Impact Player

by Bobby Richardson

  Mickey talked about how he had looked up to ballplayers such as Stan Musial, Ted Williams, and Joe DiMaggio. “Those were role models,” Mickey said, implying that he didn’t think of himself that way. “I wouldn’t want kids trying to be like I was at the end there.”

  Near the conclusion of that interview, with the camera zoomed tightly on his face, Mickey said, “I know there is something in there that’s not fulfilled or something. I don’t know what it is, Bob. I can’t explain it.” Then Mickey shook his head.

  The year after that interview, Mickey was diagnosed with liver cancer and received a liver transplant. That summer, with the All-Star Game in Arlington, Texas, Betsy and I traveled to Dallas for a meeting with the Baseball Assistance Team. B.A.T., as it is called for short, provides financial assistance for players, umpires, and team personnel. I was on the B.A.T. board of directors with Whitey and Mickey, but Mickey was unable to attend the meetings because he was still recovering from the transplant.

  The phone in our Dallas hotel room rang at six o’clock one morning while we were there. Betsy answered.

  “Betsy, this is Mickey. I’m really hurting. I want Bobby to pray for me.”

  Betsy handed the phone to me, and Mickey and I prayed for his condition to improve. As I had with Dick Howser, I shared with Mickey the message of Philippians 4: Delight yourself in the Lord, tell Him your problems and anxieties, and He promises to give you a peace that passes all understanding.

  I talked with Mickey two or three more times on that trip. “Now don’t forget,” he told me before I returned home, “you have my funeral.”

  We had been back in Sumter a few weeks when Mickey’s wife, Merlyn, called. Mickey was back in the hospital, and his condition had taken a turn for the worse. We hastily arranged a flight back to Dallas. On the plane, as I realized this likely would be my final visit with Mickey, I prayed for my teammate’s life. I prayed for my friend’s soul. I prayed that I would be a bolder witness than I had ever been, in what would be our final times together. I wanted nothing more than for Mickey to spend eternity with me in heaven.

  We arrived in Dallas that night. First thing the next morning, I headed to the hospital. I didn’t know what to expect as I pushed open the door.

  Mickey flashed his down-home, country-boy smile.

  “I can’t wait to tell you this,” Mickey said right away. “I want you to know that I’m a Christian. I’ve accepted Christ as my Savior.”

  I was thrilled, of course, but I said, “Mickey, to make sure you understand, let me go over it with you again.” Then I began to share again the story he had gone out of his way to hear me share when we were teammates.

  “Mickey, God loves you, and He has a purpose for your life. He sent the Lord Jesus to shed His precious blood and promised in His Word that if you repent of your sin and receive Him as Savior, you may indeed have everlasting life. I did that very thing when I was a boy of about twelve. My pastor came to my home and opened up God’s Word and talked about how Romans says, ‘All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.’

  “Mickey, you and I are both sinners. We are in that same category. And the Bible says there’s a penalty involved. ‘The wages of sin is death’—eternal death. The good news is that Christ died for our sins. He was buried, and He rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures. That day as a young boy, I responded to ask God to forgive me for my sins, and I received Him as Lord and Savior of my life.”

  “That’s just what I’ve done,” Mickey told me. “I have received Jesus Christ as my Savior.”

  Tears filled my eyes. After a lifetime of decisions he regretted, Mickey had made “that decision”—the best decision any person could make. I didn’t get the whole story about how Mickey accepted his salvation, but near his bed were audiotapes of Pete Maravich’s testimony.

  I couldn’t wait to recount our conversation to Betsy when I arrived at the friend’s home where we were staying.

  “Let’s go back to the hospital,” Betsy said, “and let me talk to him.” She and Mickey had become good friends over the years.

  When Mickey saw Betsy, he said, “Let me get comfortable so we can talk.” His sons helped him to a reclining chair. When his son David put his arms around Mickey to help move him, Mickey asked David, “Do you want to dance?” As sick as he was, he still couldn’t resist a joke.

  After we visited awhile, the boys left the room, leaving only Mickey, Merlyn, Betsy, and me. Betsy knelt beside Mickey, held his hand, and shared the story of how she had come to know Christ as her Savior. She told Mickey that even as a youngster, she’d needed her sins forgiven just as much as Mickey did. Finally Betsy paused, gave Mickey a serious look, and asked Mickey the same question she had been asked when she became a Christian: “If you were to stand before a holy God today, and He asked you the question, ‘Why should I let you into My heaven?’ what would you say?”

  Mickey considered her question for a moment and looked to Merlyn before turning back to face Betsy. “Betsy, we’re talking about God?”

  “That’s right.”

  Mickey thought a little longer before answering: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

  I suspect that verse had been planted in a young Mickey’s heart long ago, perhaps in a church back in Commerce, Oklahoma. For all those years, that seed had been germinating. Now, in what a gospel tract would later call Mickey’s final inning, in a hospital room in Dallas, the salvation message of John 3:16 had grown in and changed his heart.

