle moved to center field in 1952, replacing
Joe DiMaggio, who retired at the end of the 1951 season after one year playing alongside Mantle in the Yankees outfield. He played center field until 1967, when he was moved to
first base. Among Mantle's many accomplishments are all-time
World Series records for
home runs (18), runs scored (42), and
runs batted in (40).
Mantle also hit some of the longest
home runs in
Major League history. On
September 10, 1960, he hit a ball left-handed that cleared the right-field roof at
Tiger Stadium in
Detroit and, based on where it was found, was estimated years later by historian Mark Gallagher to have traveled 643 feet (196 m). Another Mantle homer, this one hit right-handed off
Chuck Stobbs at
Griffith Stadium in
Washington on
April 17, 1953, was measured by Yankees traveling secretary Red Patterson (hence the term "tape-measure home run") to have traveled 565 feet (172 m). Though it is apparent that they are actually the distances where the balls ended up after bouncing several times
[1], there is no doubt that they both landed more than 500 feet (152 m) from home plate. At least twice Mantle hit balls off the third-deck facade at Yankee Stadium, nearly becoming the only player to hit a fair ball out of the stadium. On May 22, 1963, against Kansas City's Bill Fischer, Mantle hit a ball that fellow players and fans noted was still rising when it hit the 110-foot high facade, then caromed back onto the playing field. It was later estimated that the ball would have traveled 620 feet had it not been impeded by the ornate and distinctive facade. While physicists might question those estimates, on August 12, 1964, he hit one whose distance was undoubted: a center field drive that cleared the 22-foot
batter's eye screen, beyond the 461-foot marker at the Stadium.
Although he was a feared power hitter from either side of the plate, Mantle considered himself a better right-handed hitter even though he had more home runs from the left side of the plate: 372 left-handed, 164 right-handed.
[2] However, it should be noted that there are more right-handed pitchers than left-handed ones, so a preponderance of his at bats were from the left side of the plate. In addition, many of his left-handed home runs were struck at
Yankee Stadium, a park that was, and is, notoriously friendly to left-handed hitters and brutal on right-handed hitters. When Mantle played for the Yankees, the distance to the right-field foul pole stood at a mere 296 feet (90 m), while the left-field power alley was a distant 457 feet (139 m) from the plate.
In 1956, Mantle won the
Hickok Belt as top professional athlete of the year. This was his "favorite summer," a year that saw him win the
Triple Crown, leading the majors with a .353
batting average, 52 HR and 130 RBI on the way to his first of three MVP awards. Though the
American League Triple Crown has been won twice since then, Mantle remains the last man to win the Major League Triple Crown.
Also in 1956, Mantle made a (talking) cameo appearance in a song recorded by
Teresa Brewer, "I Love Mickey", which extolled Mantle's power hitting. The song was included in one of the ''
Baseball's Greatest Hits'' CD's.
Mantle may have been even more dominant in 1957, leading the league in runs and walks, batting a career-high .365 (second in the league to
Ted Williams' .388), and hitting into a league-low five double plays. Mantle reached base more times than he made outs (319 to 312), one of two seasons in which he achieved the feat.
On
January 16, 1961, Mantle became the highest-paid baseball player by signing a $75,000 contract. DiMaggio,
Hank Greenberg and
Ted Williams, who had just retired, had been paid over $100,000 in a season, and Ruth had a peak salary of $80,000. But Mantle became the highest-paid active player of his time.
During the 1961 season, Mantle and teammate Roger Maris chased Babe Ruth's single season home-run record. Five years earlier, in 1956, Mantle had challenged Ruth's record for most of the season and the New York
press had been protective of Ruth on that occasion also. When Mantle finally fell short, finishing with 54, there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief from the New York traditionalists. Nor had the New York press been all that kind to Mantle in his early years with the team: he struck out frequently, was injury-prone, was a "true hick" from
Oklahoma, and was perceived as being distinctly inferior to his predecessor in center field,
Joe DiMaggio. Over the course of time, however, Mantle (with a little help from his teammate
Whitey Ford, a native of New York's Borough of
Queens) had gotten better at "schmoozing" with the New York media, and had gained the favor of the press. This was a talent that Maris, a blunt-spoken upper-Midwesterner, was never willing or able to cultivate; as a result, he wore the "surly" jacket for his duration with the Yankees. So as 1961 progressed, the Yanks were now "Mickey Mantle's team" and Maris was ostracized as the "outsider," and "not a true Yankee." The press seemed to root for Mantle and to belittle Maris. But Mantle was felled by an abscessed hip late in the season, leaving Maris to break the record.
