Mickey Mantle, the legendary centerfielder for the New York Yankees and cultural icon, died 30 years ago this week, on August 13, 1995.
During the post-World War II era of the 1950s and 1960s, as America began to thrive economically, Mantle was easily one of the most revered and recognizable athletes all across the country.
Talk to virtually any baby boomer today who called themselves a serious sports fan, and they will tell you that whether they grew up in Odessa, Texas, Omaha, Nebraska, Montgomery, Alabama, or Raleigh, North Carolina—they all wanted to wear number seven on their uniform.
They mimicked “The Mick’s” batting stance, emulated how he threw and even copied how he ran around the bases after hitting a home run—with his head down and his arms out.
Dig a little deeper, and you’ll learn that virtually every boy who grew up during that period not only wanted to hit mammoth home runs like Mantle—they wanted to be Mickey Mantle.
The comedian Billy Crystal even spoke with a southern Oklahoma drawl at his bar mitzvah.
But it wasn’t just the boys who admired Mantle. Similarly to Beatlemania, teenage girls dreamed of marrying him, parents cheered for him, and grandparents admired him.
On the surface, Mantle was a clean-cut American poster child. If Elvis Presley was the “King of Rock and Roll,” Mickey Mantle was the “King of Baseball” when it really was “America’s National Pastime.”
He had a certain aura about him that was synonymous with the days of summer and the innocence of America’s youth. He was a young, handsome, blonde-haired, blue-eyed country kid with shoulders as broad as the wings of a Boeing 777.
Mantle brought all of these characteristics, along with his baby-faced smile, to the bright lights of New York City in 1951, where he would play center field for the next 18 years with the New York Yankees, America’s most successful and recognizable sports franchise. It did not take long for Mantle to win over the endearing New York fans with his dazzling play and good looks.
Throughout his career, Yankee fans became accustomed to seeing Mantle belt moonshots into the stratosphere. They also watched in awe as he made spectacular plays in what was known as “Death Valley,” the nickname for the old Yankee Stadium due to its sizeable dimensions and the considerable amount of ground that Mantle had to cover in left-center field—where the monuments of Lou Gehrig, Miller Huggins, and Babe Ruth stood, in the deepest part of the ballpark.
Mantle was born in 1931 in Spavinaw, Oklahoma, but was raised in Commerce, Oklahoma, a small town that, as of 2024, had just 2,268 residents. When Mantle lived there, the town was even smaller.
Mantle’s father, Elvin Mantle (nicknamed Mutt), was a zinc and lead miner who made just $50 a week, barely enough to support the Mantle family. But Mutt believed his supremely athletic son was destined to be a baseball player and somehow found the time to play baseball with Mickey every night at a field nearby their house, after a long day at the mines. It was on that field that Mutt Mantle worked endlessly—teaching his son the fundamentals of baseball. It was also on that very field that Mutt would turn Mickey Mantle into the greatest switch hitter of all time.
Mantle was pursued heavily by Yankee scout Tom Greenwade, who recognized Mantle’s talent and convinced the Yankees to sign him to a contract in 1949, when he was just 18. Mantle, who was originally brought up as a shortstop, committed 47 errors at that position during his 1949 campaign with the Yankees’ minor league team, raising serious concerns about his ability to play in the field. But while there may have been questions about Mantle’s fielding ability, there was never any doubt that the kid could hit.
During the winter before the 1951 season, Mantle worked extensively on improving his fielding, as the Yankees converted him into an outfielder. At spring training that year, Mantle played in front of the watchful eyes of the mythological Yankee manager Casey Stengel, who determined that Mantle was ready to be promoted to the big leagues.
On opening day, the boy from Oklahoma found himself placed in right field next to the Yankee icon, Joe DiMaggio—the man who won nine World Series Championships, hit safely in 56 consecutive games (still a Major League record), and would later marry Marilyn Monroe.
Mantle’s perch next to DiMaggio was short-lived, as he struggled to hit and was subsequently sent down to the minors so that he could refine his swing. When his struggles in the minors continued, Mantle phoned his father and told him he intended on quitting baseball altogether and would go back to Oklahoma, where he would join Mutt in the mines.
Mutt drove up to Kansas, where Mickey was playing so that he could talk to him in person before a decision was made. When the elder Mantle arrived at the hotel, he ripped into Mickey, quipping, “If that’s all the man you are, then get your clothes and let’s go home.” Mutt then famously said to his teary-eyed son, “I thought I raised a ballplayer. You’re nothing but a coward and a quitter.”
This encounter served as a wake-up call to Mantle. He decided to give baseball another shot. He immediately rediscovered his stroke, and he began to hit. By the end of August, Mantle returned to the Yankees, who were on their way to winning another pennant.
