No miner in Commerce wished the same life for his son, and Mutt Mantle was a caring father, if not an outwardly compassionate one. He wanted something better for Mickey—a life aboveground, in the sun, free of “miner’s disease.” It was hard to fashion dreams in the worst years of the Great Depression, but Mutt managed to. His eldest son would be a ballplayer, not in the semipro sandlot leagues in the tristate region but in the major leagues. He would be like Mickey Cochrane, a splendid hitter with his name splashed on every newspaper in the country. Long before New York City sportswriters imagined what Mickey could do and might mean to the nation, Mutt Mantle had fashioned him in his own mind, a Frankenstein creation, a one-of-a-kind athlete. Mutt would forge Mickey into the ballplayer he had never been.
AS A YOUNG BOY Mickey wondered why his father pushed him so hard. Mutt made baseball seem like a matter of life and death, because in some ways it really was. “Mickey,” his father explained, “do you know what every miner wants most when he’s down under? He dreams of fresh air and sunshine. It’s not much—fresh air and sunshine. But when you’re under the ground,” risking your life, “it’s the most important thing in the world.” Mutt loved baseball because it was played outside in the “summer when the sunshine pours over you.” Playing baseball relieved him of the stress, the daily uncertainty of working in the ground; baseball was the light in a life of darkness. It made him feel alive and hopeful that his boy would have a better life than him.10
Shortly after Mutt moved his family to Commerce in the mid-1930s, he and his father, Charles, began molding Mickey into a switch-hitter. The lessons took place in the side yard, between the modest four-room house and an all-purpose shed. It became a daily ritual: Mutt would return home from a grueling day in the mines, his overalls covered with soot, and he’d call for his boy. Arming Mickey with a “two-bit bat,” he and Charles began lobbing tennis balls to him. As Mickey grew older they threw baseballs overhand, Mutt right-handed and Charles left-handed. They forced Mickey to bat left-handed against his father and right-handed against his grandfather. Mutt knew that right-handed batters hit better against left-handed pitchers and vice versa. So, he figured, learning how to switch-hit might increase Mickey’s chances of making the big leagues.11
But it wasn’t always easy for Mickey. Batting lefty felt unnatural and unnecessary to a boy who just wanted to play the game. He remembered that when his mother called him for dinner, Mutt would interrupt. “Your belly can wait,” he’d say. And he’d continue pitching until Mickey satisfied him with a few more good cuts.12
As Mickey matured, Mutt became stricter. When he was just twelve Mickey defied his father during a game, batting from the right side of the plate against a right-handed pitcher—and striking out. Mutt’s voice boomed across the field. He recalled his father saying, “Boy! You’re in for it. Go on home and don’t you put on a baseball uniform again until you switch-hit like I taught you.” That was the last time Mickey ignored his father’s instructions.13
Mutt only wanted the best for his son. He imagined that with practice and hard work, Mickey might just have a chance to become a professional ballplayer. He reminded Mickey that the men in Commerce had few opportunities and lived a meager, vulnerable existence. “Mickey,” he said, “you know that our house is built over a mine. So are plenty of other houses in town. One day there could be a cave-in from a blast and the whole floor could fall right from under us.” The odds of that happening, he said, were long, but it was possible. That’s why Mickey had to practice. Every day. Committing himself to baseball could give him something Mutt never dreamed of having: a life on solid ground, a fine home, security, and peace of mind.14
Mickey had faith in Mutt’s dream. So he swung hard from both sides of the plate, devoted countless hours to learning the fundamentals of the game, and mastered its nuances. Although he never became a true student of baseball, his father’s instructions became a permanent part of his muscle memory. From age four to eighteen, Mutt and baseball determined the pattern of his life.