In game three, bottom of the ninth inning of the
1964 World Series against the
St. Louis Cardinals, Mickey Mantle blasted Barney Schultz's first pitch into the upper right field stands at Yankee Stadium, which won the game for the Yankees, 2-1. This "walk-off" home run is arguably the most dramatic hit made by Mantle in his entire illustrious career.
Injuries
Mickey Mantle's career was fraught with injury. Beginning in high school he accumulated both acute and chronic bone and cartilage injuries in his legs. Applying thick wraps to both of his knees became a pre-game ritual, and by the end of his career simply swinging a bat caused him to fall to one knee in pain. Baseball scholars often ponder "what if" he had not been injured, and he was able to lead a healthy career.
[3] [4]
As a sophomore in high school, his left shin was kicked during football practice. It swelled and he developed the bone disease
osteomyelitis. It became so serious doctors wanted to amputate the leg. His mother, however, refused and drove Mickey 175 miles to the Crippled Children's Hospital in Oklahoma City. There Mickey was treated with
penicillin, receiving doses every three hours around the clock. He responded, and his leg was saved. The injury was just the first among many that would hinder his playing career.
[5]
As a 19 year old rookie in his first
World Series, Mantle tore the cartilage in his right knee on a pop fly by
Willie Mays while playing right field. Joe DiMaggio, in the last year of his career, was playing center field. Mays' pop-up was hit to deep right center, and as both Mantle and DiMaggio converged to make the catch, DiMaggio called for it at the last second, causing Mantle to suddenly stop short as his cleats caught a drainage cover in the outfield grass. His knee twisted awkwardly and he instantly fell. Witnesses say it looked "like he had been shot." He was carried off the field on a stretcher and spent the rest of the World Series watching from the hospital.
[6]
Retirement
Mantle announced his retirement on
March 1, 1969, and in 1974, as soon as he was eligible, he was inducted into the
Baseball Hall of Fame; his uniform number 7 was retired by the Yankees. (He had briefly worn uniform number 6, as a continuation of
Babe Ruth's 3,
Lou Gehrig's 4, and
Joe DiMaggio's 5, in 1951, but his poor performance led to his temporary demotion to a
minor league in mid-season. When he returned,
Bobby Brown, who had worn number 6 before Mantle, had reclaimed it, so Mantle was given number 7 by Yankees longtime equipment manager, Pete Sheehy.) When he retired, the Mick was third on the all-time home run list with 536.
Despite being among the best-paid players of the pre-free agency era, Mantle was a poor businessman, having made several bad investments. His lifestyle would be restored to one of luxury, and his hold on his fans raised to an amazing level, by his position of leadership in the sports
memorabilia craze that swept the USA beginning in the 1980s. Mantle was a prize guest at any baseball card show, commanding fees far in excess of any other player for his appearances and autographs. (Castro 2002:252-253) This popularity continues long after his death, as Mantle-related items far outsell those of any other player except possibly Babe Ruth, whose items, due to the distance of years, now exist in far smaller quantities.
Despite the failure of Mickey Mantle's Country Cookin' restaurants in the early 1970s,
Mickey Mantle's Restaurant & Sports Bar opened in New York at 42 Central Park South (59th Street) in 1988. It became one of New York's most popular restaurants, and his original
Yankee Stadium Monument Park plaque is displayed at the front entrance. Mantle let others run the business operations, but made frequent appearances. But his drinking led radio show host
Don Imus to joke, "If you get to Mickey Mantle's restaurant after midnight, you win a free dinner if you can guess which table Mickey's under."
In 1983, Mantle worked at the Claridge Resort and
Casino in
Atlantic City, N.J., as a greeter and community representative. Most of his activities were representing the Claridge in golf tournaments and other charity events. Mantle was suspended from baseball by
Commissioner Bowie Kuhn on the grounds that any affiliation with gambling is grounds for being placed on the "permanently ineligible" list. Kuhn warned Mantle before he accepted the position that he would have to place him on the list if he went to work there.
