Mickey and Willie

by Allen Barra

  Like most ballplayers, Mickey gave little thought to the future. Before he left Commerce for spring training, he had given away what would one day prove to be a small fortune in jerseys, bats, and home run balls. He also gave a friend his 1953 World Series ring. Who knew that in thirty years’ time those items would have such value? After all, Mickey Mantle had not yet invented nostalgia.

  Most preseason prognosticators assumed that the retooled Yankees, even without their veteran starters Allie Reynolds, Ed Lopat, and Vic Raschi, would bounce back and overtake the Indians for the pennant. Their likely opponent, most thought, would be the New York Giants, who had, after all, won the World Series in dazzling fashion. They had Willie Mays at his peak, and so far Mays had yet to play on a Giants team that failed to win the NL pennant. In the Bronx, the addition of new pitchers Bob Turley and Don Larsen, along with veteran pitcher Jim Konstanty (the former “Philly Whiz Kid” the Yankees had faced in 1950), held up nicely. Two new players, a power-hitting former college football player named Bill “Moose” Skowron and a catcher-outfielder, Elston Howard, the Yankees’ first black player, helped the team maintain a small lead over the Indians for most of the season. They ended up beating them to the flag by just three games.

  The biggest addition to the roster was Howard, a superb catcher—from the start some thought he was even the equal of the Yankees’ three-time MVP catcher, Yogi Berra. Howard was also a capable outfielder. And he could hit. Howard didn’t simply endure the pressure of being the first black Yankee—he thrived. On May 14, against the Detroit Tigers, he hit a dramatic two-out game-winning triple that brought the normally reserved Yankees out of their dugout. Mantle asked Billy Martin and Hank Bauer to stall Howard on the field while he ran ahead into the clubhouse. When Elston entered, he found a row of his teammates, all grinning, and a trail of white towels—in some stories they are red—from his locker to the showers. It was a tradition for new Yankees who had won their spurs.

  Sometime during the 1955 season, Mickey began needling his beloved teammate Yogi Berra about how overrated the catcher’s job was. How tough could it be, Mickey asked Yogi, to call pitches with someone like Whitey Ford on the mound? After all, it was always the pitcher who had the final say. Before a game against the Red Sox at Fenway, Mantle laid it on. Finally, Yogi threw up his hands—Okay, he told Mantle, you go ahead. You call the pitches for Whitey. They agreed on a signal: when Mickey stood straight up in center field, he wanted Ford to throw a fastball; if he bent over with his hands on his knees, he was calling for a curve. This may sound a bit frivolous for professional ballplayers, especially Yankees, who were locked in a pennant race, but there was really no risk involved. If Berra disapproved of Mantle’s call, he’d change it. (And of course Whitey, who knew of the arrangement, had final approval of the pitches.)

  As it turned out, Mickey did a pretty good job. Ford shook him off only four or five times, and the Yankees were leading 2–0 after seven innings. But even though Mantle did not have to spend hours squatting behind the plate, he found calling the pitches mentally exhausting. When the Yankees piled into the visitors’ dugout before the start of the eighth inning, Mickey walked over to Yogi, slapped him on the shoulder, and told him, “Okay, I got you this far. Take it the rest of the way.”8

  The first season in which Mickey and Willie were regarded as equals—or at least near equals—was 1955. In 1954 Mantle had been perceived by most sportswriters as one of the four or five best players in the American League, but Mays was clearly the best player in baseball. Many thought Mickey, from 1952 through 1954, might have been the most overrated player in baseball; in truth, he might have been the most underrated. In 1955, though, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind: Mantle batted .306 and led the AL in home runs (37), walks (113), triples (11), and both on-base and slugging percentage. By Total Baseball’s ranking, he was clearly the best player in the AL.

