Mickey and Willie

by Allen Barra

  While I working on Yogi Berra, Eternal Yankee, Clete Boyer gave me a hot blast of great stuff about Yogi, Mickey, Ralph Houk, and the Yankees in the first half of the 1960s. The last thing I told him in our final conversation was that I thought he was a better third baseman than Brooks Robinson. I’m glad he got such a kick out of that and am delighted to say it again in this book.

  Jim Hamilton was a dear friend, a lifelong union man, a fine scriptwriter, and a baseball fan who watched Willie from his barnstorming days on the West Coast through his career with the Giants.

  The great artist Bill Gallo was a friend and supporter and a vital part of my life as a young fan. I’m proud to have done two books that included his cartoons, particularly my all-time favorite, his Mickey-Willie paper doll, the last image in this book. The only thing he asked in return was a donation to Juvenile Diabetes.

  Paul Hemphill was a great journalist, a great sportswriter, and a great fan, and I treasure the moments we spent together at ball games and talking about baseball in Birmingham.

  And finally, one of my greatest regrets is that Bert Randolph Sugar didn’t live to see it. For twenty-eight years no writer or historian was more helpful or generous with his time, knowledge and wit than Bert. I had so looked forward to seeing Bert at the book party for Mickey and Willie. It just doesn’t seem right living in a world without him.

  John Hall, the historian for the Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri League, not only wrote a wonderful little book on Mickey and his pre-Yankees years but was generous with his time in helping me track down the origins of many Mickey legends.

  Bob Costas has been a great baseball talker since I first met him when I was writing for the Village Voice in the mid-1980s. I’ll never be able to thank him enough for inviting me and my daughter for his HBO show featuring Willie Mays and Hank Aaron in 2008. It was a night neither she nor I will ever forget.

  Margie Bolding, my college drama teacher, God bless you. Without you I would never have known about Mickey’s secret life in New York in the 1950s. You’ve got a book in you, darlin,’ and I hope you don’t hesitate any more to write it.

  Roger Kahn is the repository for more New York baseball knowledge than any man who ever lived, and I can never repay him for all the hours on the phone and at his home in upstate New York.

  What Charlie Einstein didn’t know about Willie, Arnold Hano did, and I thank him for being honest and opening up to me on the darker side of Willie Mays’s personality.

  Monte Irvin has now spent hours filling in background on two of my book subjects, Yogi Berra and Willie Mays. I thank him twice.

  I also am most grateful to his cousin, Daniel McGriff, who shared photos of Monte and Willie that I’ve never seen before.

  Mickey’s son Danny was most helpful in untangling some of the myths that built up around his father over the years.

  Bill James gave me carte blanche to quote from his writing and analysis of both Mays and Mantle. His first Historical Abstract lit a spark for me.

  Kristi Jacobson, granddaughter of the legendary Toots Shor, brought me inside the smoke-filled rooms of the saloon that was Mickey’s, Billy Martin’s, and Whitey Ford’s favorite hangout in the 1950s.

  Ray Robinson has, over the years, been a wonderful friend when it came to talking about the New York sports world of the 1950s and 1960s. Whenever I speak to him I feel like I remember why I became a fan in the first place.

  Rob Neyer took off a couple of days of his valuable time to dig out information on the Mantle-Mays barnstorming tours in Syracuse and Philadelphia. Sorry about Kansas in the NCAA final this year, Rob.

  Alex Belth, host of the blog BronxBanter (bronxbanterblog.com), helped me track down many veteran sportswriters, most notably Arnold Hano.

  Marty Appel, a fine historian and writer, had loads of Mickey and Willie stories and always gave whatever contact information I needed.

  David Falkner, one of the most objective biographers of Mickey as well as Billy Martin, generously allowed me to quote from The Last Hero.

  A mainstay in New Jersey journalism and a columnist I read for more than thirty years, Jerry Izenberg, knew both Mickey and Willie intimately and shared nearly half a century of history with me.

  Thomas Barthel, whose book Baseball Barnstorming and Exhibition Games, 1901–1962, is definitive and was invaluable in filling in the background of baseball’s last great barnstorming era.

