by Allen Barra
Mickey Mantle won the Triple Crown in 1956, just the fourth time in baseball history that a player had accomplished that feat—the first three winners were Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig, and Ted Williams. Mantle led the league in home runs (52), home runs at home (27) and on the road (25), total bases (376), runs scored (132), runs batted in (130), batting average (.353), and slugging percentage (.705)—the last an almost unbelievable one hundred points higher than second-place Ted Williams. There was only one important category Mickey did not lead in—on-base percentage, where he finished at .464, fifteen points behind Ted Williams. He stole 10 bases in 11 tries, and in the outfield he averaged 2.80 putouts per nine innings, 0.46 higher than the league average. (Mays that season averaged 2.44, 0.41 higher than the NL average.) And Mickey did it all wearing a brace on his right knee for most of the year.‡ Years later, statisticians would rank Mantle’s 1956 season as at least the best season of the decade—with the possible exception of his 1957 season.
On opening day at Griffith Stadium in Washington, the park where he had hit his titanic home run in 1953, Mickey hit two towering home runs over the center-field wall, both estimated at well over 500 feet. (Red Patterson must have taken the day off.) With Mantle leading the way, Yogi Berra, batting in front of him, also caught fire and finished the season with 105 RBIs. The Yankees quickly built up a big lead over the Cleveland Indians. After beating them on May 16, they never relinquished the top spot again and won the AL pennant by nine games.
The entire 1956 season was one of milestones for Mickey. On May 18, he hit a home run batting right-handed and then, later in the game, one from the left side; on Memorial Day, May 30, against the Senators, batting left-handed, he ripped a ball so high and hard that it appeared to the awestruck crowd that it was going to be the first ball ever hit out of Yankee Stadium. (The stadium roof was exactly 120 feet from the ground; the ball struck the grandstand’s facade a foot, maybe a foot and a half, from its very top.) And on June 18, against the Tigers in Detroit, he became just the second player after Ted Williams to hit a ball over the roof of Briggs Stadium. Peter Golenbock, the Yankee historian, estimated that “the ball was going so fast when it struck the facade that it still had enough momentum to rebound more than 100 feet back onto the playing field. Had the facade not stopped it, the ball would have traveled more than 600 feet. It just didn’t seem possible that a baseball could be hit that hard.”13
Before the season ended, perhaps even halfway through, while he was pursuing Babe Ruth’s single-season record of 60 home runs, Mickey Mantle became perhaps the most famous ballplayer since Joe DiMaggio had burst onto the national scene during his 56-game hitting streak in 1941. In fact, some thought he had become more famous than DiMaggio—more famous than even Babe Ruth himself at his peak. Newsweek and Time featured him on their covers in the same week; after the Memorial Day home run, Life magazine did the same; and pop songs and a biography followed in the tail of his comet. Duke Snider, already a national celebrity before Mantle played a game in the big leagues, would later comment on his own fame in comparison with that of Mays and Mantle: “At the height of my fame … in 1955 after we won the World Series, and [at the height of] Willie’s … in 1954 after they won or in 1955, he and I could still go out in public without being mobbed. It was nothing like the way it was for Mickey in 1956 and 1957. That was a whole different ball game.”14
Mickey’s dream season got off to a rocky start. In the spring of 1956, Casey Stengel had lost patience with Mickey for what he regarded as overswinging. Like Leo Durocher, Casey was convinced that strikeouts were bad—or at least worse than other kinds of outs—and that cutting down on them was good, even if it resulted in fewer home runs. (No one was yet paying attention to the fact that since 1951 Mantle had hit into fewer double plays than any regular player on the team except Phil Rizzuto, who had appeared in fewer games.) After Mantle struck out for the third time in an exhibition game with the Giants—a game in which Willie Mays hit two doubles—Stengel lost his temper and actually told several reporters that Mickey was “stupid.” It was understood that this quote would not appear in print, but Joe Trimble of the Daily News did write a piece for Look magazine that asked the question “Is He a Rockhead as Some Claim?”
As the 1956 season progressed, Stengel found it more difficult to criticize his young phenom. In the middle of one of the greatest seasons of any ballplayer ever, he gave an interview that appeared in whole or in part in numerous papers in the New York area.