  Over the next couple of days, Mickey had to be heavily medicated for pain and began drifting in and out of sleep. His wife and sons were in the room with us. Whenever Mickey woke up, I would read to him from Psalms, and we would pray. Despite his condition, there was a genuine peace in that room—a peace I had never seen in Mickey before. At one point, a doctor checked in on Mickey, and Mickey told him, “I’m ready.”

  Mickey passed into the presence of his Savior early on Sunday morning, August 13, 1995. He was sixty-three. He was my teammate and friend, and I will spend eternity with him.

  My Favorite Mickey Story

  Securing a location for Mickey’s funeral proved a greater challenge than expected. I had two friends who pastored large churches in Dallas, but both were on vacation and unable to be reached. Finally an assistant to Mickey’s lawyer helped us connect with people at the Lovers Lane United Methodist Church in North Dallas. We could hold Mickey’s service in that beautiful facility.

  When I wasn’t involved in the arrangements for the service, I isolated myself as much as possible at the home of our friends Sumner and Celeste Wemp. Robby and Ron, who both were pastoring churches in Sumter at the time, received a flood of phone calls from media outlets all across the country trying to contact me with interview requests. I like to help the media when I can, but that was a time when I chose to turn down all requests. I knew Merlyn and the family wanted to avoid publicity, and my mission was to be there for my friend Mickey and his family.

  As I prepared my message, I thought of the friends and teammates of Mickey who would be at his funeral. What did they need to hear?

  First and foremost, I wanted to let them know that the Lord had answered the prayers of so many—that Mickey had become a Christian. Because Mickey’s final days had been kept private, few would know that Mickey had accepted Jesus as his Savior. I asked my family and close friends to pray for me, that I could present the gospel clearly and represent my friend in a way that would have pleased him and would comfort his family. This would be one more opportunity for me to share that message with my teammates. I knew Mickey would want them to know that he had finally made “that decision.”

  I felt a heavy sense of responsibility in communicating that message for Mickey—and that was when I was thinking only of speaking to his friends and teammates. I did not know the service would be broadcast live—not only by two Dallas TV s
tations, but also nationally on CNN and ESPN2.

  Tony Kubek was at the funeral home for visitation the night before the funeral. I talked with Tony about what I was feeling as I prepared the message, and he was such an encouragement to me.

  The next day more than two thousand family members and friends packed into that church. Folding chairs had to be set up in one of the aisles to make room for more people. A line began forming outside the church at five thirty that morning for a service that would begin at two in the afternoon, and many had to be turned away by security.

  It’s eerie how quiet that many people crammed into one place can become.

  After being introduced as “a faith friend of Mickey’s,” I made some brief opening remarks. I chose to set a comforting tone for the service by reading from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18:

  I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

  Then I prayed, referencing the words of Moses in Psalm 90:9: “We spend our years as a tale that is told.”

  “We know that one day,” I continued, “we will all stand before You as our Creator. We’re just so thankful that You provided a way, the Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered and died for our sins on the cross so that we might have everlasting life with You. We ask Your blessing on this service and Your blessing on this family. Be a comfort to them, and meet each one here today at their point of need. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

  Bob Costas, who had grown up admiring Mickey, was next at the pulpit. He hit a home run as he eloquently expressed the emotions Mickey had stirred up within so many baseball fans who became kids again at the sight of their baseball hero.

  Bob drew a loud laugh from the congregation when he shared one of Mickey’s favorite stories about being met by Saint Peter at the pearly gates of heaven. As Mickey envisioned it, the good saint shakes his head and says, “Mick, we checked the record. We know some of what went on. Sorry, we can’t let you in. But before you go, God wants to know if you’d sign these six dozen baseballs.”

  I had heard that tale many times and had laughed because it’s a funny story, but I’d felt a sense of sadness, too. This time, though, I just laughed. I knew that in just a few minutes I would be sharing a new Mickey Mantle story that would correct the part about him not stepping through heaven’s pearly gates.

  Before my message, singer Roy Clark delivered a haunting rendition of a song that was a hit for him in 1969: “Yesterday When I Was Young.” Mickey had asked Roy to sing that song at his funeral. “A promise is a promise,” Roy said as he stepped forward to the microphone with his guitar. “It just wasn’t supposed to happen this soon.”

  The ballad, originally written by Herbert Kretzner and Charles Aznavour, tells the story of an aging man who reflects on his life and regrets the way he had wasted the years of his youth on meaningless pursuits. Mickey believed the song could have been the story of his life. And the final line Roy sang really is sobering: “The time has come for me to pay for yesterday, when I was young.”

  Those words seemed to hang heavily over the congregation as I took my place again at the pulpit. If Mickey had been next to speak, I knew he would have cracked a joke to lighten the mood.

  “I want to make a transition now from crying and sadness to laughter,” I began, “because if you knew Mickey, he was always laughing.”