  I could not have written Yogi Berra, Eternal Yankee nor Mickey and Willie without the help of Jim Bouton, pitcher, bestselling author, entrepreneur, union rep, movie actor, and iconoclast supreme. Jim knew Mickey and Willie as they were and loved them both; no higher compliment can be paid.

  Jane Leavy was wonderful about sharing Mickey stories while working on her own great biography of Mantle, The Last Boy.

  Robert Creamer was the secret author of Mickey’s 1964 book, The Quality of Courage, and knew the mid-to-late career Mickey as well as anyone.

  My old friend Mickey Herskowitz has now given me able assistance on two books, The Last Coach: A Life of Paul “Bear” Bryant, and this one. No one knew the post-career Mantle as well as Mickey.

  Our friend Steve Mavropoulus runs a heck of a tight ship at Garden State News in South Orange, where we moved, and just plain inspired me with his love for Mickey Mantle.

  A special salute across the years to my friends from six years of my youth in Old Bridge, New Jersey, including Mark and Kevin Feely, Jamie and Brian O’Kane, Allan Nordstrum, Joe Casamento, Steve Irwin, Marty and Jimmy Bean, Frankie Mischetti, Peter Frechette, Mike Santiago, and Tony Pasqua. I can’t think of Mickey and Willie without thinking of you. How many times were we Mickey and Willie when playing “Three flys and you’re out” on William Street?

  Marvin Miller is the wisest man I’ve ever known. Working with him on his memoirs, A Whole Different Ball Game, is the greatest honor I’ve had as a working writer, and my family’s relationship with Marvin and his late wife, Terry, has been an unending treasure. As founder and director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, Marvin saw sides of Willie and Mickey that no one else did. His story about Mays’s speech to the union reps during the 1972 strike preserves what I believe to be Willie’s finest hour.

  Over the years I’ve often wondered why writers thank their agents and editors in acknowledgments. With this book, I now understand. Andrew Blauner was a huge help on this book from the beginning, constantly finding articles and items concerning Mickey and Willie that were just the way I like ’em—way out of left field.

  Regarding Julian Pavia, let me leave it at this: he’s the best editor I’ve ever had.

  Thanks again to my wife, Jonelle Bonta, who knows as much about baseball as I do and a hell of lot more about editing. Every paragraph of this book bears her imprint. And thanks to my daughter, Maggie, for giving me someone to tell these stories to.

  And finally, I want to thank my father, Alfred, for loving Willie and Mickey so much and for taking me to see them play in so many different ballparks, but most especially for bringing home the tickets to my first game, that 1961 exhibition between the Yankees and the Giants.

  Appendix A

  Mickey vs. Willie—Who Was the Best?

  So then, who was better?

  For most of their careers, the debate had them pretty much neck and neck, with a nod generally going to Mays by about a nose. After their careers were over, Willie pulled ahead, and he remains so today. In the all-century voting, Willie Mays placed third on the list of best players to Mickey Mantle’s thirty-second, and in The Sporting News’s top one hundred, Mays again left Mantle in the dust, placing second to Mantle’s seventeenth.

  Why did the experts in their own time regard Mays as superior? The case was summed up neatly in the 1962 Sport magazine Mantle-Mays issue: “He can do more things better. It is possible, some people say, that no player in history has ever been able to do so many things so well.” According to the story, the Dodgers’ chief, Alex Campanis—yes, that Al Campanis�
�set a point value rating system for all the things a player could do on a baseball field: “hitting for average, hitting for power, speed on the bases (stealing and going for the extra base), strength and accuracy of arm, and fielding.” (How refreshing, by the way, to see the terms “hitting” and “fielding” used instead of “offense” and “defense.”) The only one judged to have a perfect score in every category was Mays.

  In his 1994 book All My Octobers, published a year before his death, Mickey Mantle finally came clean about who he thought was the greater player. With a refreshing lack of modesty, Mantle said to Mickey Herskowitz, “I have been asked the question a thousand times at card shows—Which of us was the best? All you have to do is open the record book and the answer, over a full career, is Willie. He played 22 years to my 18. He finished with more of everything, including homers. In my prime years, head to head, I think I had the edge. I was faster and a better base stealer and we were about even defensively, although Mays, with his basket catches, had more of a flair. I’ll give him that.”