Hall of Famer Willie Mays, who had also taken a similar position, had already had action taken against him. Mantle accepted the position, regardless, as he felt the rule was "stupid." He was reinstated on
March 18, 1985, by Kuhn's successor,
Peter Ueberroth.
Troubled family
On
December 23,
1951, he married Merlyn Johnson in their hometown of
Commerce, Oklahoma; they had four sons. In an autobiography, Mantle said he married Merlyn not because he loved her, but because his domineering father told him to. While his drinking became public knowledge during his lifetime, the press kept his many marital infidelities quiet.
The couple had four children, all sons: Mickey Jr. (born in 1953), David (1955), Billy (1957, whom Mickey named for
Billy Martin, his best friend among his Yankee teammates) and Danny (1960). Like Mickey, Merlyn and the sons all became alcoholics, and Billy developed
Hodgkin's disease as several previous Mantle men had. This led to him developing a dependence on prescription painkillers.
Mickey Mantle has four grandchildren. Mickey Jr. had a daughter, Mallory. David and his wife Marla have a daughter, Marilyn. Danny and his wife Kay have a son, Will, and a daughter, Chloe. Danny and Will played a father and son watching Mickey (played by
Thomas Jane) hit a home run in the 2001 film "
61
★ ."
Mickey and Merlyn had been separated for 15 years when he died, but neither ever filed for divorce. Mantle lived with his agent,
Greer Johnson. Johnson was taken to federal court in
November 1997 by the Mantle family to stop her from auctioning many of Mantle's personal items, including a lock of
hair, a neck brace and expired
credit cards.
During the final years of his life, Mantle purchased a luxury condominium on
Lake Oconee near
Greensboro, Georgia, near Greer Johnson's home, and frequently stayed there for months at a time. He occasionally attended the local Methodist church, and sometimes ate Sunday dinner with members of the congregation. He was well-liked by the citizens of Greensboro, and seemed to like them in return. This was probably because the town respected Mantle's privacy, refusing either to talk about their famous neighbor to outsiders or to direct fans to his home. In one interview, Mickey stated that the people of Greensboro had "gone out of their way to make me feel welcome, and I've found something there I haven't enjoyed since I was a kid."
Mantle's last days
Well before he finally sought treatment for alcoholism, Mantle admitted that his hard living had hurt his playing and his family. His rationale was that the men in his family had all died young, so he expected to die young as well. "I'm not gonna be cheated," he would say. As the years passed, and he realized he had outlived the men in his family — not realizing that working in mines and inhaling
lead and
zinc dust aided Hodgkin's and other cancers as much as heredity did — he frequently used a line popularized by football legend
Bobby Layne, a
Dallas neighbor and friend of Mantle's who also died in part due to alcohol abuse: "If I'd known I was gonna live this long, I'd have taken a lot better care of myself."
Mantle's wife and sons all completed treatment for alcoholism, and told him he needed to do the same. He checked into the
Betty Ford Clinic on
January 7,
1994, after being told by a doctor that his
liver was so badly damaged, "Your next drink could be your last." Also helping Mantle to make the decision to go to the
Betty Ford Clinic was
Pat Summerall, a sportscaster who had played for the
New York Giants football team while they played at
Yankee Stadium, and was now a recovering alcoholic and a member of the same Dallas-area country club as Mantle.
Shortly after completing treatment, his son Billy died on
March 12, at age 36, of heart trouble, brought on by years of
substance abuse. Despite the fears of those who knew him that this tragedy would send him back to drinking, he remained sober. Mickey Jr. later died of
liver cancer on
December 20,
2000, at age 47. Danny later battled
prostate cancer.
Mantle spoke with great remorse of his drinking in a "
Sports Illustrated" article, "I Was Killing Myself" – My Life As An Alcoholic
[7] He said that he was telling the same old stories, and realizing how much of them involved himself and others being drunk, and he decided they weren't funny anymore. He admitted he had often been cruel and hurtful to family, friends and fans because of his alcoholism, and sought to make amends. He became a
born-again Christian due to his former teammate
Bobby Richardson, an ordained
Baptist minister, sharing his faith with him. After the bombing of the
Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in
Oklahoma City on
April 19,
1995, he joined with fellow Oklahoman and Yankee legend
Bobby Murcer to raise money for the victims.
