Mickey Mantle

By Andy Spear
Love of Sports Correspondent

In 1961, two teammates went head to head in an effort to break baseball’s most renowned and sacred record: Babe Ruth’s 60 home runs.

One teammate broke the record. The other fell just short. I was only four years old and a few years away from starting my own baseball career. But when I made the Hillcrest Leafs little league team after a final dusty tryout session on a warm afternoon in late June, I joined the other players sitting on the wooden bench that would be our home dugout and waited for the handing out of the itchy, grey flannel uniforms.

I knew the drill. The coach would raise a jersey and call out a number. If you wanted that jersey, you’d quickly have to raise your hand and get the coach’s attention to claim it. Each kid had his favorite player and each wanted to wear their hero’s corresponding number.

Though I’d never seen him play, when the coach held up the jersey with the #7 stitched on the back, I flung both arms up at lightning speed and waved my hands frantically. I was fortunate it was I, and not Tim Boby, who caught the coach’s eye, and he tossed the top to me. I pulled the jersey away from my face and just stared, mesmerized by the big black, felt number #7. Probably for the first time in my life, I was in heaven.

Such was the aura Mickey Mantle exuded.

Recently, August 13th marked another anniversary, that of the Mick’s passing in 1995. There wasn’t an official ceremony to honor him and not too many people were likely even aware of it. Maybe you’re even asking yourself, ‘What’s the big deal?’

Nothing, I suppose. After all, although Mantle’s career stats are impressive, they don’t blow you away. He doesn’t rank in the Top 10 on MLB all-time home run list anymore (536) or in RBI (1,509) or slugging percentage (.557) or even extra-base hits (952). In fact, other than home runs, he doesn’t even crack the Top 25 in any of these categories.

No one knows how one becomes a sports hero. There’s no road map. No set of directions. Certainly, it takes more than stats.

Well, Mantle was destined to be a hero. From him developing osteomyelitis, an inflammatory disease of the bone severe enough for amputation in some cases, to him winning the Triple Crown in ’56 and having two MVP seasons to his credit before he was 26.

And while standing in the spotlight of October, when an entire country would watch or listen, Mantle’s powerful swing resulted in 18 World Series home runs, a record that still stands. During that summer of ‘61, he may have lost a home run race to Roger Maris, but he won millions of fans in doing so.

Mantle was a centerfielder with sprinter-like speed, a switch-hitter with a swing so powerful it resulted in home runs of jaw dropping distance.

Two home runs deserve special mention; a 565-foot blast in Washington in 1953, then a 1956 blast that missed being the first ball hit out of Yankee Stadium by about two feet.

At 5-foot-11, 195 pounds, Mantle had a tremendous physique. His shoulders, arms and back were thick and naturally muscled. Unfortunately, though he was built like a Charles Atlas prodigy you’d see in an ad on the back of a comic book, he was plagued by injuries, all beginning in Game 2 of the 1951 World Series. While chasing a fly ball hit by Willie Mays, Mantle’s spikes caught in a drainpipe covering. He tore up his right knee, and would never play another pain-free game.

But nobody’s perfect, and away from the diamond, Mantle wasn’t nearly as outstanding, frequently spurning kids who wanted his autograph or reporters who sought an interview. With the Yankees in town to play the Red Sox, it was in the Statler Hilton in 1968 that my father saw a well dressed Mantle rushing through the crowded lobby. My father grabbed my hand and hurried after the baseball star with me in tow trying hard to keep up. “Hey, Mick! Hey, Mick!” my father repeated while tapping Mantle’s right shoulder in an effort to get the great Yankee to stop and talk. But Mick wouldn’t stop. My father finally gave up when Mantle stepped into the revolving door. My once in a lifetime opportunity to meet my hero was gone. My spirit if not crushed, was bruised.

We were in attendance for that night’s game at Fenway Park. Mantle’s legs were too feeble for him to patrol centerfield anymore, so he was stationed at first base. During each at bat, I booed. And after each of two at-bats in which he struck out, I cheered, at least on the outside.

Eventually, the injuries and drinking caught up to him. In his final four years, he averaged just 20 HRs, 53 RBI and just a .254 average, causing his career number to drop below the magical .300 mark (.298). He called that ‘the biggest disappointment of his career’, a Hall of Fame career that came to an early end at age 36 and 8,102 ABs (compared to contemporary Willie Mays’ 10,881 ABs).

1968 would be the last year Mickey Mantle would wear his #7 in a game for the New York Yankees. It would also be my last year of wearing #7. At the tender age of 11, the scar left by a missed autograph made me put away my childhood worship of baseball heroes, if only temporarily.

The years have passed, and my pain of not meeting Mickey Mantle is long gone. And though I never saw him play in his prime, based on interviews, film clips and stories, he remains a hero to me. It certainly wasn’t his numbers, but the way he played. He’d constantly swing from his heels, his only aim to hit the ball as hard as he could.

In eulogizing Mantle, sportscaster Bob Costas said “In the last year of his life, Mickey Mantle was always so hard on himself, but he 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.”

I know I did.