One hot summer afternoon at Yankee Stadium, during a game between the Detroit Tigers and New York Yankees in the late 1950’s, some Yankee fans in the rightfield bleachers were doing what they do best—taunting the opposition.

             “Hey, Kaline!,” one fan yelled at the Tigers’ superb rightfielder, Al Kaline.  “You ain’t half the ballplayer Mantle is!” 

            “Kid,” Kaline replied, “nobody is half the player Mantle is!”

 

            And that, in a nutshell, sums up the awe in which Mantle was held by both fans and peers alike. 

 

            Mickey Mantle was a god among mortals through the 1950’s and on into the early 1960’s, the baseball equivalent of Achille’s—a powerful Greek god with a fatal flaw, a body that betrayed him.

 _______________________________________________________________________“There’s never been anyone like this kid which we got from Joplin.  He has more speed than any slugger and more slug than any speedster—and nobody has ever had more of both of them together.”-- Casey Stengel, assessing the talents of Mantle early in his career_______________________________________________________________________ 

            If ever an individual was destined to be a Major League baseball player at birth, it was Mickey Charles Mantle.

 

            When Mantle came into this world on Oct. 20, 1931, his father, Mutt Mantle, laid a baseball beside his newborn son and christened him with the first name of Mickey in tribute to the father’s favorite player, Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane.

 

            Determined that his son, the eldest of five children, would not spend a lifetime in the Oklahoma lead and zinc mines as he had, Mutt Mantle began teaching him to switch-hit at an early age, convinced that the game of baseball was headed towards a specialized time when platooning would become commonplace.  His plans worked to perfection as Mickey Mantle would ultimately become the greatest switch-hitter in Major League history, pounding out 536 home runs and capturing three Most Valuable Player awards in an 18-year career that would ultimately land him in baseball’s Hall of Fame.

 

            But despite all of his accomplishments and gaudy statistics—and he had plenty of both-- Mantle’s career would be remembered as much for what might have been as for what was.  And while his considerable statistics help to tell part of Mantle’s story, they can’t completely explain the fan devotion of those who grew up watching him play or of the esteem he was held in by his peers.

 

            Part of the Mantle mystique derived from the incredible power he generated with one of the most fearsome swings the Major Leagues have ever seen, producing some of the longest home runs ever recorded.  But another factor was the fragility of that same muscular body, resulting in numerous injuries over the course of his career that prevented him from putting up the kind of final statistics that most observers felt he was capable of.

 

            As Chicago White Sox second baseman Nellie Fox once put it, “On two legs, Mickey Mantle would have been the greatest ballplayer whoever lived.”

“He’s the best prospect I’ve ever seen.”

-- Branch Rickey

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            An outstanding three-sport athlete at Oklahoma’s Commerce High School, Mantle was signed by the New York Yankees to a $1,500 contract by legendary scout Tom Greenwade the day after he graduated in 1949.

 

            His first stop in the minors was D League ball in Independence, Kansas where the 17-year-old wunderkind got off to a slow start, hitting only .225 as late as July 10^th.  By the end of his first professional season, however, Mantle had posted a .313 batting average and collected 15 doubles, seven triples and seven homers, in addition to driving in 63 runs in 89 games.

 

            The next year Mantle burned up the Class C Western Association for the Joplin Miners, leading the league with a .383 batting average and 141 runs scored while driving in a whopping 136 runs and pounding out 30 doubles, 12 triples and 26 homers.

 

             With Joe DiMaggio still patrolling centerfield for the parent club, the Yankees thought they could mold Mantle into a shortstop in those early minor league days.  They were wrong.  At Independence, Mantle committed 47 errors in just 89 games for a fielding average of .886.  At Joplin the following season, he made 55 more miscues (.908 fielding average) in 137 games. 

 

            In his autobiography “The Education of a Baseball Player”, written in 1967, Mickey recalled, “I was a thorough-going butcher in the infield and I am sure every scout who ever saw me, as well as (Joplin manager) Harry Craft and any others who might have watched or managed me, reported emphatically that I was no shortstop.”

