Tony Castro - Maris & Mantle: Two Yankees, Baseball Immortality, and the Age of Camelot

For Renee and Jeter

Like the Arthurian years at Camelot, the Sixties constituted a breakthrough, a fleeting moment of glory, a time when a significant little chunk of humanity briefly realized its moral potential and flirted with its neurological destiny, a collective spiritual awakening that flared brilliantly until the barbaric and mediocre impulses of the species drew tight once more the curtains of darkness.

Tom Robbins

Contents

Prologue

I dont want to be Babe Ruth. He was a great ballplayer. Im not trying to replace him. The record is there and damn right I want to break it, but that isnt replacing Babe Ruth.

Roger Maris

Presidential historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once astonished a Harvard University symposium on the age of Kennedy with the stunning observation that the early 1960s in America were possibly defined as much by baseball superstars Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle as they were by president John F. Kennedy himself. It was unexpected praise for Maris and Mantle from the trusted confidant and biographer of the 35 th president of the United States that elicited questioning glances and some laughs from a mystified audience of graduate students, professors, and fellow intellectuals. Was this brilliant, popular Harvard professor, who was known for his trademark bow ties, serious, or was he simply inserting a bit of levity into an otherwise staid, scholarly reappraisal of the time of JFK?

Even the academics in the crowd who were acquainted with Schlesinger and shared his love of baseball didnt know. Few of them were even aware that this son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., and now a leading historian of American presidents himself had once obsessed over the same dream that tantalizes most boys throughout the country. When I am a man I wish to be a fast-ball player, seven-year-old Schlesinger wrote in one of his earliest letters. I would like to be a fast-ball player because I am interested in fast-ball, because it is a good sport and because it is fun.

Young Arthur was passionate about the game. Attending Red Sox games at Fenway Park and Braves game at the South End Grounds, talking baseball, and mourning the loss of Babe Ruth to the Yankees was how he and his father bonded, developing a close relationship that led to books and history. Ever the sentimentalist for his local teams, Schlesinger years later would often complain that, pro baseball died the day the Braves moved out of Boston. Ultimately, Schlesinger stepped into his fathers shoes as a leading American historian interested in big personalities, liberal politics, and a democratic world viewan egalitarian crusader who would remark that we suffer today from too much pluribus and not enough unum . Thus, to Schlesinger, presidents and ballplayers were really part of the same national fabric, the nation and its pastime, especially that period when the age of Camelot met the age of Mantle and Maris.

It was an age when anything seemed possiblemade to seem possible by men who dared to dream and achieve what was thought to be impossibleand the men who best symbolized this new age were John F. Kennedy, a president no one expected could be president, and Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, two teammates who, in chasing the immortal Babe Ruth, brought him back to life, Schlesinger told the symposium. It was an age of innocence in America we may never see again.

In the first two years of the new decade, Maris and Mantle established themselves as the peacetime heroes of Americas romance with boldness, its celebration of power, a nations Arthurian self-confidence in strength during a time when we last thought might did make right. In the age of Kennedy, their heroics cast them as figures through which an America profoundly affected by nuclear fear, by a dizzying plethora of atomic panaceas and proposals, and by endless speculation on the social and ethical implications of the new worlds reality, reconciled the conscious and unconscious aspects of the national psyche. In his inaugural address that was at once soaring and solemn, Kennedy had summoned Americans to harness realism to idealism, patriotism to service, and national interest to universal aspiration. This was the time and place, he said, insisting, I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation.

Almost immediately, Mantle and Maris emerged as exemplars of their time. In 1961, the two New York Yankee sluggers brought baseball to the forefront of American pop culture for possibly the last time, as its place as the countrys national pastime would soon be overtaken by the National Football League. If this tale were fiction, the contest between the duo renowned as the M&M Boys might seem too contrived, presidential historian Michael Beschloss would observe half a century later. In the summer of 1961, the Yankees Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle competed to break the home run record of a Yankee predecessor, the most famous baseball player of them all, Babe Ruth60 homers during the 1927 season. For later generations, the two men established an abiding lesson in civility and friendship. Resisting some fans and reporters who were determined to pit these two very different Yankees against each other, the irrepressible, sometimes loutish Mantle, from Commerce, [Oklahoma], and Maristhe headstrong, introverted Croatian-American from Hibbing, [Minnesota], and Fargo, [North Dakota]managed to keep their rivalry under control.

Its possible that Americans will never again be as focused on any sporting accomplishment as we were that year. Has there ever been another season in sports that has spawned so many reminiscences, so much commentary, so much myth and legend? Perhaps it was the innocence of that period. In a sense, Maris and Mantle were tailor-made heroes for America in the age of Camelot. In them, the country saw more proof that there were no worldly boundaries and that nothing seemed beyond the reach of American power, or of Americans ability. The American Century was at its pinnacle. U.S. wealth and prosperity were unrivaled. Hollywood, rock music, blue jeans, and hamburgers carried American pop culture, tastes, and values to the far corners of the world. This was the New Frontier. Roger Maris had broken the Babes record. America would soon be going to the moon. It was an innocence, which would soon have the hubris in that sentiment exposed.

There would still be moments when all seemed right. The early years of the new decade marked the beginning of a new, if brief, period in the countrythe Kennedy years. President John F. Kennedy was an avid fan of his hometown Boston Red Sox, but even he couldnt ignore the specialness of the Yankees. As spring training camps opened in 1962, the countrys young president wanted to cheer up his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, who was recovering in Palm Beach from a stroke he had suffered in late 1961. President Kennedy dispatched a couple Secret Service agents to nearby West Palm Beach, where the Yankees were playing an exhibition game, and asked Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and Tony Kubek if they would kindly pay a visit to the elder Kennedy. The four Yankees obliged and spent part of an afternoon with the Kennedy family patriarch talking baseball among themselves as the presidents father listened attentively. The stroke had left Joe Kennedy without his speech, but Ford recalled that you could tell he was interested in what we had to say and grateful for our visit. While in office, President Kennedy saw Mantle play in person only once, in the 1962 All-Star Game at D.C. Stadium where he threw out the first pitch, shook hands with many of the players, including Mickey, and said to Stan Musial, A couple of years ago, they told me I was too young to be president and you were too old to be playing baseball. But we fooled them.