- Sunday, April 1, 2018

A SEASON IN THE SUN: THE RISE OF MICKEY MANTLE

By Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith

Basic Books, $28, 304 pages

A joyful fringe benefit of baseball fandom is memories of games past. And reading this book took me back to my first major league games the summer of 1956, as a young soldier stationed in Baltimore.

A slugger named Mickey Mantle, of the New York Yankees, was terrorizing American League pitchers while delighting fans nationwide who felt they were witnessing the emergence of “the new Babe Ruth.”

One evening at the old Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, an Oriole pitcher served up a fast ball to the muscular Mr. Mantle’s liking. CRACK! The ball vanished over the left field wall and seemed destined to come to earth somewhere near the city limits of Bethesda.

I exaggerate, of course, but such is the privilege of a fan who worships the national pastime. And anyone who loves the sport will find hours of undiluted joy in one of the best books on baseball — or any other sport — that I have encountered.

In addition to being astute fans, the authors are also professors — Randy Roberts at Purdue University, and Johnny Smith at Georgia Tech. Their intensive research is backed by brisk writing that lets this reader sense he was sitting in a prime third-base-line seat.

Mickey Mantle was born in 1931 in Commerce, Oklahoma, a town built around a lead mine. Both his grandfather and father played on sandlot teams, and Mickey spent of his boyhood with a “two-bit bat” in hand, first hitting tennis balls thrown by his father, then baseballs.

While still in his teens, “Mick” was diagnosed with a bone disease, osteomyelitis, often referred to as “cancer of the bone.” He spent months on crutches. But recovery permitted him to enter the Yankee farm system in 1949 for $400 for a partial season plus a signing bonus of 1949.

He was blessed with a “chiseled physique” that was the ideal body for a power hitter — “broad, sloping shoulders, bulging shoulders, bulging biceps and Popeye forearms in baseball parlance, country strong.”After two superb minor league seasons, Mr. Mantle moved up to the Yankees, which had dominated baseball for decades. The dominant figure was Joe DiMaggio, an aloof but aging star who paid scant attention to the rookie.

But Mr. Mantle’s power attracted attention in a hurry, and the hyperactive New York baseball press sensed a star in the making.

By the 1956 season Mr. Mantle’s prowess at the plate stirred speculation that he would break Babe Ruth’s 1927 record of 60 home runs in a season.

And here is the true meat of the story: A near game-by-game account of the season, and how Mr. Mantle captured the hearts of a baseball nation, even of Yankee-haters.

From the season’s first weeks, Mr. Mantle hit homers at a pace exceeding Ruth’s record year, many of them gravity-defying “moon shots.” Record crowds swarmed American League stadiums. Advertisers seized a ride on his fame — $60,000 in product endorsement (worth $828,000 in 2018 money).

But leg aches related to earlier injuries hampered Mr. Mantle. A bandage stretched from upper thigh to ankle. “He is a cripple but insists on playing,” manager Casey Stengel commented.

To an admiring public, Mickey Mantle was the bashful country boy — handsome, with fierce blue eyes and hardness around his mouth, a face that adorned four major magazine covers in a single month.

What cooperative sports writers kept secret from an admiring public was that Mr. Mantle and pals played games other than baseball, one with a sound track of good bourbon gurgling into late-night glasses and the laughter of a damsels who, well, let’s just say, not the girls you would not take home to meet Momma.

Mickey Mantle’s carousing pals were Billy Martin and Whitey Ford, who were nightly fixtures at bars and clubs. Their drinking stretched from the last out into the early morning.

Mr. Mantle had a hyperactive eye for women. When he asked for a raise for the 1957 season, the Yankee owner handed him a private detective’s report on his philandering. Such behavior was unfitting a Yankee idol.

Mr. Mantle was also the target of a blackmail scheme involving a married woman. The FBI investigated. Mr. Mantle admitted that he had “shacked up” with many women but he had “never been caught.”

In the end, Mickey Mantle fell short of Babe Ruth’s record. But he did become only the fifth player ever to gain the “triple crown” of batting” — most home runs (52), runs batted in (130) and batting average (.353).

The Mick enjoyed many other stellar seasons. But the bottle finally felled him, and he died of cirrhosis of the liver and cancer.

Yet for the glorious season of 1956 he was the hero of anyone, young or old, who ever picked up a baseball. Thanks, Mick.

His inability to run, hit or throw cost Washington writer Joe Goulden a big-league career.

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