 

            In fact, Craft, sent the Yankees the following scouting report:

“"He can run, steal bases, throw, hit for average, and hit with power like I've never seen. Just don't put him at shortstop." _____________________________________________________________"You guys got to see this kid we have in camp. Out of class C ball, hits 'em both ways - five-hundred feet both ways! You've got to see him."

            Despite his fielding woes, the Yankees brought Mantle to training camp prior to the start of the 1951 season.  His combination of speed—he got down the first base line in a mercurial 3.1 seconds and circled the bases in just 13 seconds in one timed drilled that spring—and power, coupled with his .402 batting average in exhibition play, earned him a promotion to the big club.  The Yankees assigned Mantle jersey number six— a not-so-subtle hint at the lineage he was expected to join…Babe Ruth (No. 3), Lou Gehrig (No. 4) and DiMaggio (No. 5).

            But after a fast start, Mantle began to struggle at the plate, striking out frequently.  Ultimately, the Yankee front office determined he needed more seasoning and demoted him to Triple A Kansas City of the American Association.  His confidence shaken, Mantle’s troubles continued at Kansas City (he went hitless in 22 straight at bats) to the point that he was ready to call it quits.  He called his dad, Mutt, to tell him so one night.

            “I’ll be right there,” Mutt promised his eldest son.

            “When my father met me in Kansas City,” Mantle recalled years later, “I could not speak for crying.  My throat was squeezed tight and tears ran down my cheeks.”

            Expecting his father to offer words of comfort and support, the younger Mantle was startled to receive the tongue lashing of his life, one that he credited for turning his career around.

            “If that’s the way you’re going to take this,” Mutt told his son, “you don’t belong in baseball anyway.  If you have no more guts than that, just forget about the game completely.  Come back and work in the mines, like me.”

            “There was no trace of sympathy in his eye,” said Mickey.  “I had been looking for a comforting pat on the back and I had not even gotten a handshake.”

            Mantle responded to his father’s words by blasting two home runs that night for Kansas City.  He would go on to hit .361 with 11 home runs and 50 RBI in 40 games for KC before getting called back to New York for good.

            He finished his rookie season for the Yanks with a .267 batting average, 13 home runs and 65 runs-batted-in, as well as a new uniform number—7.  The future again looked bright…until Game Two of the 1951 World Series.

            Mantle, playing rightfield that day, started to chase a high fly ball hit by another heralded rookie, the Giants’ brilliant Willie Mays, when, at the last second, he heard DiMaggio quietly announce “I’ve got it.”  In an attempt to avoid colliding with the legendary Yankee centerfielder, Mantle got his right foot caught in the rubber cover of a Yankee Stadium sprinkler head and his right knee exploded, a bone protruding out of the side of his leg.  The torn ligaments in his knee, the first of many debilitating injuries that would befell him in his career, was not the worst news Mantle would receive, however.

            The next day, as he was getting out of a taxicab to enter the hospital for knee surgery, Mantle leaned on his father’s shoulder for support.  Mutt crumpled to the ground.  Mickey would soon discover that his father was in the late stages of Hodgkin’s Disease, a Mantle family curse that would ultimately claim Mutt’s life at the age of 39.

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“Hornsby could run like anything but like this kid.  Cobb was the fastest I ever saw for bein’ sensational of the bases but he was not a long hitter.  There’ve been a lot of fast men but none as big and strong as Mantle.  He’s gonna be around a long time, if he can stay well, that fella of mine.”   

          Mantle rebounded from his terrible knee injury with a solid sophomore campaign in 1952, blasting 23 homers and knocking in 87 runs while batting .311 to help the Yanks capture their fourth straight American League pennant.  He would also play a key role in spurring New York to its fourth straight World Championship by hitting .345 with two home runs in a seven-game World Series triumph over the arch-rival Brooklyn Dodgers that October.  With the Yanks down three games-to-two, Mantle hit the first World Series home run of his career in the top of the eighth inning off of Dodger right-hander Billy Loes to provide the margin of victory in a 3-2 decision, forcing a winner-take-all Game Seven.  With that game tied 2-2, Mantle took Dodger ace reliever Joe Black deep in the top of the seventh to put the Yanks ahead in a game they eventually won 4-2.

