Arrested development: The Mickey Mantle story

It's that time of year when the sports pages are brimming with stories about spring training -- how this or that baseball team hopes to break through this year, how this or that waning star hopes to get a fresh start in a new city.

So it's coincidental that I recently finished a book (a Christmas gift from my oldest son) about what used to be known as America's pastime and one of its biggest stars on its marquee team. I'm talking, of course, about No. 7 -- Mickey Mantle, the Hall of Fame centerfielder for the New York Yankees, and one of the most popular players of the modern era.

"The Last Boy" is an exhaustive biography that purports to tell the story of Mantle and the end of America's childhood. Author Jane Leavy, a former Washington Post reporter and author of a well-received biography of Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax, grew up near Yankee Stadium idolizing Mantle and readily admits to a soft spot for The Mick. Yet over the course of 420 pages, including three appendices, she does an admirable job of distancing herself from the Mantle legend and boring in with deep reporting and clear-eyed commentary.

I'm a Bay Area boy whose introduction to Major League Baseball came in the wind-chilled seats of San Francisco's Candlestick Park. Willie Mays, the Giants' do-it-all centerfielder, was my favorite player as a young boy. I hated the Yankees and still do, especially now in this era of exorbitant spending for free agents. I didn't dislike Mantle but, for me, he was never the Golden Boy as he was for East Coasters or Yankee-lovers across the country.

Leavy writes about The Mick from every conceivable angle -- from the grinding poverty of his childhood in Commerce, Oklahoma, where his dad worked in the zinc and lead mines to the challenge of replacing Joe DiMaggio as a Yankee superstar to the soul-numbing aspects of a post-career routine that saw him travel constantly to autograph shows, golf tournaments and other public appearances.

She spares no detail in chronicling the good -- how he was revered in the Yankee clubhouse as a great teammate, a generous friend and a courageous player who excelled despite frequent injuries; how, as the recipient of a liver transplant, he became a national spokesman for organ donations. And she does the same in reviewing the bad -- lifelong womanizing, excessive drinking that drove him late in life to a stint in rebab, his near-total absence as a husband and father of four boys.

The Mick, 1950s.

Mantle broke in to the major leagues at age 19, fulfilling the dreams of his father Mutt, who died at age 40. Over the course of an 18-year career and the years that followed, he never quit traveling, as if life were a series of games to be played on the road and at home. Unquestionably, there were people all around him who enabled his bad behaviors, including members of the press, who at the time refrained from reporting on athletes' off-the-field antics.

That era is long gone and so, too, is the chance that any modern athlete (or other celebrity, for that matter) would profit from the kind of mythology that built up around Mickey Mantle. We've swung the other way to reporting every brush with the law, along with real or perceived character flaws, and details of gigantic contracts and product endorsements that make LeBron, Kobe, Tiger names and faces that are recognized around the globe.

"The Last Boy" is an enjoyable read. Every now and then, it's good to get away from the seriousness of everyday news and get lost in something of less consequence. I learned a lot -- probably more than I needed to know -- about The Mick that passed me by in my childhood. Had I known him, I probably would admired, detested or tolerated him, depending what stage of life he was in. Thanks to Leavy's meticulous reporting and sharp writing, I can appreciate him as a well-meaning kid from a small town who became a larger-than-life figure for generations of baseball fans...and through it all was a human being with good qualities, unrealized opportunities, and feelings and flaws like anyone else.

Listen to or read a transcript of NPR's interview with Jane Leavy.


Photograph by Bob Olen