When my sons visited the clubhouse, they wouldn’t stay long at my locker. My locker was to the left of the entrance, five spots from the door. Mickey’s was on the right, across the room from mine. Robby and Ronnie would be with me at my locker for about three minutes before they were crossing the floor to go see Mickey, who always welcomed them with open arms and made them feel special. He would joke around with them, tousle their hair, have one-on-one talks with them, and wrestle around with them.
In fact, whenever my boys were involved in roughhousing in the locker room, Mickey was likely in the middle of it. It wasn’t uncommon to see Mickey with Robby tucked under one arm and Ronnie under the other, both trying to squirm free from Mickey’s grip.
One of our most prized photos appeared on the back cover of Mickey’s book The Quality of Courage. Mickey and a preschool Ronnie are running side by side on the Yankee Stadium field, and both are wearing boyish smiles. That picture says so much. Mickey was a fun-loving kid from Oklahoma, and there was a sense that he never really grew up. That was part of his appeal—and also part of his problem.
As fun-loving as Mickey was, sadness also haunted his life. Mickey’s father died at age thirty-nine, from Hodgkin’s disease, during Mickey’s second season in the majors. An uncle and grandfather also died young from Hodgkin’s, and Mickey often stated that he, too, would die at an early age. He said it in a joking manner, but it was obvious that deep down he didn’t expect to live long.
Mickey was insecure in his relationships, particularly with his family. He loved his four sons and missed them during the season, but he didn’t seem to know how to properly relate to them as a father. When his sons were older, his relationship with them basically consisted of drinking together. That appeared to be the only way he knew how to connect with them. I believe they knew he loved them, though. Years later, in a New York Times article, I read these words from Mickey Jr. about his father: “I thought he was a great dad. He wasn’t what you would call a regular dad. But then he didn’t lead what you would call a regular life.”
I had closer friends on the Yankees than Mickey, and there were others I spent more time with off the field. Yet my relationship with Mickey was very special. That special bond carried on well after our playing days. In fact, I believe it grew stronger after we both retired. I would see Mickey maybe two or three times per year or up to five or six times when we were playing in Old Timers’ Games.
In the late 1970s a friend of mine wanted Mickey and me to help promote a resort, and he offered to give us a townhouse in exchange. Mickey liked that idea, so we shared a place at Adam’s Apple near Grandfather Mountain in western North Carolina. A friend of mine from Sumter, Betty Ann Klapthor, came in and picked out furniture for the place and had it decorated all nice and cozy. We enjoyed having that place available as a getaway and used it several times.
At one point, the resort arranged for us to be grand marshals of a huge ski festival. When we got there, they wanted to take a picture of us snow skiing, but neither of us knew how to ski. So the idea of getting us on snow skis was scrapped in favor of having us dress in ski clothing and pose on a ski lift. We couldn’t ski, but we did know how to sit down!
We had shared the place about three or four years before the economy got in the way. Interest rates soared, there was a nationwide gasoline shortage, and the resort went bankrupt. When people asked Mickey what happened to the place that he and I shared, Mickey didn’t want to say what really happened, so he came up with a better-sounding answer: “Bobby tithed that to the Lord.”
Ready to Help
Retired baseball players are often invited to take part in or lend their names to fund-raisers for worthy causes. Mickey, being so famous, was asked to do that a lot. And because I was involved with so many charitable endeavors, there were times when I was the one asking. I was careful not to go overboard in requesting favors, but not once did he turn me down when I asked for one.
The time when Mickey and Tony Kubek came to Sumter to help me with the YMCA fund-raiser—when Tony’s changeup wound up hurting Mickey’s leg—Mickey must have signed two to three hundred bats for fans. He was pretty well known for not liking to sign bats, but on that occasion he volunteered. I know he offered to do it because he wanted my fund-raiser to be successful. He would have signed more, too, but so many people were trying to get his autograph that a concrete wall the lined-up fans were leaning on gave way, and the signing had to be stopped.
After that event I put fifteen 100-dollar bills in Mickey’s pants pocket to cover his plane fare and other expenses. About two months later when I saw him again, I started, “Mickey, I hope that fifteen hundred—”
“What fifteen hundred?” he asked.
“I put fifteen 100-dollar bills in your pocket.”
“I keep 100-dollar bills in my pocket all the time. I didn’t know they were yours.”
Then it dawned on me: Mickey had thought nothing about paying his own way to come help me.
Later, when I ran for Congress, I didn’t even need to ask Mickey to visit South Carolina on my behalf. He offered to come in and do anything I needed from him.
One of my favorite memories of Mickey involved an instructional video he helped me with when I was coaching at South Carolina. Mickey worked with a group of eight-year-olds on their swings, and he was great with those boys, just as he had been with my sons in the Yankee Stadium clubhouse. Mickey would ask a kid to swing a couple of times, find something to compliment, then say something like, “Maybe this is a suggestion for you. When I’m hitting, I do so-and-so.” Then he’d have the boy take a few more swings and help him apply the tips he’d just received. He worked with all the kids that way, teaching them to hit the ball where it’s pitched, to not try to pull every ball, and to get out in front of the ball and make solid contact there instead of trying to hit for power.