 

            The homers were his first in World Series competition.  The Commerce Comet would go on to hammer a record 18 World Series home runs, eclipsing the mark of 16 held by Babe Ruth.

 

            The Yankees would stretch their pennant-winning and World Series-winning streaks to five years in a row in 1953.  Mantle had another solid season (.295, 21 homers and 92 RBI) and hit two more World Series homers—a two-out, two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth inning that snapped a 2-2 tie and lifted the Yankees to a 4-2 victory in Game Two and a grand slam in Game Five with the Series tied at two games apiece that propelled New York to a pivotal 11-7 triumph.  But it was a blast in early April of that season that would help to create the legendary status Mantle would eventually achieve.

 

            Playing at old Griffith Stadium on April 17, 1953 against the perennial last place Washington Senators, Mantle took a pitch from Nats lefthander Chuck Stobbs and deposited it an estimated 565 feet away from home plate, heralding the birth of the “tape measure” home run.

 

            According to a newspaper account the next day, “The ball caromed over the top of the 60-foot auxiliary scoreboard in deep left field and landed several houses away from the ballpark.”

 

            Said Senators manager Bucky Harris, a contempory of Babe Ruth, “I just wouldn’t have believed a ball could be hit that hard.  I’ve never seen anything like it.”

 

            Later in his career, Mantle would twice come close to becoming the only player to hit a ball completely out of Yankee Stadium.  On August 6, 1961, The Mick victimized Minnesota Twins pitcher, Pedro Ramos, hitting the rightfield façade with the 361^st home run of his career, tying him on the all-time list with DiMaggio.  Then, on May 23, 1963, he hit what many believe would have been the longest home run of his career if not for  the same rightfield façade when he turned on a Bill Fischer pitch in the bottom of the 11^th inning to lift the Yanks to an 8-7 win over the Kansas City A’s.

 

            “Mickey Mantle left fans breathless with a titanic solo home run in the llth inning that not only won the game, but almost became the first home run to be hit out of Yankee Stadium,” wrote one sportswriter.  “The blast, which was still rising, hit the right field façade only inches from the top and then bounded all the way back to the infield.”

 

            Helping to further capture the imagination of the public were newspaper pictures illustrated with dotted lines that traced the trajectory of Mantle’s mammoth blasts.

This boy could pick up all the marbles in this circuit—batting, home runs, runs driven in.  Nothing is beyond him.  Nothing.  He could be the No. 1 player of our league.”  

            New York’s run of consecutive AL pennants ended in 1954 when the Cleveland Indians put together an amazing 111-win season.  Although the Yanks came in a distant second, Mantle produced his best season of his young career to that point, recording personal bests of 27 homers and 102 RBI to go along with an even .300 batting average. 

 

            In 1955, Mantle would capture his first American League home run championship, belting a career-high 37, and drive in 99 runs while hitting .306 to help the Yanks recapture the American League pennant before losing to the Dodgers in a classic seven-game World Series.

 

            Despite his outstanding individual accomplishments in 1954 and ’55, the demanding New York press and Yankee fans continued to have higher expectations for Mantle.  He would meet those expectations with one of the greatest individual seasons in Major League history in 1956.

 

            Mantle would become just the 11^th Triple Crown winner in baseball annals in ’56, clouting 52 home runs, driving in 130 runs and batting .353.  He then topped his season by leading the Yanks past Brooklyn in another seven-game World Series.  He drilled three home runs against Dodger pitching, including a solo blast in Game Five that snapped a scoreless tie in the fourth inning and provided what proved to be the eventual winning run in Don Larsen’s magnificent perfect game.  Although the home run was critical to New York’s 2-0 win that day, it was Mantle’s running backhand catch of a Gil Hodges drive to the left-centerfield gap in the top of the fifth inning—which Mantle always considered “the best catch of my career”—that helped to preserve Larsen’s gem.

