Childhood hero

I think the first time I ever heard the name Mickey Mantle was while sitting on a pop crate in the back of Frankie Legatto’s convenience store/ ice cream parlour. That was back when Frankie still used his back room as a storage area. Later on in the fifties, he would clear out his storage area and put in a juke box to give the older kids a place to hang out and listen to rock’n’roll. But you still had to sit on pop crates.

Frankie was a friend of the old man’s; one of the “originals” who served in the North Novies with Dad during WW2. I was sitting with Francis, Frankie’s oldest son, and Bobby Gordon listening to the Yankees and Dodgers duke it out in that annual ritual known as the World Series.

We didn’t get to actually see a game back then; TV was still a few years off, at least in our neck of the woods. Of course, you could pick up some of the highlights on the (really) big screen at the Saturday morning matinee at the Odeon . . . if you paid attention during the newsreels.

I was still a kid and Francis and Bobby were both older than I was, maybe twelve or thirteen.. But I often got to hang out with them, maybe because I was big for my age, or, maybe because, even as a kid I was a decent little ball player. I was usually one of the first to be picked in local pick-up games in the schoolyard behind the catholic middle school (St. Joseph’s), often ahead of some of the older guys.

I really didn’t know much about “major league” baseball back then; I could name more players on the Glasgow Celtic football club than I could on the New York Yankees. But, the name itself fired my imagination, and Mickey Mantle became one of my first childhood heroes.

The Yankees won the series that year, 1953 if my fast failing memory serves me right; a year or so before we moved from Guy St. to Bog Row. Mantle would go on to pick up seven World Series rings in his eighteen year career, all played with the Yankees.

In 1956, Mantle won the Hickok Belt as top professional athlete of the year. These days, sportswriters and baseball pundits might refer to it as his “career year.” It was the year he won baseball’s “Triple Crown”, leading the majors with a .353 batting average, 52 homeruns and 130 runs-batted-in, on the way to his first of three MVP awards.

In 1961, Mantle became the highest-paid active player of his time by signing a $75,000 contract with the Yankees. Joe DiMaggio, Hank Greenberg and Ted Williams, who had just retired, had been paid over $100,000 in a season, and Babe Ruth had a peak salary of $80,000. That salary pales in comparison to the multi-million dollar contracts awarded to many of to-days overpaid, under-productive ball players.

One of the most fascinating things about Mantle was that he played his entire career in pain.

Following an injury during a high school football game, Mantle's leg became infected with osteomyelitis, a crippling disease that would have been incurable just a few years earlier. Fortunately, Mantle was able to be treated with a newly available wonder drug, called penicillin, saving his leg from amputation. He suffered from the effects of the disease for the rest of his life, and, according to some, it probably led to many other injuries that hampered his accomplishments.

In 1974, as soon as he was eligible, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame; his uniform number “7” was retired by the Yankees. In 1999, "The Sporting News" placed Mantle at 17th on its list of "The 100 Greatest Baseball Players."

His stats might have suffered as a result of his injuries; but, I don’t believe they hampered his accomplishments. And, the only drug he abused was beer. No steroids, folks.