  I think Mantle’s assessment is more accurate than not, though he rates himself a little too high when he says he and Willie were “about even defensively.”

  What does the record book say? A statistical comparison of Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays is a baseball analyst’s dream. Their prime years occurred at exactly the same time, with park conditions and rules virtually the same for both leagues. The National League had more superstars in this period, almost all of them black, but as black players overall contributed about 8 percent of major league rosters in the 1950s, it really can’t be said that, on the whole, Mays competed against better players than Mantle. In terms of what Mantle and Mays faced day to day, the competition and conditions are strikingly even. Here are the career lines from Total Baseball, the game’s official encyclopedia:

  I’ve looked at these numbers so many times over the years that I’d stopped seeing them. I’d always assumed, for instance, that Mantle was clearly a superior power hitter, but the record doesn’t show it. Mantle had a greater home run percentage—that is, Mickey averaged a home run every 15.1 times at bat, while Willie averaged one for every 16.4. But Mays hit doubles and triples with more frequency. Mantle’s career stolen base percentage is actually better than that of Mays (who led the NL in stolen bases for four straight years from 1956 through 1959 and was regarded by many as the best base runner of his time). And Mantle’s walk total is particularly impressive: he had 269 more walks despite playing in 541 fewer games.

  It has always been argued that Mantle’s career numbers would look much more impressive if not for his serious injuries, and of course they would, but how about Mays? It’s always puzzled me that Mays was never given hypothetical credit for the 270 or so games he missed while in the service. Let’s fantasize for a moment. As a twenty-year-old rookie in 1951, Mays hit 20 home runs in 121 games, scored 59, and drove in 68. As a twenty-three-year-old in 1954, he hit 41 home runs, scored 119, and drove in 110. He played only thirty-four games before going into the Army in 1952, with 4 home runs, 17 runs scored, and 23 RBIs. For the sake of argument, let’s split the difference between Mays’s 1951 and 1954 seasons and give him 31 home runs, 79 runs, and 79 RBIs for both 1952 and 1953, then subtract what he did do in 1952 before entering the Army. Here’s what Mays’s career numbers on the all-time chart really look like:

  Now let’s add our hypothetical numbers and see how that would have changed the record book:

  There are already a great many people who consider Mays the greatest all-around player of all time, but think what it would have done for his career reputation if he could have been the first to break Ruth’s career home run record.

  Is there anything that would mitigate the career numbers for either Mantle or Mays? Were they particularly helped or hurt, for instance, by their home ballparks? In a home-road breakdown compiled for The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, Mantle is shown to have hit .305 with 266 home runs and 743 RBIs at home, with a .291 average, 270 home runs, and 766 RBIs on the road; that’s near-perfect balance. The same is true for Mays, who hit .302 with 335 home runs and 932 RBIs at the Polo Grounds and Candlestick Park, and .301, with 325 home runs and 971 RBIs, on the road. Mantle was a switch-hitter and thus was not hurt by Yankee Stadium’s deep left-center-field power alley. Oddly enough, though, Mays, contrary to popular belief—and contrary to Willie himself, who constantly complained about the parks he had to hit in—lost nothing from the Polo Grounds’ similar left-center configuration or from that famous but apparently mythical wind that was supposed to have cost him, in the familiar litany of his fans, “at least a hundred home runs.” In fact, Mays actually hit ten more homers at home than he hit in all other NL ballparks.

  But all this comes under the heading of “career value.” We already know Mays lasted longer and performed at a quality pace longer than Mantle. The more important question for me is: Who was the best at his peak? And what do we mean when we say “peak”? Is fifteen years okay? Let’s try their fifteen peak seasons, 1951 to 1965 for Mantle, 1951 and 1954 through 1967 for Mays. (And I’m going to toss in SLOB, slugging average times on-base percentage, a stat that I think gives a truer picture of a player’s ability to produce runs than the popular OPS, which is OBP plus SLG.)