When we had completed filming and began picking up to leave at the end of a long day, one of the boys said, “Mr. Mantle, can we ask you something? Would you take one swing for us?”
Mickey looked at me. I nodded. Mickey took a couple of practice swings right-handed, because that was his natural side and he was a better hitter right-handed. Then, when the pitch was thrown, Mick crushed it. We had been filming on a youth field, so the ball sailed way over the short fence in left center. It flew across a football field and into a parking lot that, because we were on such a small field, seemed like it was five hundred yards away.
“Wait! Wait! Wait!” I ran screaming toward Mickey. “No more, Mickey! We’ve got to stop this—my car is parked over there!”
Mickey had already made a big impression on those young boys that day because of how special he’d made each one feel while the cameras were on. That long home run hit he’d made just for them, while the cameras were off, left them in awe.
Searching
The two of us were long considered a curious pairing—Mickey, the hard-living life of the party, and I, the clean-living homebody. I am frequently asked how our special bond grew out of such contrasting lifestyles. I believe that Mickey and I were drawn together spiritually, that God had a purpose for our friendship.
Christians tend to use the word searching to describe a nonbeliever who seems to feel a void in his life that he can’t adequately describe. We Christians can identify that person as searching because we have been there and have experienced the joy of filling that void with the presence of Christ in us.
In that sense, for most of the years that I knew Mickey, I do believe he was searching.
I’d heard Mickey and his wife, Merlyn, say that they did not drink alcohol when they were young but that when Mickey got to New York, he was drawn into the fast life there. Truthfully, though, I don’t think Mickey’s going to New York was to blame. If he had played in a smaller city, such as Kansas City or St. Louis, I believe he still would have found the party scene. That was his personality, and he would have been drawn to that lifestyle no matter where he was. Mickey was searching,
but he didn’t know what he was searching for and went to the wrong places to try to replace the sadness in his life with something meaningful.
One spring in Fort Lauderdale, we had a team party at the home of a friend, Jack Matthews. Mickey had previously introduced Jack to me as “one of your kind,” meaning a Christian. Jack didn’t have alcohol at his party. Everyone had a fun night grilling hamburgers and playing pickup basketball games. “You’re right,” Mickey told Betsy and me as we were leaving. “You can have fun without drinking.”
I believe what drew Mickey to me was that I had the relationship with Jesus Christ that he was searching for, even if he didn’t realize it. I knew that I had the answer for Mickey’s questions. My problem was that I did not know how to share that answer with him effectively.
And as I’ve mentioned, that problem was not limited to my friendship with Mickey.
I had no problem standing in front of an audience and sharing the gospel. I spoke in churches on road trips during the season and to church and civic groups during the off-season. After some early bouts with stage fright, I even found it relatively easy to get on the platform of a packed stadium during a Billy Graham Crusade and tell how I had come into a personal relationship with Christ.
I was even known throughout baseball as one of a handful of players who publicly shared his faith. When I signed an autograph for a fan, I liked to include the words Romans 1:16 after my name.
One time I signed that for a fan at a hotel in Kansas City. The fan looked at my signature and asked, “You’re in Room 116?”
“No, no,” I said, “that’s Romans 1:16—a Bible verse. Go look it up.”
That verse begins, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” I was not ashamed of the gospel, and I felt a responsibility to accept almost every speaking invitation so I could tell others about the salvation that God offers. At the same time, I felt insecure and ill-equipped to share that same message in a one-on-one setting with a friend. It wasn’t a natural part of my personality to open up about the details of my life.
In many ways we are influenced by the events of our childhood, and I grew up in an environment that was not very open or expressive. My dad never talked much, especially about personal things. I never doubted that he had great love for me and was extremely proud of my abilities and future as a baseball player. He made sure to spend time with me, coming home from work and throwing a ball in the yard with me every day. He was at every game of mine he could make. And yet our communication was mostly nonverbal.
Because of the way I grew up, I wasn’t comfortable expressing deep feelings with others. Men of my generation tend to be fairly nonexpressive to begin with, and I’m probably even more that way than most. I wasn’t—and still am not—much of a hugger, and personal, one-on-one witnessing is a challenge for me. Step behind a microphone in front of tens of thousands of people? Let’s do it. Sit down with an individual and share my deepest feelings? That’s a different story.
That prevented me from having conversations with Mickey, as well as other teammates, that perhaps I would have liked to have had. However, I tried to live a life in front of them that demonstrated my relationship with Christ and glorified God. And when I could, I did try to share my faith with them in a low-key manner.
I was glad to read that interview with Joe DiMaggio where he said I had shared my faith in simplicity as a friend. That’s exactly what I always hoped to do. I didn’t want to be too zealous and, despite my best intentions, turn someone off to the point that he would shut down my future attempts to share the gospel. I know this is a concern for people with a personality like mine who want to witness to others. It’s a tricky balance to maintain and was especially challenging for me as a ballplayer. I was aware of the risk that thumping my teammates over the head with a Bible could lose me their trust, which was a key component of our success as a ball club.