During Game Two of the 1951 World Series, Mantle’s career nearly ended right in front of the eyes of Mutt, who was watching from the stands, along with 65,000 fans who were at Yankee Stadium that day. With Willie Mays at the plate and Eddie Lopat on the mound, Mays lofted a fly ball towards Mantle. On this particular occasion, Mays did not produce the swing that he would produce 660 times throughout his career, in which he hit the ball over the fence for a home run. The ball was hit relatively shallow and should have been a routine out.
The only issue was that the ball was hit in between center field, where DiMaggio was playing, and right field, where Mantle was stationed. Typically, the general rule of thumb is that the center fielder has the power to call off the other outfielders, even if the ball is out of his “territory.”
In this particular instance, it appeared that Mantle should have been the one catching the ball. But as the ball was descending, and with Mantle running at full speed, at the last second, just as Mantle put his glove out to snag the ball, he heard DiMaggio yell, “I got it.”
Mantle wisely deferred to the icon and quickly got out of the way. But in doing so, the heel of his cleats got caught in a rubber sewer drain, which resulted in his knee going right out through his leg. Mantle lay motionless on the field, flat as a pancake. A hush rang over Yankee Stadium, as 66,000 fans sat there, shell-shocked and speechless at what they had just witnessed. To some, it appeared that Mantle had been shot. While the crowd remained uncertain as to what had just transpired, one thing was very certain. Mantle’s knee would never be the same again. It was the last game Mantle ever played pain-free, and it was only his rookie season.
The next day, with Mantle’s knee heavily wrapped, he took a cab to Lenox Hill Hospital with his father. As the younger Mantle got out of the cab, he put his arm around Mutt’s shoulder for extra support. Mutt immediately dropped to the sidewalk. Both Mantles were carted up to the same room where they watched the rest of the World Series together. Soon thereafter, Mantle learned that his father had Hodgkin’s disease, a form of cancer that ran in the Mantle family. Mutt Mantle would pass away only seven months later, at the age of 40, while Mickey was just 20 years old.
In the blink of an eye, Mantle’s biggest role model and mentor was gone. The man who had pushed him to the limit all of his life, the man who had willed him to succeed, the man who believed in him when no one else did, was now suddenly gone from Mantle’s life. The correlation of the knee injury and the passing of Mutt were two instances that would continue to haunt Mantle for the rest of his life.
It is no secret that the shy kid from Oklahoma was an imperfect man who struggled with the expectations that often come with fame and stardom, especially in the biggest media market in the country. He was an alcoholic, a philanderer, and an absentee father.
Still, Mantle was loved and admired everywhere he went, but he never quite knew how to show his fans the same affection they had towards him. He often said that he felt unworthy of their support.
There was no greater display of Mantle’s unwavering popularity than in 1961, when Mantle went toe-to-toe with teammate Roger Maris in pursuit of breaking Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record. Mantle received overwhelming support from Yankee fans who felt he was the rightful heir to surpass the Bambino. Maris, meanwhile, was booed, taunted, and even sent death threats by Yankee fans who did not want him to break the record.
By the time Mantle retired from baseball, before the start of the 1969 season, he ranked near the top in several baseball statistical categories. He appeared in twelve World Series, winning seven of them, and won the Triple Crown in 1956, leading the league with a .353 batting average, 52 home runs, and 130 RBIs. Mantle also won three American League Most Valuable Player Awards and appeared in 16 All-Star Games. At the time of his retirement, he was third all-time on Major League Baseball’s home run list, trailing only Babe Ruth and Willie Mays, and had appeared in more games than anyone else ever to grace a Yankee uniform (2,401), until Derek Jeter passed him in 2011.
Mantle is considered by many baseball players and experts alike to have been one of the greatest baseball players to have ever played the game, and yet when people look back at his career, they often talk about Mantle having not reached his full potential and imagine just how great he could have been had he taken better care of himself and had he not had a nagging knee injury that plagued him his entire career.
While millions of young boys considered Mantle to be their hero, “The Mick” made it clear that he did not consider himself to be a role model. “I wouldn’t want kids to try to be like I was,” an ailing Mantle, fresh from a stint at the Betty Ford Clinic, once told Bob Costas in an interview. “In the back of my mind, I feel like I let everybody down,” Mantle said of his shortcomings.
Perhaps Costas summed up Mickey Mantle best in his eulogy. “I just hope God has a place for him where he can run again. Where he can play practical jokes on his teammates and smile that boyish smile, ’cause God knows, no one’s perfect. And God knows there’s something special about heroes.”
From this author’s vantage point, Mickey Mantle is a hero, not only because of his storied career with the Yankees and the tape-measure home runs he hit, but because he gave millions of people in this country something to root for and, perhaps most importantly of all, the confidence to believe that we could do better the second time.
He gave us the power to believe, through sheer grit and determination, no obstacle is insurmountable, no setback is permanent, and no amount of pain has to last forever.
And for that, we thank number seven.