Mutt could not, however, control his son’s health. In October 1946 Mickey was little more than a squirt, 130 pounds and a head shorter than many of his classmates, but he badgered his father to allow him to play football. Football, Mutt thought, was too dangerous, but he reluctantly consented. Sure enough, during a practice a teammate accidentally kicked Mickey in his left shin. At first it seemed like a dime-a-dozen football injury, hardly worth notice, and Mickey finished the practice. But the pain persisted and intensified. The next morning his ankle was swollen and bruised. Concerned, Mutt took off from work and rushed his son to the local hospital.15
The Commerce physician sent them up the road to the Picher hospital, which had an X-ray machine and superior facilities. There Mutt learned that Mickey had osteomyelitis, a serious bone disease that was often referred to as “cancer of the bone” or “TB of the bone.” Modern antibiotics, especially the recently developed penicillin, had proven an effective remedy for the disease, and during the year after the injury, Mickey received a series of treatments at the Crippled Children’s Hospital in Oklahoma City. It was a painful experience. Hobbled by osteomyelitis and hampered by crutches, Mickey recovered fitfully and slowly. Yet that same year, his body matured. He put on thirty pounds and by 1948 looked more like a young man than a kid, especially on the ball field. Everything his father had taught him, Mickey now seemed to do naturally. With the added muscle he now hit with power from both sides of the plate, threw runners out from deep in his shortstop’s position, and ran the bases like an Olympic sprinter.
HIS TALENT AND PROGRESS, now packaged in a young man’s body, impressed Tom Greenwade so much that in 1949 he signed Mickey to a modest professional contract to play the rest of the minor-league season for a $400 salary plus a bonus of $1,100. Mutt was surprised that the amount was less than what Mickey could earn playing Sunday semipro ball and working in the mines. Shrewdly, Greenwade had calculated that Mickey would earn about $0.87/hour in the mines and about $15 playing for a semipro team each Sunday. Add it up, Greenwade said, and Mickey would earn about $1,500—the same amount the Yankees could pay him. Unwilling to wait for other offers, Mickey signed the contract.16
Mantle played well in his first minor-league season, in Class D with the Independence team, which was part of the Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri League. Then, in September of 1950, after an outstanding season with the Yankees’ Class C team in Joplin, Missouri, during which he hit .383 and was named most valuable player (MVP) for the Western League, the Yankees called him up for a brief two-week major-league stint. Although he saw no action on the field, he found traveling with the team exciting. He began imagining joining the club for good the next season.
Returning to Commerce in the fall, Mickey worked alongside his father for the Blue Goose Number One mine, hoping that the Yankees would invite him to Phoenix for spring training. After the new year, as January turned into February and the cold ground hardened, Mickey grew anxious. When the Yankees didn’t send him money for transportation, he figured that the team didn’t want him anymore. Perhaps, he thought, it was time to quit baseball and plan on working for the rest of his life in the mines just like Mutt.17
One afternoon a Yankees official called him at the mine. Where are you? Why haven’t you reported for spring training? “I’m broke,” he answered. “I don’t have any money for transportation.” Within a few hours the Yankees had wired him money for the fare. He stuffed his suitcase with clothes and his mitt and rushed to the train station, clutching the ticket to his father’s dream.18
CHAPTER 2
The Commerce Comet
“Yankee rookie Mickey Mantle is hogging sport page headlines. They’re calling him ‘another DiMaggio.’ Time will tell. Time will tell.”
—WALTER WINCHELL, Washington Post, March 25, 1951
“Wait till you see this kid from Oklahoma.”