There is a greater risk, of course, when we neglect the great commission of Matthew 28:18-20—an eternal risk. So in addition to living what I prayed would be an exemplary lifestyle in front of my teammates, I invited in speakers who were experienced and effective in sharing the gospel message in small-group settings. About five or six times on road trips during a season, I’d arrange for a room in our hotel and bring in a guest speaker. I would have sweet rolls and coffee ready for the guys because of the time-proven truth that free food always attracts people!
I liked to have the speaker come and visit me a day early so I could introduce him to my teammates and give them a chance to get to know him. I knew the guys would be more likely to come to our meeting the next morning if they first had a chance to connect individually with the speaker. And if the speaker happened to pick up the tab for dinner—as often happened—the guys were much more likely to give him a chance. Again, free food.
I didn’t target Mickey specifically for those sessions, but I did invite speakers who I thought would relate well with him. I also made sure to invite him personally. He would usually try to give a type of nonanswer by kidding around, saying something like, “Oh, man, let me know tomorrow morning because I’ll be out late tonight. I’m not sure I’ll be up that time of day.” But then, almost every time, Mickey would come walking in.
Mickey wasn’t embarrassed to walk into one of our chapel services or into a church service, either. I think he actually liked being in church and looked forward to going if someone would ask him and make arrangements for him to get there.
Watson Spoelstra was a sportswriter for the Detroit News, and he’d told me, “If any of your guys want to go to church while you’re playing in Detroit, I know where there’s an early service.” Tony Kubek and I liked to take up Watson on his offer, and we usually asked Mickey if he wanted to go to church with us. I remember several occasions when Mickey would say, “Yeah, I’d like to go.” We would have coffee together, then Watson would pick us up at the hotel, take us to church, and get us back in time for the game.
Even though I kept my witnessing low-key, Mickey was well aware that his salvation was important to me. In fact, we often talked about “that decision”—referring to the prospect of his surrendering to Christ. As Mickey often did with serious topics, however, he would use the phrase in a half-joking manner.
Once we were together in a helicopter that lurched at takeoff. Mickey looked over to me and said above the noise of the helicopter, “Maybe this would be a good time to make that decision!”
Another time I showed up at a charity golf tournament that Mickey didn’t know I’d be participating in. “I’m glad you’re here,” he told me. “This minister’s getting on me about making that decision for Christ. I told him if he beat me in golf, then I’d make that decision.”
Mickey and I talked enough about “that decision” that Phil Rizzuto, when he was broadcasting Yankees games, would holler out to Mickey, “Have you made that decision yet?”
Well after our playing days, in the late 1980s, Mickey opened a restaurant in New York City. On a couple of occasions I was asked to speak to groups that met there. I called Mickey’s secretary ahead of time to let him know I’d be there. And both times he showed up, listened to me share my testimony, and joined in with the group asking questions about my story and faith.
My son Robby, who is in the ministry, also shared his faith once to a group in Mickey’s restaurant. After the meeting started, Robby noticed Mickey slipping in and quietly taking a seat in the back of the room. Robby didn’t mention Mickey so as not to draw attention to him. Afterward Mickey made eye contact with Robby and pointed toward a back office. Robby walked back to meet with Mickey, and Mickey told Robby how great it was to see him again. “You know,” he told Robby, “you sound just like your dad—always talking about that decision I need to make.”
It was about that same time that Mickey appeared in a televised interview with sportscaster Bob Costas. Roger Maris had passed away about three years earlier. Mickey, in his
midfifties at the time of the interview, had joked for years that he wouldn’t live past age thirty-nine. And his good friend Roger’s death had affected him in a deep way. At Roger’s funeral, Mickey had asked me to handle his own funeral when the time came. Three years later, during the interview, it was obvious Mickey was still thinking about his mortality.
Mickey told Costas that Roger’s death had left “a void in my heart, an emptiness inside.”
When the interview ended, my phone began ringing with calls from friends wanting to know if I had watched the interview.
“Did you see that?” one friend asked. “He’s searching. God is working on his heart.”
Chapter 20
The Decision
Mickey was a courageous baseball player. He played through constant injury to earn a place among the game’s best ever. I would watch in amazement as Mickey would have a leg bandaged from his ankle to the top of his thigh in the locker room, then drag his leg onto the field and clout one of his tape-measure home runs or track down a long fly ball in deepest center field that many fully healthy center fielders would not have been able to reach. And I could never forget that World Series game in ’61, when he played with a hip so badly abscessed that he left the game with bloodstained pants.
Yet I don’t think I ever saw Mickey more courageous than when he sat across from Bob Costas in another interview, in 1994. By then Mickey had recently completed rehab for alcohol abuse at the Betty Ford Center. And only two weeks earlier, one of his four sons, Billy—named for Billy Martin—had passed away at age thirty-six. Like so many in Mickey’s family, Billy had contracted Hodgkin’s disease and then, after receiving treatment, died of a heart attack. Another Mantle had died far too young.
In the interview, Mickey swept away a tear and admitted, “I was not a good father. . . . I wasn’t ever there.” He hadn’t expected to live as long as he had. He certainly hadn’t expected to bury a son. He added that he still had three sons, and “I need to tell ’em I love ’em.”
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