Sure the feller is not a finished center fielder. Mays and Snider could have an edge, but the feller is getting so he can catch them as good as anybody with his tremendous arm, although he still throws to the wrong base now and then. But it takes time for a feller to learn how to play the outfield if he never played it before he got into the big leagues.… Never put his foot into the outfield until I told Mr. Hendrix [presumably Casey meant Tommy Henrich] to see how he looks in right field. So now he’s my center fielder but he didn’t become my center fielder, that is, when he wasn’t crippled, until 1952 after DiMaggio quit.
You might say his shifting from right to center forced him to start all over again and learn how to execute. I know because I played in all the fields. And he’s catching on as a center fielder just as he is at the plate, waiting for the good pitch. All he’s got to do is meet the ball and it will leave any park. If you cut most of his drives in two, they’d still be homers. But, unfortunately, they only count as one.15
Not even in a season when Mickey was leading the major leagues in both batting and home runs could he entirely please his manager.
Around this time a reporter is alleged to have asked Mantle, “Mickey, if you could hit .400 or 60 home runs, which would you choose?” Mickey is reported to have replied, with a smile, “I’d choose the .400.” Then, pausing a moment for the surprised reporter, who naturally thought Mantle would choose the home run record, he continued: “Because if I hit .400, the way I swing, I’d get the 60 home runs.” As it turned out, he got neither. He had to settle for what was merely the greatest season since the heyday of Babe Ruth—superior to any season by Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Duke Snider, or Willie Mays.
“The Remarkable Mickey Mantle” read the caption of Mickey’s first Life magazine cover. It pictures a grinning Mickey, batting from the left side of the plate as he looks into the camera. That put him two years up on Willie, who may have had a pop record but would have to wait until 1958 for Life to make him a cover boy. Shortly after, Mickey finally got his pop record. Unlike “Say Hey: The Willie Mays Song,” it made the mainstream airwaves and was played all over the country. “I Love Mickey” was a cheerful but innocuous ditty with lyrics penned by the enormously popular singer and Mickey fan Teresa Brewer. Like Willie, Mickey made a contribution to his own record. At the end of each chorus, after Ms. Brewer chirped, “I love Mickeeeeeey,” Mantle piped in, “Mickey who?” And at the end, “Not Yogi Berra?” Like Willie, Mickey was not invited back to a recording studio. Mantle and Brewer made the rounds of some talk and variety shows to plug the record,‖ which led to rumors among Mickey’s friends of a romantic involvement.
Whatever the truth, it’s clear that Mantle was living two separate lives: the devoted father and happy husband, as photographed in magazines and for advertisements, and the hard-drinking libertine. The sports press was well aware of the second, but by the unspoken gentlemen’s agreement of the period, kept it from the public.
In the fall of 1956, Mantle made an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. On the same bill was a blond actress who was Hollywood’s most popular leading lady. Roger Kahn recalls discussing rumors about her with Mickey. “I hear she’s frigid,” said Kahn. “Not with me,” Mickey shot back.16
Had the Yankees lost the 1956 World Series, our perspective on their dominance of the decade would be very different. The Yanks hadn’t been world champions since 1953, and with Mantle having an MVP/Triple Crown season, a failure to beat the Dodgers for the second consecut
ive year might have knocked the Yankee world off its axis. The pivotal game of the Series was Game 5, perhaps the most famous nine innings in baseball history. It was, of course, the day Don Larsen picked to pitch his perfect game, and Mickey Mantle not only preserved Larsen’s gem but provided all the offense his team needed.
In the fourth inning, the Dodgers’ Sal Maglie made a mistake, hanging a curveball over Mickey’s power zone; Mantle deposited the ball in the right-field seats, a few feet to the left of the foul pole. In the booth, Yankees announcer Mel Allen recited his famous “It’s going, going, GONE!” Then, “How about that!” The Yankees would score again later, but with the Dodgers held scoreless, Mickey’s home run was all the Yanks needed to prevail.