Bill Dickey immediately recognized that the shortstop from Joplin was special. Watching Mickey Mantle swin
g a bat, the Yankees’ hitting coach couldn’t believe that he was only nineteen years old. Dickey, an old-timer, was not easily impressed. A Hall of Fame player, he had been teammates with every Yankee legend: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Joe DiMaggio. And as an eleven-time All-Star catcher, he had scrutinized the hitting prowess of Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenberg, and Ted Williams. But Mantle was the best prospect he had ever seen. He told Yankees second baseman Jerry Coleman that Mickey had unprecedented power from both sides of the plate and was faster than anyone else in camp. “Just wait till you see this kid,” he repeated.1
Mickey excited his teammates too. “When he gets up to hit,” Yankees coach Jim Turner noticed, “the guys get off the bench and elbow each other out of the way to get a better look.” The same thing happened in the opposing dugout. Every time Mantle approached the batter’s box, everyone in the ballpark focused on him. “Here’s one sure tip-off on how great he is,” Turner added. “Watch DiMag when Mantle’s hitting. He never takes his eyes off the kid.”2
Throughout spring training, reporters peppered DiMaggio with questions about his future—and about the kid from Joplin who seemed destined to become the next great Yankee. After twelve seasons, DiMaggio was recognized as the best player of his generation. He was, the New York Post’s Jimmy Cannon opined, “a whole ballplayer, complete and great.” There were players who hit with more power or ran faster, but none had DiMaggio’s grace. He did not sprint across the outfield; he glided. He didn’t swing the bat; he stroked it with ease, like a smooth serve from Jack Kramer. “Never satisfied with anything less than perfection,” the New York Times’s Arthur Daley noted, DiMaggio competed as though every game were his last. As he was nearing the end of his career, his legs ached constantly, and yet he doggedly played through pain. After one late-season game, when the Yankees held a comfortable lead in the pennant race, Cannon asked him why he played so hard. “Because there might be somebody out there who’s never seen me play before,” he answered.3
DiMaggio was more than the greatest player of his era. He was the most famous athlete in America and arguably the biggest celebrity too. Throughout his career, he had appeared on countless magazine covers and movie screens, in newsreels and newspaper headlines across the country. Sportswriters exalted him as a “demi-god who could do no wrong.”4
Regally aloof, DiMaggio guarded his privacy and offered little during interviews. Reporters frequently replaced his monosyllabic answers with fabricated lines that they imagined a heroic player would say after a ballgame, always making sure that the Clipper sounded better than he really did. W. C. Heinz, one of the most talented writers of the age, noticed that his colleagues treated Joe with a kind of reverence never accorded to other players.5
On March 2, 1951, the second day of spring training, DiMaggio met with three reporters at the Adams Hotel in Phoenix. Nagging injuries—bone spurs in his heels, an aching throwing shoulder, and sore knees—were leading the thirty-six-year-old center fielder to consider retirement. “I want to have a good year,” he announced, “and then hang ’em up.” When Yankees manager Casey Stengel heard the news, he instructed Mickey to talk to Joe about learning how to play center field. Someday, Stengel planned, the kid would replace the Clipper. The only problem was that DiMaggio had no interest in mentoring the rookie.6
When he first met Joe, Mickey barely said a word. He was too shy and intimidated to initiate conversation. Afraid of saying the wrong thing, he avoided even glancing at DiMaggio. Cold and distant, Joe occupied the Yankees clubhouse with majestic authority. He “had this aura,” Mantle recalled. “It was as if you needed an appointment just to approach him.” Unless DiMaggio spoke first—and he rarely did—Mantle didn’t dare interrupt him with a question or comment. Usually, he just said good-bye as Joe exited the clubhouse.7
DiMaggio’s cool disposition made Mantle even more insecure than he already was. He began to wonder if he belonged in the same room as the Yankee Clipper. And although Joe may have praised Mickey publicly, calling him “the greatest prospect I can remember,” in private he derided Mantle as “a rockhead” who wasn’t worth his time.8
Nervous around the Yankee veterans, Mickey let his bat do the talking. As he stood in the batter’s box during hitting practice, his cap pulled down over his cropped blond hair, his muscles stretched the flannel jersey across his broad back. Swinging the bat, Mantle crushed ball after ball over the outfield fence. His towering shots seemed to climb above the clouds, disappearing into the distance, landing somewhere in the Arizona desert.9
Sportswriters quickly took note of Mickey’s natural talent. During an exhibition tour in California, riding in smoke-filled train cars, Yankees beat writers traveling with the team argued deep into the night about his ability. For hours, one columnist recalled, they “talked about nothing but Mickey Mantle.” Every day writers wired hyperbolic reports back to New York proclaiming Mantle as the “next DiMaggio.” In packed press boxes, scores of reporters wearing fedoras with their shirtsleeves rolled up leaned over their portable typewriters, churning out copy about “one name” only. “No matter what paper you read, or what day,” New York Daily Compass writer Stan Isaacs observed, “you’ll get Mickey Mantle, more Mickey Mantle, and still more Mickey Mantle.”10
