Mickey and Willie

by Allen Barra

  Willie’s team was even more formidable, composed of future Hall of Famers Richie Ashburn of the Phillies, the only outfielder in baseball, many felt, with as much range as Mays; the Cubs’ Ernie Banks, NL MVP for 1958 and 1959; Frank Robinson, who would later win the MVP in both the National and American Leagues; and the Pittsburgh Pirates’ second-base fielding wizard, the Ozzie Smith of his day, Bill Mazeroski. The Dodgers’ Johnny Podres and Gil Hodges, who were winding down their careers, were also on the roster; Scott knew they would draw some fans from Brooklyn.

  Nothing indicates the state of baseball in 1958 more clearly than the notice at the bottom of the promotional posters for the game: “No Television—No Radio.” Even Scott, who was years ahead of his time as a savvy promoter, felt that TV and radio exposure would hurt sales rather than promote interest. Today, of course, such an event would probably be on ESPN TV and radio, not to mention streamed live on the Internet.

  The game drew 21,129 fans, which was regarded as a huge success since the attendance was considerably more than the Yankees, Giants, or Dodgers had averaged per game in 1957. The next day the New York Times headline read, “Mays’ Team Wins Exhibition, 6–2.” Willie Mays “had the hitting and the pitching on his side yesterday as his National League All-Stars whipped Mickey Mantle’s American League All-Stars 6–2 at Yankee Stadium.”15 Willie went 4-for-5, including three hits off Whitey Ford, beginning a long domination of the AL’s best pitcher that would continue throughout their careers. Ray Robinson, who was at the game, recalls that Mickey and Willie “were both grinning when they brought their score cards up to home plate and shook hands. But the crowd was clearly on Willie’s side.”

  The Times account supports Robinson’s memory: “The Giants’ Mays, roundly applauded each time he stepped to the plate, and the Phillies’ Richie Ashburn got seven hits between them.… The 21,129 spectators cheered Willie Mays’ every move. Willie provided an exciting note with his daring base running.”16 Mickey—who went 1-for-2 before taking himself out of the game—got a few boos when he came to bat.

  The 1958 Mickey-Willie All-Star game had an odd side story. George Plimpton, the intrepid sports journalist who would later write about his experience playing for the Detroit Lions in Paper Lion and on the professional golf tour in Bogey Man, wanted to use the event to write about what it was like to pitch to a batting order of major leaguers. He first approached Frank Scott, “the players’ agent—a powerful figure in the world of professional athletics. He is often described as the October Santa—parlaying World Series heroics into lucrative engagements of the banquet circuit for the outstanding players. He’s such a success at making money for athletes off the playing field that almost any day on television you can see his clients selling things, showering, shaving.… He was closely identified with a group promoting the game, and he and I had a number of conversations over the phone—always pleasant, but he was skeptical. Most of the time he wanted to know who was to be held responsible. Suppose I got killed. All sorts of things happen on the pitcher’s mound. Did I remember Herb Score [hit by the Yankees’ Gil McDougald] and the terrible line drive that nearly blinded him? Or suppose I beaned somebody? Did I want to have a Ray Chapman on my conscience—the fellow Carl Mays killed with a submarine ball?” A Carl Mays hitting a Willie Mays? Only imagine.

  Finally, Plimpton sought the advice of Toots Shor, pater familias of sports in New York City. Shor advised him, “What you need is cash. That’s all. Cash. Get your editor to put up cash.” Toots told him to tell Frank Scott that he had, say, $2,000 for the players to divide up, in which case the players would be so anxious to have Plimpton pitch that “they’ll carry you out to the pitcher’s mound on a goddam divan.” Finally, Sports Illustrated, which had Plimpton on assignment, managed to scratch up $1,000 for whichever team got the most hits off Plimpton, and as Shor had predicted, the captains of both squads agreed to let him pitch.

  Plimpton had no idea that he was about to step into a nightmare. He was delighted to meet Mays, who came into the locker room “with a rush, shouting greetings in his high, rather squeaky voice, an arm upraised, waving—smaller, much smaller in stature than I’d imagined, and yet so ebullient the locker room came alive the moment the door swung shut behind him.” Moments later, Plimpton spoke to Mantle, who immediately asked him about the money. After much whispering between Mantle and Scott, it was agreed that Plimpton would get his chance a half hour before the game. Both sides would send up eight batters—pitchers would not bat—and the team with the most bases would divvy up the prize money.

