Castro Tony - Mantle: the best there ever was

Mantle

Books by Tony Castro

Chicano Power :

The Emergence of Mexican America

Mickey Mantle :

Americas Prodigal Son

The Prince of South Waco :

American Dreams and Great Expectations

DiMag & Mick:

Sibling Rivals, Yankee Blood Brothers

Looking for Hemingway:

The Lost Generation and A Final Rite of Passage

Gehrig & The Babe:

The Friendship and The Feud

Mantle

The Best There Ever Was

Tony Castro

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom

Copyright 2019 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Name: Castro, Tony, author.

Title: Mantle : the best there ever was / Tony Castro.

Description: Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, [2019] | Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORKT.p. verso. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018056819 (print) | LCCN 2018057216 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538122228 (electronic) | ISBN 9781538122211 | ISBN 9781538122211(cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Mantle, Mickey, 19311995. | Baseball playersUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC GV865.M33 (ebook) | LCC GV865.M33 C378 2019 (print) | DDC 796.357092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018056819

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

To Renee

best of wives, best of women, best of friends

and

Oliver

our first grandchild

Not everything that can be counted counts,

and not everything that counts can be counted.

Albert Einstein

Contents

Chapter One:

Chapter Two:

Chapter Three:

Chapter Four:

Chapter Five:

Chapter Six:

Chapter Seven:

Chapter Eight :

Chapter Nine:

Chapter Ten:

Chapter Eleven:

Chapter Twelve:

Chapter Thirteen:

Chapter Fourteen:

Chapter Fifteen:

Chapter Sixteen:

Chapter Seventeen:

Chapter Eighteen:

Chapter Nineteen:

Chapter Twenty:

Part One

The Best There Was

Mickey was the best I ever saw. I never saw Ruth play in person, but I saw all the others: Gehrig, Ted Williams, Willie Maysand I know how good I was.

And to say there was anyone better in the game, to say there was anyone better than Mantle is what we Italians would call un sacco di stronzate, a load of crap.

Joe DiMaggio

Prologue

Ive Beaten Gehrig

They say the soul of a New York City summer is hedonistic in the most selfless way imaginable. Some make a game of watching how others endure the heat, or wilt in the unrelenting sun. In the dog days of summer in 1961, few people could take their eyes off Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle included. Mickey knelt down in the cathedral that was Yankee Stadium. Of course he did, and he wasnt religious. He just happened to be in the on-deck circle, rubbing the rag of pine tar across the handle of his bat as he watched Roger dig in at home plate. If you happened to be watching the two of them, it was impossible not to see that they were as different as night and day. Mariss muscles seemed to flow; Mantles bulged. Maris was visibly high strung and intense; Mantle, playfully laid back. Then, Maris swings from his heels. The crack of the bat is deafening.

This could be 56! booms the excited voice of Mel Allen, the familiar Yankees radio broadcaster. Shes going... going... GONE! Maris has hit No. 56... four behind the Babe, and its only September 9...

Almost an hour later, a pack of sportswriters surround Maris in the Yankee clubhouse, according to the next days newspapers.

Rog, whats it feel like to be this close to Ruths record? one writer asks.

It doesnt feel any different than it did yesterday, says Maris.

Another writer jumps in. Didya know that with your homer today, you and Mantle have already overtaken Ruth and Gehrig for most home runs by two teammates in a single season?

No, I didnt know that, says Maris, who hollers to Mantle. Did you, Mick?

Nearby, Mantle looks up. Nah. How many did Gehrig hit?

Forty-seven, the second writer tells Mantle.

Fuck, forty-seven? I already got fifty-two. Ive beaten Gehrig, says Mickey, quickly looking at Maris. Its up to you to beat Ruth.

Theres a roundhouse of laughter as the writers scribble furiously.

Later in the training room, Mickeys immersed in a whirlpool, sipping on a beer. Maris is getting rubbed down on the training table, Yankee clubhouse attendant Pete Sheehy recalled in a 1976 interview with me in which he recounted the scene between Mantle and Maris.

Mick, Im losing hair, says Maris. Im losing sleep. Something I dont get. How come going for the record doesnt seem to get to you?

Mickey considers it with a sip of beer.

It does, Mantle says finally. It did in 56.

I read where you had forty-seven going into September?

Then I only hit five more the rest of the way, says Mickey.

What happened?

The Babe, says Mantle. He rose out of his grave and kicked me in the balls.

What?

The trainer finishes the rubdown on Maris. Hes been listening in.

Mickey pulled a groin muscle, the trainer tells Roger.

Mantle takes a long swig of his beer. I was seein the Babe on the street, in cabs, in bars. Of course, it wasnt, and I mighta been drinkin too much. Mickey points to the beer Maris has just opened. Someone elses ghost becomes your monster.

Tell me bout it, says Maris, putting his beer down.

Its like naming a kid junior, says Mickey.

Whats wrong with that?

Nothing personal, says Mantle. Well, actually it is. He pauses and remembers something from the past.

You know, a couple of years ago, Merlyn and the boys were flyin back to Dallas, and I guess Mickey Jr. was playin in the aisle. Well, some guy thought he was cute and asked him what his name was. Merlyn says he said, Mickey Mantle Jr. Real proud and all. Well, the guy mustve thought here was this little kid who wants to grow up to be Mickey Mantle and made a joke about it. Mickey Jr. started cryin cause the guy didnt think that was his name. Imagine having to go through life like that.

Mickey is weepy eyed and reflective, as is Maris.

As different as they were, they were bonded that summer, as they would be the rest of their lives, in a pursuit not for fame but for immortality in sports, which are often confused as the same, though they arent. Mickey would have countless friends and many teammates over his lifetime, but Roger Maris would remain special.

Roger is the man I wish I could have been, Mantle told me during one of our conversations in the early 1970s. There was no arguing with him. You couldnt tell him that all men are different. They may be equal in the eyes of the law, the founders of America, or perhaps even in some religions. But they are different, and one mans character may be as ill fitting on another as their clothes. As someone to admire, though, you could do a lot worse than Roger Maris. On October 1, 1961, in Yankee Stadium, on the last day of the season, Maris hit his sixty-first home run of the season, breaking the revered, thirty-four-year-old single-season home run record held by Babe Ruth. It was a historic day in sportsand, in many ways, in the social fabric of America. A photograph of Maris in the full extension swing that produced that home run adorned the back of the program handed out to the nine hundred or so as they entered St. Marys Cathedral in Fargo, North Dakota, on December 19, 1985, for Rogers funeral mass. He was fifty-one years old when he died after a long bout with lymphatic cancer.