 

            The Yankees’ sensational slugger earned the first of his three American League Most Valuable Player awards in 1956, as well as the Hickok Belt as the top professional Athlete of the Year.

 

            The ’56 season began an extraordinary six-year stretch in Mantle’s career.  He won his second AL MVP award in 1957 when he hit 34 homers, drove in 94 runs and batted a career-best .365, finishing second to Boston’s Ted Williams in the batting race.

 

            In ’58, Mantle captured his third American League home run crown, blasting 42 roundtrippers.  Two seasons later, he would win the last of his four home run crowns when he hammered 40 to lead the Yanks back to the Fall Classic against the seemingly overmatched Pittsburgh Pirates.  Despite a spectacular individual Series in which he batted .400 with three homers and 11 RBI, Mantle’s Yanks went down to defeat in one of the great World Series upsets of all-time when Pittsburgh second baseman Bill Mazeroski led-off the bottom of the ninth in Game Seven with a shot over the leftfield wall at Forbes Field to give the Pirates a shocking 10-9 victory. 

 

            “In all my World Series experience, that was the one time when I really thought the better team lost,” said Mantle, who wept openly after the defeat.

 

            The Yankees and Mantle bounced back with a season that left them ranked among the best teams of all-time in 1961 when they stormed to the American League pennant with 109 victories and then overwhelmed the National League champion Cincinnati Reds in five games for yet another World Championship.

 

            But the 1961 season is best remembered as the year that Mantle and his teammate, Roger Maris, staged a remarkable assault on one of baseball’s most revered records—Babe Ruth’s single season home run record of 60 established in 1927.

 

            The two Yankee sluggers were battling neck-and-neck for the home run lead late in the season when Mantle, under the weather with a bad cold, received an antibiotic shot that became infected and developed into an abscess that landed him in the hospital late in the season.  Mantle finished the year with a career-best 54 home runs and 128 RBI, while Maris would go on to break Ruth’s mark, hitting his 61^st home run on the final day of the regular season off of Boston’s Tracy Stallard at Yankee Stadium.

 

            The 1961 season would be the last in which Mantle would play as many at 150 games.  His body, worn down by numerous injuries and a serious drinking problem, limited him to just 123 games in 1962.  Still, The Mick clouted 30 home runs that year, knocked in 89 runs and batted .321 to capture his third and final AL MVP award while leading the Yanks to the AL pennant and their seventh World Series crown in Mickey’s 12 years with the club.  It would be the last World Series title Mantle would celebrate.

 

            The Yanks would return to the World Series in each of the next two seasons, but were swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1963 and suffered a heartbreaking seven-game defeat to the St. Louis Cardinals in ’64.  The 1964 World Series provided the last memorable post-season moment of Mantle’s illustrious career, a walk-off home run leading off the last of the ninth in Game Three against Cardinal knuckleballer Barney Schultz to lift the Yanks to a 2-1 win and a two games-to-one Series lead.

 

            The 1964 campaign was also Mantle’s last great regular season as he blasted 35 homers, drove in 111 runs and batted .303, helping the Yanks to overcome a 6 1/2-game deficit late in the season to pass the Chicago White Sox for the American League crown.  He would never again hit more than 23 homers, knock in more than 56 runs or bat higher than .288 in the remaining four seasons of his brilliant career.

 

            For the Yankees, the 1964 season would mark the last hurrah of the Mantle Era.  Crippled by advancing age and injuries to stars like Mantle, Maris, Whitey Ford and others, the Yanks would slip to sixth place in 1965, 25 games behind the pennant-winning Minnesota Twins.  A year later, they would tumble to last place, the first time they had finished in the American League cellar since 1912.

“If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”-- Mickey Mantle________________________________________________________________________ 

            As Mantle’s body continued to decay, the Yankees sought to extend his career by having him switch from the outfield to first base in 1967.  After playing in just 122 games in 1965 and only 108 in ’66, the shift to first base did enable him to play in 144 games in each of his final two seasons in a big league uniform.

