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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 in
1995 at age 63 from liver cancer after about 40 years[original
research?] 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 Detroit Tigers, 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; 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. Sadly, 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 and 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, 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. He spent
the last years of his career as a wildly popular icon of the sport.
Playing career
Elvin "Mutt" Mantle taught his son how to
be a switch-hitter. 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. It was
one of the great steals in baseball history. Tom Greenwade was quoted in
the press release announcing Mickey's signing as saying that Mickey was
the best prospect he'd ever seen.
On arrival at the Yankees, he became the
regular right fielder (playing only a few games at shortstop and third
base in 1952 to 1955). He 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 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 in attempts to become the only player to hit a fair ball
out of the stadium. His last effort was on May 22, 1963, against Kansas
City's Bill Fischer. Fellow players and fans noted that ball was still
rising when it hit the 110-foot high facade, then caromed back onto the
playing field. It was later "guesstimated" that the ball would have
traveled 620 feet had it not been impeded by the ornate and distinctive
facade.
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. 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.
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 52, 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.
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.) 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 unlucky 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. This popularity continues long after his
death, as Mantle-related items far outsell those of any other player
except possibly the unmatched 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, Ga., near
Greer Johnson's home, and frequently stayed there for months at the
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 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.
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, "My Life In A Bottle." 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. The first play of the game, a
Yankee win over the Cleveland Indians, resulted in Kenny Lofton, a
center fielder who wore number 7, flying out to the 1995 Yankee center
fielder, Bernie Williams.
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."
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. While most fans who remember them both tend
to rate Willie Mays as a better player than Mantle, Mantle remains the
most popular player of the 1950s and 1960s, even as Mays, Hank Aaron and
others outlived him by many years. ESPN's "SportsCentury" series that
ran in 1999 ranked him No. 37 on its "50 Greatest Athletes" series. His
biography, which debuted on May 7, 1999, has since been replayed on
ESPN's sister channel ESPN Classic.
In 2006, Mantle was featured on a United
States postage stamp [2]. The stamp is one of a series of four honoring
baseball sluggers, the others being Mel Ott, Roy Campanella and Hank
Greenberg.
****
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