Two innings later, Mickey made the most important play of his career. Larsen fired a hard slider to Gil Hodges, who hit it deep into the vast territory of Yankee Stadium’s left-center field. Right fielder Hank Bauer recalled that his immediate thought was Damn, that ball is maybe a triple, or even an inside-the-park home run! With just about any other outfielder in baseball, it might have been. The ball rode a wind that was blowing out toward the left side of the field; Mantle, who began his pursuit with a fast backpedal, turned quickly and began a furious chase on a hard angle toward the wall. In the Dodgers’ home park, Ebbets Field, the ball would have been a home run, but this was Yankee Stadium, and as the ball began its descent, everyone realized it would not reach the fence and just might be caught … if Mickey could run it down.
And that’s what he did. He simply ran the ball down. In full stride he extended his glove and, backhanded, speared it in the web. On the radio, listeners heard Allen say, “Hodges hits it to deep left field, Mantle is digging hard, Still going … how about that catch?!” Mickey later said, “I just put my head down and took off as fast as I could. I caught up with the ball as it was dropping, more than 400 feet from home plate. I had to reach across my body to make the catch, and luckily the ball dropped into my glove.… It was the best catch I ever made. Some people might question that, but there’s certainly no question it was the most important catch I ever made.”17 Larsen got his perfect game, of course, and the Yankees went on to win the World Series. The world was back on its axis.
Mantle’s catch in the 1956 Series was not so spectacular as the one Willie Mays made in the 1954 World Series. But in retrospect, two questions should be asked. First, wasn’t there as much at stake for Mickey in 1956 as there was for Willie in 1954? Was there perhaps more pressure on Mantle since he was running a ball down to try to preserve a perfect game? And here’s something else to ponder: if Mickey Mantle was the fastest player in the game in 1956, as many believe, who else could have made that play? Willie Mays perhaps, if only because he might have gotten the jump half a step sooner.
Willie Mays was fantastic that season and clearly once again the National League’s best player. He batted .333 with 35 home runs, led the league in slugging percentage at .626, and also led in stolen bases, for the second straight year, with 38. He hit 20 triples to lead the league for the third time in his career. But the Giants were dismal, finishing twenty-six games behind the league-teading Milwaukee Braves. The Yankees won the AL pennant again, but would lose a tough seven-game series to the Braves.
Meanwhile, going into the 1957 season, Mickey Mantle’s star power was unchallenged by any other athlete. It would not be approached in American sports until Michael Jordan in the 1990s. But in Jordan’s time, the other major professional sports also commanded attention. In 1957 baseball was without question the national pastime, and Mickey Mantle its brightest star.
Mantle was perhaps better in 1957 than in 1956, although it wasn’t readily apparent on paper. He hit for his highest batting average, .365, but his home run total dropped from 52 to 34 and his RBIs from 130 to 94. Whenever possible, American League pitchers that year simply would not give Mantle the chance to hit home runs off them. They walked him 146 times—an average slightly lower than one walk per game, 34 more walks than he drew the previous year.
Some old-time sportswriters thought that Ted Williams deserved to be MVP that year after hitting an incredible .388 to lead the majors. Williams also led both leagues in on-base percentage (.526) and slugging percentage (.731) and hit more home runs (38) than Mantle. But by Total Baseball’s system as well as Bill James’s Win Shares—which both take into account the significant advantage Williams had playing in the league’s best hitting park, Fenway, and Mantle’s all-around contributions (for instance, he stole 16 bases in 19 tries)—Mickey was not only better, but better by a significant margin.