 

            Although he managed just 22 home runs in 1967, Mantle became the sixth member of the exclusive 500 Home Run Club when he took Baltimore’s Stu Miller out of the park on May 14, 1967 at Yankee Stadium to join Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Jimmie Foxx, Ted Williams and Mel Ott as the only players to have reached that mark at that point.

 

            Mantle’s final season during 1968’s Year of the Pitcher saw him hit only 18 homers and knock in but 54 runs while batting a career low .237.  The Mick had entered that year with a career batting average of .302, but his final season left him with a .298 mark.  Finishing below .300 for his career would be his greatest regret as a ballplayer.

           

            Mantle hit the 536^th and final home run of his career on September 20, 1968—a solo shot off of Boston right-hander Jim Lonborg in a 4-3 Yankee loss at The Stadium—and announced his retirement the following spring.  At the time, he ranked third on baseball’s all-time home run list behind Ruth and Mays, two ahead of Foxx.

 

            He remains the Yankees’ all-time leader in games played (2,401) and plate appearances (9,909), is second to only Ruth in home runs (536) and bases on balls (1,733), and is third in team annals in on-base percentage (.421), OPS (.978), runs scored (1,677), hits (2,415), total bases (4,511), and extra base hits (952).  When he retired, he was the Major League’s all-time strike out king, having whiffed 1,710 times in his 18 seasons with the Yanks.  The mark, however, has since been eclipsed by 14 players, including, among others, Reggie Jackson, Mike Schmidt, Bobby Bonds and Sammy Sosa.  To this day, he remains the Major League’s all-time leader in homers by a switch-hitter.  Eddie Murray, who finished his career with 504 home runs, is the only other switch-hitter to surpass the 500 mark.

 

            In addition to his three MVP trophies, Mantle was a 16-time All-Star, and won a Gold Glove for his outfield play in 1962.  On top of capturing four American League home run titles, he led the AL in runs scored and OPS six times, in walks five times, in slugging four times, and in bases on ball and on-base percentage three times.

 

            The Yankees retired his number seven on June 8, 1969 during a day in his honor at Yankee Stadium.  Five years later, Mantle became a first ballot inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame, entering the Cooperstown shrine along with his teammate and close friend Whitey Ford.

 

            After years of alcohol abuse and admitting in a 1985 autobiography (The Mick, co-written with Herb Gluck) that he was alcoholic, Mantle entered the Betty Ford Clinic for rehabilitation in 1987 and remained sober the remainder of his life.  Unfortunately for The Mick, it was too little, too late.  He had already destroyed his liver.   And when he was lucky enough to receive a liver transplant on June 8, 1995 at Baylor University Medical Center, it was discovered that the cancer that had attacked his original liver had spread to other parts of his body.  Within two months, he would be gone.

 

            Mantle, who was as beloved and worshipped by his teammates as much as any professional who ever lived, was laid to rest at Parkman Hillcrest Mausoleum in Dallas, Texas.  Sportscaster Bob Costas delivered the main eulogy at his funeral while his closest teammates—Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Moose Skowron, Bobby Murcer and Johnny Blanchard-- served as pallbearers.

 

            At Mantle’s own deathbed request, country singer Roy Clark sang Mickey’s favorite song, “Yesterday When I Was Young.”  The lyrics were never more poignant than they were on that day…

             “I ran so fast that time and youth at last ran out…There are so many songs in me that won’t be sung…the time has come for me to pay for yesterday when I was young.” (Sources used for this article include Baseball Reference, “The Last Hero: The Life of Mickey Mantle”, by David Falkner; Becket Great Sports Heroes: Mickey Mantle; “The Education of a Baseball Player”, by Mickey Mantle; “The Mick”, by Mickey Mantle with Herb Gluck; “Mickey Mantle: The American Dream Comes to Life”, by Mickey Mantle and Lewis Early; “All My Octobers”, by Mickey Mantle with Mickey Herskowitz; “The Yankee Encyclopedia”, by Mark Gallagher; HBO’s Mantle: The Definitive Story of Mickey Mantle; “Speaking of Baseball”, edited by David Plaut; and “Baseball’s Greatest Quotations”, by Paul Dickson)