Mantle received a
liver transplant at
Baylor University Medical Center in
Dallas, on
June 8,
1995, after his liver had been damaged by years of chronic
alcoholism,
cirrhosis and
hepatitis C. In July, he had recovered enough to deliver a press conference at Baylor, and noted that many fans had looked to him as a
role model. "This is a role model: Don't be like me," he said. He also established the Mickey Mantle Foundation to raise awareness for organ donations. Soon, he was back in the hospital, where it was found that his
liver cancer spread throughout his body.
Mickey Mantle died on
August 13,
1995, at
Baylor University Medical Center in
Dallas. He was 63 years old. During the first Yankee home game after Mantle's passing,
Eddie Layton played "
Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on the
Hammond organ at Yankee Stadium because Mickey had once told him it was his favorite song. The Yankees played the rest of the season with black mourning bands topped by a small number 7 on their left sleeves.
Mantle was interred in the
Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery in Dallas. In eulogizing Mantle, sportscaster
Bob Costas described him as "a fragile hero to whom we had an emotional attachment so strong and lasting that it defied logic." Costas added: "In the last year of his life, Mickey Mantle, always so hard on himself, finally came to accept and appreciate the distinction between a role model and a
hero. The first, he often was not. The second, he always will be. And, in the end, people got it."
[8]
Honors
On Mickey Mantle Day,
June 8, 1969, in addition to the retirement of his uniform number 7, Mantle was given a plaque that would hang on the center field wall at Yankee Stadium, near the monuments to
Babe Ruth,
Lou Gehrig and
Miller Huggins. The plaque was given to him by
Joe DiMaggio, and Mantle then gave DiMaggio a similar plaque, telling the crowd, "His should be just a little bit higher than mine." When Yankee Stadium was reopened in 1976 following its renovation, the plaques and monuments were moved to Monument Park, behind the left-center field fence. Shortly before his death, Mantle videotaped a message to be played on Old-Timers' Day, which he was too ill to attend. He said, "When I die, I wanted on my tombstone, 'A great teammate.' But I didn't think it would be this soon." The words were indeed carved on the plaque marking his resting place at the family mausoleum in Dallas. On
August 25, 1996, about a year after his death, Mantle's Monument Park plaque was replaced with a monument, bearing the words "A great teammate" and keeping a phrase that had been included on the original plaque: "A magnificent Yankee who left a legacy of unequaled courage."
Mantle and former teammate
Whitey Ford were elected to the
Baseball Hall of Fame together in 1974, Mantle in his first year of eligibility, Ford in his second.
In 1999, "
The Sporting News" placed Mantle at 17th on its list "The 100 Greatest Baseball Players." That same year, he was one of 100 nominees for the
Major League Baseball All-Century Team, and was chosen by fan balloting as one of the team's outfielders.
ESPN's "SportsCentury" series that ran in 1999 ranked him No. 37 on its "50 Greatest Athletes" series.
In 2006, Mantle was featured on a
United States postage stamp [9]. The stamp is one of a series of four honoring baseball sluggers, the others being
Mel Ott,
Roy Campanella and
Hank Greenberg.
See also
★
50 home run club
★
500 home run club
★
My Favorite Summer 1956
★
Top 500 home run hitters of all time
★
List of major league players with 2,000 hits
★
List of Major League Baseball players with 1000 runs
★
List of Major League Baseball players with 1000 RBI
★
Hitting for the cycle
★
Triple Crown
★
List of Major League Baseball RBI champions
★
List of Major League Baseball batting champions
★
List of Major League Baseball home run champions
★
List of Major League Baseball runs scored champions
★
Major League Baseball hitters with three home runs in one game
★
Major League Baseball titles leaders
References
★ Castro, Tony, ''Mickey Mantle: America's Prodigal Son'', 2002, ISBN 1-57488-384-4
★ Gallagher, Mark, ''Explosion! Mickey Mantle's Legendary Home Runs'', 1987, ISBN 0-87795-853-X
★ ''Mickey Mantle: His Final Inning'' by
American Tract Society, 1998, ISBN 1-55837-138-9
External links
★
★
7: ''The Mickey Mantle Novel'' by Peter Golenbock
★
Downloadable audio interview with sportswriter Peter Golenbock (''Dynasty, Bats, Balls, Guidry, The Bronx Zoo'') on his controversial book ''7: The Mickey Mantle Novel''
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