  Willie Mays was even better in 1955 than he had been the previous season, batting .319 and leading the NL in home runs (51) and slugging percentage (.659), with an on-base percentage of .400. He also, like Mantle, led the league in triples (13). His power might have been even more impressive than that. There were few statisticians in the 1950s who bothered to notice such things, but in 1955 Mays had not entirely mastered the art of hitting home runs at the Polo Grounds—that is, he had not yet learned how to hit the ball with power to the opposite field. (Mantle, who switch-hit, never had to.) Mays hit 29 of his 51 home runs in the seven other NL ballparks; if he had done as well playing in New York, he would have been a couple of hanging curveballs away from tying Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record of 60. No doubt the frenzy that would have accompanied such an achievement would have lit up New York all summer and even into a fall in which the Giants were never in the pennant race. Despite finishing third behind the Dodgers and Braves, they trailed eighteen and a half games behind Brooklyn and were never in the race all season. The 1955 season, said one writer, finally disproved two things: “that Willie Mays could not play on a team that did not win a pennant” and that “every team that Willie Mays played on had to win the pennant.”9

  In 1955 Willie added a new dimension to his game: he used his great base-running skills to begin stealing bases, a rare talent in the 1950s, when most batters simply reached base and stayed there until someone slugged them in. In 1954 he stole 8 bases in 13 attempts; in 1955 he stole 24 in just 28 tries. In the field he led all outfielders with an eye-popping 23 assists and 8 double plays, and his range factor per nine innings was just a hair under three putouts per game, a healthy 0.6 above the rest of the league’s center fielders.

  Mantle was very nearly as good, averaging 2.76 putouts per nine innings, and he stole 8 bases in 9 attempts. (The Yankees were not a base-stealing team, relying mostly on power, and Mantle attempted steals only late in the game when the score was close.) It was not noticed at the time that he grounded into just four double plays, while Mays grounded into twelve. It was noted, however, by analysts of the next generation. Bill James, in his 2002 book Win Shares, taking into account all the contributions Mickey and Willie made at bat, in the field, and on the bases, calculated that Mantle in 1955 was exactly as good as Mays—despite the fact that Mickey finished the season limping. On September 16, in a 5–4 victory over the Red Sox, he suffered a severe muscle tear in the back of his right thigh as he tore down to first base to beat out a bunt. He played in only two more games the rest of the season, both times as a pinch-hitter.

  The missed at-bats might have cost Mickey the MVP award (which was won by his teammate Yogi Berra). Indeed, the voting showed an odd prejudice against Mickey, who finished fifth behind Berra, the Detroit Tigers’ twenty-year-old outfielder Al Kaline (who led the league in batting at .340), Cleveland’s Al Smith, and Ted Williams. By most objective ratings, Mantle was the best player in the league that season, so it’s curious that he was never a serious contender for MVP. It was almost as if the voters were saying, “Unless you live up to what we think is your potential, we’re not going to vote for you.” Not wanting to diminish Yogi’s achievement, Mantle never complained publicly, but privately he told a couple of writers that he was puzzled that he wasn’t at least a serious MVP candidate.

  Just as strange was that Mays finished fourth in the voting for the NL MVP; another catcher, Roy Campanella, took the award. Duke Snider and Ernie Banks also finished ahead of Willie. (Snider was named top player by The Sporting News.) Like Mickey, Willie was by all objective yardsticks the best player in the league—in fact, he was by far the best player in the league. Why was he not named MVP for the second year in a row? There is no clear answer to that question. It’s easy enough to say that Snider’s team won the pennant that season, but Ernie Banks would win MVPs in 1958 (a year in which Mays was a substantially better all-around player) and in 1959; Ernie’s team, the Chicago Cubs, finished sixth both years. It was almost as if the voters were saying, “C’mon, Willie, you’re so good and you’ve got so many years to win this thi
ng, let’s give someone else a chance.”

  Mickey limped, literally, into the World Series, where, for the third time in four years, the Yankees played the Dodgers. Mantle missed the first two games, both of which the Yankees lost. They would win three of the last five, but it was not enough as the Dodgers won their first and only World Series. It’s difficult to believe that a full-strength Mantle would not have made the difference in at least one of those four losses, particularly the first three games, which the Yankees lost by a total of three runs. In the first inning of Game 3—the first time Mantle stepped onto the field—he pulled the thigh muscle again chasing down a ball hit by Carl Furillo. He had just two hits in ten at-bats for the entire series.

