I met Mickey Mantle for the first time after a high school football game in Commerce, Oklahoma, in 1949. He didn't say a word. I guess that's why I remembered him afterwards. I thought it was so odd.
Right then (in my mind, anyway), I was more a celebrity than he was, for I was drum majorette of the Picher High School band and a soloist at the First Baptist Church of Picher, and I'd sung at nearby army camps. Mickey had been graduated from Commerce High School that spring and was working as an electrician in the local lead and zinc mines, where his father was a ground boss.
I had never heard of Mickey, although Picher is only three miles from Commerce, and he had been playing baseball around those parts since he was five years old, from peewee leagues to pro ball. He'd even been signed by the New York Yankees at the time of his graduation. But I, like most of the other folks then in Ohlahoma, was strictly a football fan. I knew so little about baseball that, on one of our early dates, I asked Mickey how many time-outs they could have during an inning....
It was hard for me to understand, when we first started going together, why he said so firmly that we couldn't get married until he had made good with the Yankees. But all his life ... my husband has been trained for just one thing -- to play baseball. I'll never forget last year, when he got home on Christmas Eve from ther tour he had made with Bob Hope of army camps in Alaska. He saw all the presents I had put out for the children and said: "I can't remember ever having any toys but baseballs and bats."
Both Mickey's dad and his grandfather were crazy about baseball and I guess they decided when Mickey was born that he was going to be a major leaguer .... They taught Mickey to be a switch hitter, his grandpa throwing to him right-handed, and his dad left-handed. When he was just a little fellow, they would have him out in the back yard afternoons taking batting practice until it got dark. Of course, this is largely why he is where he is today, and Mickey is fully aware of the debt he owes them both. Grandpa died in 1935; I never knew him. But I got to know his dad during Mickey's first year with the Yankees.
I had just graduated from high school and was working in the bank at Picher during the summer .... Then Mickey got into a slump. The Yankees sent him back to Kansas City, which just about broke his heart. Mickey admitted he even cried when he heard the news. Kansas City was about 150 miles from Commerce, but Dad and Mother Mantle drove over there often to see Mickey play and keep up his morale. They sometimes took me along, too.
When Mickey made good in Kansas City and the Yankees recalled him, Dad Mantle was even more thrilled than Mickey. He got a group together to go to see Mickey play in the World Series in New York .... But in the second game, Mickey, who was playing right field, tripped on one of the drains in the outfield and tore all the ligaments in his right knee. They had to carry him off the field on a stretcher. I can imagine how Dad Mantle must have felt. He hurried to the clubhouse and went down to Lenox Hill Hospital with Mickey. But as Dad Mantle tried to help Mickey out of the cab, poor Dad collapsed .... The doctors at Lenox Hill ... found out he was in the last stages of cancer, and told Mickey his father couldn't live more than six months....
Dad Mantle came home shortly after the Series was over, but Mickey had to stay in the hospital about a month. When he got home, he asked me to marry him as soon as possible .... Mickey was under tremendous pressure. He wanted to make good both for himself and for his dad. He also had financial reasons. He had been voted a full share of the World Series money and had used it to pay the mortgage on the family house. But he was now the sole support of two families and he was aware of his responsibilities. Dad Mantle died in May. There was a night game with the Indians and Mickey played because he knew his father would have wanted it. Then he went home to the funeral.
....Mickey and I were very young that first year, very inexperienced, and both of us were spoiled. I was lonesome and homesick .... I also had my first experience with baseball fans. Mickey used to come home from the park followed by a string of boys and girls. Sometimes their kidding wasn't so good-natured, especially if he'd had a bad day. If he didn't stop to sign autographs, they threw ink at him. Several good shirts and jackets were ruined, and we couldn't afford that. His Fan Club, girls around 14 years old, used to settle for hanging around me if they couldn't find Mickey. When I did my daily marketing, I was followed down the street and into the stores by a group of little girls wearing jackets with "Mickey Mantle" on their backs.
....So far as I'm concerned, I would settle for Mickey's quitting when he finishes ten years of baseball in the majors, which will be after the 1960 season. But if Mickey's legs hold out, I don't think he will stop that soon. There is nothing else he was ever trained for, and nothing he loves to do as much.
--Merlyn Mantle (as told to Christy Munro)
"The Mickey Mantle I Know" (1957)The Best of Baseball Digest, John Kuenster (ed.)
Copyright 2006 by John Kuenster
Published by Ivan R. Dee, Publisher (Chicago) 2006
No comments:
Post a Comment