  Then I began working my way down my page of notes, highlighting Mickey’s favorite pranks and my favorite memories of him: the fake mongoose he scared us with in the Detroit clubhouse, the rubber snake he hid in Marshall Bridges’ uniform pants in Kansas City, Yogi’s high-interest loans, Phil Linz’s harmonica, the basketball game at West Point. I pointed out his soft heart for others and for charity and his numerous good deeds, many of which went unpublicized—flying across the country during the 1965 season, for instance, to visit with former teammate Fritz Brickell, who was dying of cancer, or holding a missions benefit at the very church where we’d now gathered to remember him.

  As I shared these memories of Mickey, I was building toward my last day in the major leagues: October 2, 1966. That was also the last day of the season, so Ralph Houk had asked me to lead a team devotion. I spoke briefly that day, and as I often did for our chapel services, I brought in a guest speaker: Billy Zeoli, my close friend from Gospel Films, whose messages in past chapels had touched Mickey’s heart.

  Billy’s message to our team that day was that, according to the Bible, we all have a problem: sin. God’s answer to that sin problem is Jesus Christ, but each of us must make a decision about that.

  We can give one of three possible answers to the question of whether or not to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. We can say “yes.” We can say “no.” Or we can say “maybe,” putting off the decision until a more convenient time. However, Billy warned, because of the X factor of death, “maybe” can automatically become “no.”

  I didn’t fully comprehend what Billy meant until some years later, at a reunion of the 1961 team. We had a wonderful time remembering our great season together. But when I returned to my room that night, I reflected on the evening and the fact that three of our teammates from ’61 had already passed away: Roger Maris, Elston Howard, and Duke Maas. I understood then why Billy had said “maybe” really meant “no.”

  In reality, I explained to the congregation, because we never know what tomorrow holds for us, there are really only two choices: yes or no.

  Billy’s message culminated with one question he wanted to leave in the minds of my teammates that day, the same question I wanted to present to those at Mickey’s funeral: “What have you done with Jesus Christ?”

  Then I began to walk the congregation through my last visit with Mickey in his hospital room, when he’d excitedly told me he had accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior and recited John 3:16 as evidence that he understood his choice to say “yes.”

  I knew that many in that church and in the television audience looked to Mickey as a hero, and I told them that if Mickey could talk to them from his new home, he would introduce them to his true hero: Jesus. The greatest tribute those listening to my words could give Mickey, I said, was to say “yes” just as he had.

  In conclusion, I prayed, “Thank You, God, that You loved us so much that You gave Your only Son, and He willingly came and died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. And then He was buried and rose again on the third day, according to the Scriptures. May each of us today honestly answer the question, ‘What have I done with Jesus?’”

  Then I continued, “I’m so glad that someone shared with me years ago, and perhaps you’d like to pray now as I did then.”

  I then led those whose hearts might have been stirred by God’s touch in a prayer:

  “God, thank You for loving me and sending Your Son to shed His precious blood. And right now, I’m sorry for my sin. And I receive You as Lord and Savior. Thank You for coming into my heart. To God be the glory.”

  I know Mickey would be proud to read the mail I received from people who watched the funeral, saying the story of Mickey’s decision had influenced them to make that same decision. His testimony keeps making an impact too. The American Tract Society developed his story into a gospel tract titled “Mickey Mantle: His Final Inning.” I include a copy in most of my answers to fan mail, and I have received replies from people letting me know they had checked the box that says, “I hav
e just now prayed for Jesus Christ to save me.” It’s the same tract that Clete Boyer was reading in our living room when he prayed the prayer of salvation a year before he died.

  And I know it would bring tears of joy to Mickey’s eyes to hear that one of those most influenced by Mickey’s final message was his oldest son, Mickey Mantle Jr.

  Following Mickey’s funeral, there was a private burial service for only his family, teammates, and closest friends. Fewer than fifty people were invited. I read the Twenty-third Psalm, and at the point where I was to pray, I felt led to have a young pastor there pray instead. I knew that the young pastor had spent a lot of time with Mickey’s sons, sharing God’s Word with them and helping them through their struggles.

  I’ve been told that same pastor helped lead Mickey Jr. to the Lord before he passed away five years later, at the age of forty-seven, from cancer.

  What a glorious reunion there must have been between Mickey and Mickey Jr.—in a place where there is no more sadness, no more insecurity—only joy.

  Chapter 21

  Protecting the Home Field

  I didn’t realize at the time of Mickey’s funeral that his testimony and my testimony would become one. Following his funeral, my speaking invitations increased dramatically. I continue to tell Mickey’s story for him, and I consider it a tremendous honor to have been placed in the position to do so.

  Talking about Mickey has kept fresh in my mind the memories of him as a teammate and friend. Because I include his testimony in many of my speaking engagements and people ask me so many questions about him, I have spent a lot of time over the past decade and a half reflecting on our friendship and our time together. And from the perspective of hindsight, I’ve come to believe that Mickey was wrong about two things.