  What Plimpton had not counted on was that big league players simply wouldn’t swing at pitches they did not like. The National Leaguers were up first, and Mays became so impatient with Plimpton’s off-target tosses that he swung on an outside pitch and hit a towering pop to second base. As Plimpton stood on the mound at Yankee Stadium, he did get a sense of what it was like to pitch to professionals. Behind him were Billy Martin, taking a turn at short, and Nellie Fox at second “with a chaw of tobacco” tucked in his cheek. In center field was Mickey Mantle: “Of all of them standing there, Mantle’s was the power you sensed—seeing it in the heavy shoulders and arms sloping from a neck as thick as a water main. His large boyish face has gone heavy; he turns his head slowly, his eyes pale and impassive, so that there is something in his manner of the cat family: imperturbable, arch, and yet because the boyishness is still there, he wears a faint expression of suspicious stubbornness, of petulance.”17

  Having used up all his time throwing failed curves in the dirt to the National League, Plimpton never got to pitch to Mantle. Instead, the players were told there would be a $2,000 prize, $1,000 for each team. Plimpton paid the extra money out of his own pocket. “A small price to pay for the opportunity,” he told me many years later.

  In Plimpton’s opinion, Mickey played listlessly that day “compared to Mays,” who seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. Mantle, he felt, “seemed stolid, almost indifferent … during his early years as a Yankee, he had kept a cap pistol in his locker, and for a couple of seasons around the major league circuit, he and Billy Martin used to bang away at each other while Yogi Berra and some of the others would join in with water pistols. But the Mantle I was introduced to by Frank Scott seemed long past the cap pistol stage. His jaw moved slowly and barely perceptively on gum.”18

  I interviewed Richie Ashburn, who played in all the Mickey-Willie exhibitions, for Philadelphia magazine in 1993. Rich, as he preferred to be called, thought that Mantle was miffed at the cool reception he got from the fans at Yankee Stadium. “Of course, there were a lot of old Giants fans there, but I don’t think he expected the boos. I don’t believe that he resented the way they felt about Willie, but I think he had some kind of mistaken attitude that after winning back-to-back MVPs everyone in New York was ready to see them as equals. It just wasn’t that way.”

  Ashburn was surprised to find that Mantle was eager to barnstorm again the next year. “He was different,” he recalled. “A lot more light-hearted. If I had to guess, I’d say it was because he was playing outside of New York.”

  The first game of the 1959 tour was played in Philadelphia, where the man who put Mickey and Willie together on the same baseball field was known as “Mr. Basketball.” Eddie Gottlieb, the owner and first coach of the Philadelphia Warriors (the NBA’s Rookie of the Year Award is named for him), was born Isadore Gottlieb in the Ukraine in 1898. Like Abe Saperstein of Harlem Globetrotter fame, Eddie loved both basketball and baseball and was a big promoter of Negro League ball in the Philadelphia area. He contributed some crowd-pleasing ideas to the occasion, such as a home run contest before the game that was won by Gil Hodges, who received a plaque from the South Philadelphia Optimists Club. Mays won the game with a grand slammer, though Mickey had two doubles and a single.

  The next day the players and coaches piled their equipment onto two buses and headed up to Syracuse, where former welter- and middleweight boxing champion Carmen Basilio wa
s promoting the game. On the drive upstate, Ashburn recalled, Willie and Mickey engaged in a poor-mouthing contest that had the rest of the players laughing out loud. “It was hilarious. Willie would say, ‘Man, my dad didn’t have enough money to buy me a bicycle. I had to share one with the kids in my family.’ Then Mickey would say, ‘Oh, man, you had bicycles? We had an old horse that we used to haul stuff around with, and I had to ride him to school.’ Then Willie would say, ‘Oh, man, you got to ride to school on a horse? I always wanted to ride on a horse.’ This went on for about an hour, and finally even the two of them were cracking up.”

  The game itself, finally won by Mickey’s team, was a lark. Basilio, a huge baseball fan, wanted to play his favorite position, shortstop, for a couple of innings. Mickey told him, “Hell, yes. What am I gonna do? Tell the guy who whipped Sugar Ray Robinson that he can’t play baseball with me?” Carmen did just fine, handling two chances cleanly.