And yet, the public’s adoration of Mickey was still mixed with currents of anger and resentment. “Even that year,” Hank Bauer would recall, “you’d still hear some of the vilest stuff directed at Mickey because of the draft board thing. In one home game where Mickey hit a three-run homer to put us up big, there were some Marines sitting in a box seat fairly close to our dugout. They were yelling at Mickey some of the worst slurs I’ve ever heard in a ballpark. I mean, in New York you’d have some guys who would get drunk and call you a bum and worse, but I never heard anything like what they called Mickey. One game it was so bad, you could hear it from the dugout. Mickey was clearly shaken up, though he kept staring straight ahead and pretending he didn’t hear them. I wasn’t in the game, so I thought I’d do something to calm things down. Between innings, I walked over and leaned into their box, and said, ‘Hey, fellas, c’mon. Why don’t you calm it down a bit? The guy’s playing hard, he’s in pain—why don’t you cut him a break?’ I guess they knew I had been in the Marines, so they just kind of nodded and said nothing. But I could never figure it out, why Mickey, by doing nothing at all, could bring out the worst in some people.”18
There were worse incidents that never made the papers. The writer Gay Talese remembers that in 1957, before a game with the Senators, “a young girl—she couldn’t have been more than fourteen and was probably even younger—went under the rope that kept the fans away from the players as they got out of their cabs at the stadium. She ran up to Mickey and punched him—I swear to God, she punched him on the side of his head, right above his ear. Then she tried to pull his hair and claw his face. Mickey was startled—who wouldn’t be?—and a cop ran up to pull the girl away. She was slapping at him and shouting something, and Mantle, his hands over his face, put his head down and ran into the players’ entrance. What provoked her? No one had any idea. I asked Mickey later, and he just stared at me with a bewildered look on his face and shook his head. But one thing stuck with me: when Mickey ran into the entrance, some of the fans who had been watching were booing him. By the way, as I recall, he was hitting about .370 at the time.”19
The undercurrent that drove this intense dislike of Mantle in some fans has never been explained. In 1957, perhaps a few were put off by Mickey’s salary haggles with the Yankees. Until then, unlike Yogi Berra, Mantle had never argued over his salary. But after making $32,500 in 1956—an absurdly low figure, even for that time—Mickey got it into his head that he should be paid as if he were one of the best players in the game. We don’t know exactly what Mays was paid for the 1957 season, though writers who knew both ballplayers insisted that Willie was paid more. Mickey told George Weiss that he wanted $65,000, a salary, he pointed out, that would put him on a par with Ted Williams, Stan Musial, and, according to the rumors, Willie Mays.
Weiss countered with the ridiculous argument that he couldn’t afford to double Mickey’s salary every year—as if that had anything to do with what Mantle deserved for the 1957 season. Neither man budged. And then, Mantle later revealed, Weiss took out a manila folder and showed it to him, sitting back in his chair and twiddling his thumbs while Mickey flipped through reports from private detectives on Mantle’s private after-hours life and on several of his exploits in the company of Billy Martin. Weiss hinted that Mickey certainly wouldn’t want any of these reports to get back to Merlyn.
It was, of course, blackmail, though no on
e would call it that at the time. Finally, Yankees owner Del Webb, who thought Mantle should be paid a salary at least close to what Willie Mays was getting, intervened. The following year, though, when Mickey hit a career-high .365 and won his second straight MVP Award, Weiss tried to cut his salary again. Mickey went to Webb, who told his GM that Mantle should get at least a token raise. Weiss finally gave in: for winning his second straight MVP Award, Mantle was given a raise of $500 to $65,500.
A month or so later, some fans found yet another reason to be miffed at Mickey. Holly Brooke—or at least that’s the last name she was using in the spring of 1957—was back in Mickey’s story. It was the same Holly whom Mickey had introduced to Mutt back in 1951 and who had gotten Mickey tangled up with the sleazy agent Alan Savitt. Mickey and Merlyn were on a trip to Havana when all of a sudden stacks of the March issue of Confidential magazine were piled up at airport newsstands. The cover promised a story on “The Doll Who Owns 25% of Mickey Mantle.” Inside, Holly bragged, “I own 25% of Mickey Mantle … and there were times when he was mine 100%!”
If Holly was telling the truth—and some of the details dropped in the story indicate that she was—then there had been more to the relationship than Mickey had let on. For instance, when he was sent back to the minors, she claimed to have spent three days with him in Columbus, Ohio, and when the Yankees brought him back up, she said she had stayed with him in Washington, which was in fact where the Yankees were at the time. At every airport stop, Mickey and his friend Harold Youngman bought up every copy of Confidential they could find to keep Merlyn from seeing it. Their efforts were in vain. When they returned home, there was a bundle of several copies waiting for them; no one knew who put them there.