  So the 1955 season ended in disappointment for both Mickey and Willie. Up to that point in their professional careers, both of them, from the minor and Negro leagues on up, had scarcely known anything but winning. For Willie, years of frustration with the Giants had just begun. He would first lose his beloved manager, then his beloved city. At least, as the year ended, he had the distinction of being recognized as easily the best player in baseball. That was about to change.

  * I called Mr. Hano and asked him if that was really true; had he, for instance, ever seen Mickey Mantle hit a ball harder than the hitters he named, including Wertz? “Well,” he replied, “no, I didn’t really see Mickey play that much in person. But I have to admit, now that I think of it, that Mickey hit balls harder and longer than those guys.”

  † In Don DeLillo’s 1997 novel Underworld, Shor, Sinatra, and Gleason are at the Polo Grounds for the third game of the 1951 National League playoff. Gleason, having gorged on Jack Daniels and hot dogs, misses Bobby Thomson’s home run when he’s doubled up with the heaves.

  ‡ Also that year, the Savoy had a visit from a soon-to-be-famous fictitious character, an Englishman named James Bond, who was taken there by his CIA liaison, Felix Leiter, in Ian Fleming’s second 007 novel, Live and Let Die.

  Mickey shot a mean game of pool. Here he’s back at Commerce’s Black Cat Café, where he learned the game while in high school, with a boyhood pal looking on. In the first few years when he came home from the baseball season, “They could not get my Yankee cap away from me.” NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME, COOPERSTOWN, N.Y.

  Like Mickey, Willie learned to shoot pool as a teenager; here he lines up a shot at his boyhood haunt, Big Tony’s. Big Tony lectured the schoolboys about the importance of education but let them play for free “over one of the old, torn tables in the back of the room.” According to Richie Ashburn, on their barnstorming trip to Syracuse, Willie thought he could take Mickey but got taken instead. SPORT MEDIA GROUP

  The Quick and the Deadly. A grim-faced Mickey, not yet twenty-one, aims his bat with mean intent for the cover of the popular newsweekly Quick at the start of the 1953 season.

  Willie making “The Catch” off Vic Wertz, in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series. In recent years it has become popular to disparage the play as not being among Willie’s best. This is nonsense, as a simple study of the play will confirm. Mays’s speed in reaching the ball—which could have been more than 450 feet from home plate—was amazing in and of itself. On top of that, he caught the ball with his back to home plate. For the last twenty feet or so of his run, he didn’t so much as glance back to see where the ball was. SPORT MEDIA GROUP

  Willie Mays Day at the Polo Grounds in August 1954. Behind Willie and to his left is Frank Forbes, the boxing promoter and all-around sporting man whom the Giants hired to watch over Willie. The Yankees never thought to hire someone to watch over Mickey.

  The sign on the right reads, “Hip, Hip Hooray for the Birmingham Belter,” a nickname that did not stick. SPORT MEDIA GROUP

  The Remarkable Mickey Mantle. Mickey got his first Life magazine cover on June 25, 1956, as he pursued the Triple Crown. It was Life’s biggest-selling sports-themed issue until Mantle and Maris shared the cover while in pursuit of Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1961. GETTY IMAGES

  “Willie Mays Leads Giants into San Francisco,” April 28, 1958. The issue sold poorly; readers in the New York area didn’t want to be reminded. GETTY IMAGES

  The Perfect Catch. Don Larsen’s perfect game, October 3, 1956, at Yankee Stadium. In the top of the fifth inning, Gil Hodges came to bat for the Dodgers and hit the longest shot any Brooklyn player had in the entire game, a low-lying drive hit deep into center field. Off Hodges’s bat, it looked like a triple. Mantle, running at full speed, backhanded the ball, preserving the only perfect game in World Series history. SPORT MEDIA GROUP

  Late in 1954 Willie was backup vocalist for the Treniers on “Say Hey: The Willie Mays Song,” arranged by the young Quincy Jones. Most white listeners didn’t get to hear it until it was included on the soundtrack of Ken Burns’s PBS documentary Baseball. SPORT MEDIA GROUP

  “I Love Mickey.” Teresa Brewer cowrote the words and music to this 1956 record. According to Mantle’s friends, Brewer was a big fan of Mickey’s. But Mickey’s foray into popular music was no more successful than Willie’s.