  Mantle, Ashburn noted, did not bat left-handed in either game. “I didn’t realize it till the games were over, but Mickey never batted left-handed, even against right-handed pitching. Later I found he was still nursing his right shoulder, but he did fine in that Syracuse game. Willie hit a ball out to the flagpole in center, about twenty feet over the fence. I’d say it went about 420. About two innings later, Mickey got up with a grin and did a Babe Ruth thing of pointing out towards the flagpole, like that’s where he was going to hit it. He popped the ball up, and the players on both teams got a good laugh out of it. He came off the field with a shrug and a smile. But two innings later, he did hit one out there, probably about twenty feet farther than Willie’s. From his dugout, Willie feigned indignation as Mickey rounded third. ‘Hey, man, what you doin’ stealin’ my thunder?’ Mickey just laughed and said, ‘Hey, man, I told you that’s where I was going to hit it.’ They were just a couple of big kids.”

  In the final inning, Mantle pulled a stunt he would have never tried in a big league game. “Willie was leading farther and farther off second base, daring the pitcher to try and pick him off. He didn’t know that Mickey had ordered the shortstop and second baseman—Nellie Fox was at second and I forget who was at short—to stay away from the bag. Mickey gave a signal and came charging in from center field, the pitcher wheeled and threw, and they picked Willie off second. Mickey laughed and jumped around like a kid while Willie shook his head in disbelief. The whole thing was so silly. It was like something you would see in a company softball game.” The crowd of nearly eight thousand, who had paid a total of $20,000 to watch, were delighted. The final score was 4–2, American League All-Stars.

  After the game, there was a dinner at the local Knights of Columbus, to which Basilio belonged. “They had a pool room there,” Ashburn told me, “and Willie said to me, ‘Watch this. I’m gonna get some back from Mickey for that game today.’ ” But after an hour of pool shooting that had everyone enthralled, the ace of Big Tony’s in Fairfield had to give way to the hustler from the Black Cat in Commerce—“and I think about $50 went with that. Mickey was proud as a peacock, you could see that he really loved Willie and that there was a bond there as well as a real rivalry. Willie shook his hand and smiled, and then in a fake tough guy voice said, ‘Man, I’m gonna give up this table to someone else now. But I’m gonna get you back someday.’ ”19

  It’s true that both men probably should have been home taking hot baths and watching football on television. But even if it was work, the off-season baseball was therapeutic. Baseball historian Thomas Barthel relates a story about Mickey told to him by Ted Kubiak, a former major league infielder and son-in-law of Irv Noren, Mickey’s onetime roommate. Noren’s job, Kubiak said, was “to get him safely back to his room many a night after their nights on the town; Irv did not drink, so he was the designated chauffeur.”

  Sometime in either 1955 or 1956, Irv and Mickey decided to drive together to California. “Pretty soon they went through a small town and saw a group of young boys playing baseball behind a school. They thought it would be a good idea to have some fun, so they stopped to watch. Irv asked the boys if he could pitch to his buddy because his buddy said he could not strike him out. The boys did not want these ‘old guys’ to take up their time, so they said no. After bribing the boys with some new baseballs they had in the car, Irv began throwing to Mickey, who hit everything and, of course, was hitting the balls over the school much to the surprise of the boys. Finishing up, Irv asked them if they knew who Mickey Mantle was, and they did. ‘Well, this is Mickey Mantle!’

  “ ‘No way,’ they said. Mickey had to show them his driver’s license. They left the boys the new balls and got on their way. What a story for those kids to tell their kids!”20

  After the first barnstorming tour in 1958 came one of the strangest chapters in Willie Mays’s young life. He and Marghuerite adopted a baby and named him Michael. According to James Hirsch’s biography, Willie now had extra time to spend with the baby and “enjoyed his duties. When Michael couldn’t fall asleep, Willie would put him in his car and drive him around the block until he nodded off. He even learned how to change diapers.”21 But Michael Mays would remain, until this day, a shadow in his adopted father’s life. He was scarcely mentioned in interviews, and the two were almost never seen in public together. It has never been clear what role, if any, Michael played in Willie’s life. Nor did any of Mays’s biographers ever delve too deeply into the relationship between Willie Mays and his adopted son.