The fact that Mantle had become the story of spring training surprised Isaacs. No one expected him to make the big leagues in 1951. Only two years out of high school, before he was even old enough to vote, Mickey was attempting something never done in Yankees history. In fact, before 1951, only three players in the history of baseball had ever jumped five classes from the minor leagues to the majors. Reading the New York press, however, Mantle’s spot in the Yankees’ opening-day lineup seemed a foregone conclusion.11
Sportswriters lionized the “Wonder Boy,” constructing an image of “the perfect rookie.” Raving about his power and speed, writers ran out of superlatives to describe “the infant prodigy.” They wrote about the “Colossal Kid’s” rapid ascension, fabricating a legend faster than Mickey ran to first base. He was the “future of baseball,” a “one-man platoon,” the “rookie of the eons.” Reporters saw in the speedy switch-hitter the skills of the greatest players in history all rolled into one. “Mighty Mickey” was “another DiMaggio,” “faster than Ty Cobb,” with “more power than Ted Williams.” In the New York dailies, the “Commerce Comet” was faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Sportswriters made him into Superman, but not even the Man of Steel could hit from both sides of the plate and live up to their expectations.12
Every time Mickey buttoned his jersey during spring training, he was reminded that he had inherited the responsibility of becoming a Yankees legend. Everyone involved with the team, from the front office down to the playing field, built him up as the next star of the sport. Stengel gushed about him: “He’s the greatest switch hitter who has ever played baseball,” adding, “The kid runs so fast in the outfield, he doesn’t bend a blade of grass.” Yankees publicist Red Patterson sold writers on Mickey’s destiny. “It’s the law of mathematical progression,” he proclaimed. “Babe Ruth wore No. 3 and was succeeded by Lou Gehrig, who wore No. 4. Gehrig was succeeded by Joe DiMaggio, who wears No. 5.” He asked a writer, “Have you noticed that Mantle wears No. 6?”13
By the end of spring training, Mantle’s life had changed in ways he had only dimly perceived. Two months earlier he had been working for Eagle-Picher, wondering if the Yankees would someday invite him to try out for the team. Now he was on his way to New York, a successful spring training behind him, yet still unsure if he would make the opening-day roster or be sent to the team’s Triple-A club in Kansas City.
Every day he heard people tell him that his potential was boundless. Stengel proclaimed it. DiMaggio said it. And so did every New York scribe who owned a typewriter. One voice, however, drowned out all the noise. His father reminded him not to believe everything he read in the newspapers. “You’ve made the headlines,
” he said. “Now make the team.”14
FOR ALL THE HYPE during spring training, Mickey still had doubts about his ability to play for the Yankees. Could he hit big-league pitches? Or would he fail and return to the mines? He knew that he had talent, but he also knew that might not be enough. He admitted to a writer from The Sporting News, “I somehow get the feeling that I hadn’t ought to be here.”15
For a time he figured he’d be wearing a khaki uniform, not Yankee pinstripes. On April 4, when Mickey was in Phoenix, his father called to notify him that his local draft board had sent a notice to report for a physical. As Mutt said, “A lot of people were wondering why [Mickey] was not soldiering in Korea.” In 1950, the army had classified him 4-F, physically disqualified from service owing to his history of osteomyelitis. In the past year, Mantle had hardly thought about his draft status or the Korean War.16
By the time he received his draft board notice, the war had devolved into stalemate. After General Douglas MacArthur pushed north of the 38th Parallel, moving toward the Yalu River, Communist China intervened and repelled the Americans at the Chosin Reservoir. Holding the line at the 38th, American forces suffered mounting casualties. Frustrated with President Harry Truman’s “limited war,” MacArthur believed that the United States should bomb critical targets in China and use atomic weapons if necessary. When MacArthur learned that Truman intended to negotiate a peace settlement, he argued that the president’s policies would only appease the regimes in China and North Korea. “We must win,” the general had recently written to Republican House minority leader Joseph Martin. “There’s no substitute for victory.”17
Many Americans agreed with MacArthur. Winning was everything. And it was the duty of every able-bodied American man to serve his country in a time of war. During the early years of the Cold War, patriotic baseball fans could not comprehend why a stellar young athlete like Mickey Mantle was not fighting in the army. Sports Illustrated’s Robert Creamer recalled, “The superpatriots came out in force demanding to know why Mantle hadn’t been drafted.” Mantle insisted that he was willing to serve in the military, even if in a limited capacity. “I’ll play baseball for the Army or fight for it, whatever they want me to do,” he said. “But if I don’t go to the Army, I want to play baseball.”18
A Season in the Sun Page 3