Memories Of The Mick

MICKEY MANTLE: STORIES & MEMORABILIA FROM A LIFETIME WITH THE MICK
by Mickey Herskowitz with Danny and David Mantle
Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 175 pages, $35

No baseball legend won America's hearts the way Mickey Charles Mantle did. Babe Ruth was idolized, Lou Gehrig sentimentalized and Joe DiMaggio lionized, but Mantle was loved. "For two generations of fathers and sons, Mantle was baseball, a guy who hit the ball over buildings, who inspired the phrase tape-measure home runs," Mickey Herskowitz writes in his unique new book on the Mick.

Mantle was the reason Little Leaguers everywhere fought over their teams' number 7 jersey. He has been gone for 11 years, a victim of cancer and his own careless lifestyle, but his name is still a magical one to baseball fans who remember a simpler time before the DH, divisional playoffs and steroid scandals. This book is for them, though perhaps the word book doesn't do it complete justice. Included with the text are 10 removable reproductions of Mantle memorabilia, including a moving letter on Motel Cleveland stationery that the Mick wrote to his wife, Merlyn, and Mantle's first baseball contract, with the Class D Independence ( Kans.) Yankees, which would earn him a salary of $140 a month.

Maybe it's the pinstripes on the inside covers, the infectious Mantle smile on the front or the myriad family photos inside, but this book, written with the help of Mantle's sons, David and Danny, feels personal. This is Mantle's life story, feet of clay (i.e., his excessive drinking) and all, rich in behind-the-scenes nuggets. Like the time Mantle was on a talk-radio show with Paul Simon and during a break asked Simon why the famous line from Mrs. Robinson ("Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?") wasn't about him. DiMaggio's name had the right number of syllables, explained Simon, who was actually a Mantle fan as a boy. Another time Mantle was posing for a photo at Disneyland, surrounded by Disney characters. When the photographer ordered Goofy to move to the right, Mantle slid over. "I've been called worse," Mantle would say later. There's also a fond remembrance of Mantle's hellacious knuckleball. It was good enough that he begged Yankees manager Casey Stengel to let him pitch an inning late in a blowout. That never happened, but it was that same knuckleball that broke the nose of unwitting rookie catcher Jake Gibbs during a sideline toss.

Mantle's appeal is enduring in part because he was an American hero during the nation's age of innocence. His impact was only fully felt by his son David when David was 17 and attended Old-Timers' Day in Arlington, Texas, in 1973. He was sitting in the stands when his father was introduced, and the ensuing ovation lasted, it seemed, forever. "My eyes welled up with tears and every hair on my arms and neck stood up," David writes in the book. "That was a defining moment for me."

Mantle's life was a series of defining moments for many fans. This book offers a precious opportunity to savor those too-fleeting moments a little longer.