  By the end of the 1958 season, both Willie and Mickey were living outside New York. The Mantles had bought a four-bedroom house that cost nearly $60,000 in the tony Preston Hollow section of Dallas. Merlyn had long since decided that life in the New York area, even in the suburbs, was fraught with distractions, at least for Mickey. The trouble was that life back in Commerce had been no better. “People were knocking at their door all hours of the night,” recalled one of Mickey’s friends, “wanting to borrow money. They’d come over and use their bathroom. Can you believe that? People just wouldn’t leave them alone.”22

  Mickey had fled from their Commerce home whenever possible. When Merlyn was nine months pregnant with Billy, Mickey, Whitey Ford, Billy Martin, and another friend, Harold Youngman, left on their annual Thanksgiving hunting trip on a ranch outside Kerrville, Texas, owned by another of Mickey’s friends, a man named Hamilton Wilson. Merlyn thought Mickey might delay his trip a few days in anticipation of the arrival of the baby; he did not. On the day the pals left for their hunting trip, Merlyn, already feeling labor pains, checked herself into a hospital in Joplin, Missouri. On hearing of the birth of a boy, Youngman flew Mickey to Joplin on his private plane. When he saw Merlyn in the hospital room, she burst out crying and said, “You could have waited a few more days before taking off like that!”23

  But if Merlyn thought that moving Mickey to a house near Dallas was going to improve his instincts as a husband and father, she would be sadly mistaken.

  * Or thought they would never see again. Who, at the end of the 1958 baseball season, could have foreseen the rise of the New York Mets in this very same Polo Grounds five years later?

  † For a nominal fee, many major league teams let barnstormers wear their team uniforms, regarding it as good promotion.

  ‡ In a 1999 letter to me, Charlie Einstein suggested yet a fourth possibility: “A Dodger fan.”

  § There may have been one more reason. Frank Robinson, who barnstormed from his first postseason in 1956, once told me that he thought one of the biggest reasons for the demise of barnstorming was professional football: “Things changed very quickly after 1958, when the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants played that great championship game. I remember in 1956 and ’57 we really didn’t have much competition for Sunday barnstorming games, but by 1959, and then for the next three years, you could see interest declining quickly. It seemed like everyone wanted to stay home on a Sunday in October and watch football.”

  ‖ In a bizarre trade just a couple of months later, Colavito and Kuenn wou
ld be swapped for each other. Kuenn went on to win the league’s batting title, while Colavito led the AL in home runs.

  14

  “Neither One of Us Was Joe DiMaggio”

  For Mickey and Willie, the 1959 season was one of discontent. It was, oddly enough, the only season until the Yankees’ collapse in 1965 in which a Willie Mays—led Giants team won more games than a Mickey Mantle—led Yankees team. San Francisco finished in third place, 83–71, just four games out of first. That was the good news; the bad news was that the hated Dodgers finished first. Giants fans smarted at the thought that somehow Willie Mays had not done quite enough to make up the difference. For the first time in six seasons, Willie was probably not the league’s best player that year; that unofficial title should probably have gone to the Braves’ Henry Aaron, who did not win the MVP that year, or to the Cubs’ Ernie Banks, who did. But Willie had still done plenty for his team, batting .313 with 34 home runs and 113 RBIs. He led the NL in stolen bases for an amazing fourth consecutive season.

  Plagued with age and injuries, the Yankees had their only bad season under Stengel. Like the Giants, they finished third, but at 79–75, finished a full fifteen games behind the pennant-winning White Sox. Mickey, now twenty-seven, had a miserable year—at least that’s what many said. Playing in pain all season, he batted just .285, his worst average since his rookie season, with 31 home runs and 75 RBIs. He failed to lead the league in runs scored for the first time in four years. And yet, in hindsight, he was probably the best player in the American League—or at any rate, at least as good as the White Sox’s Nellie Fox, who finished first in the MVP voting. Bill James would give Fox 30 Win Shares for 1959, the same as Mantle. Total Baseball would rank Mickey number one in its Total Player Rating, with the Tigers’ Al Kaline second; Fox wasn’t in the top five.