  Not So “Confidential.” Mickey thought his 1951 “relationship” with showgirl Holly Brooke was long forgotten by 1957, when Holly peddled her story to Confidential magazine. Mickey tried to buy up all the copies of the magazine at an airport newsstand to keep Merlyn from finding out. No such luck—a stack of them mysteriously appeared on their front porch.

  The perfect subject for the perfect author. Willie and Charles Einstein, 1957. Einstein collaborated with Mays on three books, most notably Willie’s Time: A Memoir (1979), the only ballplayer biography to be named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Einstein followed Willie and the Giants to the Bay Area in 1958. In 1980 he moved back east to a New Jersey town called—really—Mays Landing. This book could not have been written without him. SPORT MEDIA GROUP

  October 11, 1958. Mickey and Willie sign barnstorming contracts for “Mickey Mantle’s All-Stars vs. Willie Mays’s All-Stars.” The man looking over their shoulders is unidentified. PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN

  “And out there’s where you hit that fly ball in the 1951 World Series where I stepped on the drain and twisted my knee …” A helpful Mickey refreshes Willie’s memory before their 1958 barnstorming game. George Plimpton was scheduled to pitch to both lineups before the game and actually got Willie to pop out. But Plimpton took so long that he never got a chance to pitch to Mickey. (He described the experience in his book Out of My League.) CORBIS

  If you were in Syracuse on October 11, 1959, you could have bought a grandstand ticket for $2.50 to watch Mickey’s All-Stars vs. Willie’s All-Stars with former middleweight champion Carmen Basilio as umpire. There was a home run hitting contest, too. COURTESY OF THE SYRACUSE POST-STANDARD

  Imagine being able to see all these players on one field for $2.50. Mays, Mantle, Henry Aaron, and Rocky Colavito were the big attractions at Syracuse’s MacArthur Stadium. Drawing by Fred Heyman for the Syracuse Herald-American. COURTESY OF THE SYRACUSE POST-STANDARD

  The cards that inspired this book. The way I remember it, I got both of these cards in the same pack when I was ten years old—that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. COURTESY OF THE TOPPS COMPANY

  The Fans’ Favorite! In 1961 Bill Hoebler, a young fan from Pittsburgh, suggested to Sport that the magazine sponsor a nationwide contest to determine “The Fans’ Favorite.” Hoebler volunteered to count the votes and received a pile of cards and letters weighing over 17 pounds from all fifty states. Mickey won, though one wonders what the count might have been had Willie still been playing in New York. SPORT MEDIA GROUP

  Roger Maris, Willie, and Mickey at the 1961 All-Star Game in San Francisco. Willie had no idea that in a couple of hours he would be the victim of a Mickey—Whitey Ford prank involving a bet with Giants owner Horace Stoneham. NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME, COOPERSTOWN, N.Y.

  In January 1962, Sport magazine published a special edition devoted entirely to Mickey and Willie. In the magazine’s two national polls, Mickey wa
s voted the best player by the fans, Willie by players, managers, and sportswriters. SPORT MEDIA GROUP

  12

  “A Whole Different Ball Game”

  “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,” wrote Wordsworth. “But to be young was very heaven.” It was also great in 1955 to be young and a Yankee.

  In October, a grinning Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin hopped on a bus to make a train connection out to Ebbets Field for the World Series with the Brooklyn Dodgers. It took the other passengers a good thirty seconds or so to realize who they were riding with. There were some shouts, whistles, and encouragements from their fellow riders. No one, apparently, said anything to Mantle about his 4-F draft status; no one asked for an autograph. These were, after all, just two happy young men on the way to work, both of them working for good money, perhaps not much more than some of the men riding with them. Within a year, Mickey Mantle would no longer be able to take public transportation anywhere.

  Scarcely anyone who saw Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays in public during that time knew anything about their off-the-field anxieties. The men who wrote about New York’s two young center fielders told only of their childlike antics: Willie playing stickball in the streets of Harlem, Mickey in the dugout wearing a cowboy holster, aiming a cap gun at a photographer—probably a cap gun but in the photograph it certainly looks real—and Mickey and Billy going at each other with water pistols or cans of shaving cream.