  This brings them closer together in total numbers, but Mays still has an edge because Mantle missed so many games. In 1963, for instance, the year after winning his third MVP Award, he missed 89 games owing to injury. But note that Mantle’s quality numbers are terrific; he led in the most important numbers, on-base percentage and slugging percentage, by wide margins, and even had a higher stolen base percentage, 81 percent to 70 percent. And though Mays batted more than 1,600 times more than Mantle, Mickey was only 106 home runs behind. Mays’s only edge is in fewer strikeouts, but we have no real evidence that strikeouts hurt Mantle’s ability to produce runs.

  Let’s try it another way: let’s define “peak” as their twelve best seasons. Let’s eliminate the rookie seasons for both, and Mantle’s 1963 season, even though he hit .314 for the year. Here’s how they compare:

  At first this looks like another clear advantage for Mays; more home runs, more runs, more RBIs, more hits, more stolen bases. But it doesn’t take long to see that Mantle was the superior hitter, and by a decisive margin. In their dozen best seasons, Mays played 128 more games, but the difference in their total production isn’t that great. Let’s use one more table:

  *PA = plate appearances

  Though Mays was in 128 more games than Mantle in their twelve best seasons and had nearly 1,000 more official at-bats and 552 more plate appearances, Mantle reached base 78 more times. And in their fifteen best seasons, Mays batted 1,600 more times than Mickey, but reached base just 121 more times. Not only that, but measured over a fifteen-season or twelve-season span, Mantle’s SLOB was superior to Mays’s. Over a twelve-year span, Mantle had a superior on-base and slugging percentage.

  I don’t know how else to interpret these numbers except to conclude that Mickey in his prime was a superior hitter, at least if you interpret the term “superior hitter” as the hitter who does the most to produce runs. What does SLOB say? When you multiply slugging percentage and on-base percentage, Mantle jumps into a clear and resounding lead, 25.50 to 21.85.

  Are there any factors that could possibly mitigate Mantle’s superiority in batting statistics? Let’s look at stolen bases. It was generally accepted when I was a kid that Mantle was the fastest runner in baseball—every biography and profile mentioned that he had been clocked running down to first base faster than any other player in history—but that Mays was a smarter and superior base runner. (In the 1962 Sport magazine special issue, Mantle was given by the panel of experts the nod for “speed,” while Mays got the edge in “base running.”) Mays was regarded as a dazzlingly “instinctive” base runner. (Black athletes were “instinctive” back then, while white athletes were “hardworking.”) And Mays was beautiful to watch, rounding base
s with a wide sweep that took him right out from under his cap. Mantle could probably have beaten Mays to first by a step, but I don’t think any runner in baseball could have beat Mays from first to second. Mays led the National League in stolen bases for four straight seasons, from 1956 through 1959; in fact, from 1956 through 1958, he led both leagues in stolen bases.

  This was an era when hardly anyone stole bases; Mays’s total of 40 in 1956 was the highest NL mark of the decade and the highest in the major leagues until Luis Aparicio stole 56 in 1959. Nothing was more indicative of Willie’s amazing versatility than his ability to lead the league in home runs one season and stolen bases the next. Think of it this way: from 1956 to 1959, while Mays was leading the National League in stolen bases, Aparicio was also leading the American League in stolen bases. For those four seasons, Mays had 136 steals, Aparicio had 134. But over those four seasons, Aparicio hit 14 home runs; Mays hit 134.

  It’s difficult for me to accept that Mickey Mantle was a better base runner—or at least a better base stealer— than Willie Mays. But the numbers say he was. Mantle’s stolen base percentage is not only higher than Mays’s, but higher than the average of such other stolen base champions as Jackie Robinson (78 percent), Luis Aparicio (79 percent), and Lou Brock (75 percent), and much higher than the average for Ty Cobb (65 percent) (though we don’t have his stolen base records for every season). If I had to pick the most impressive display of power and speed in baseball history, I’d say this: from 1952 to 1964, including 1963 when he played in just 65 games, Mickey Mantle hit 443 home runs and stole 133 bases in 159 attempts, a success rate of 83.6 percent.

  I see no rational reason why, if circumstances had demanded, Mickey Mantle couldn’t have stolen more bases than Willie Mays. If you have a higher percentage of steals in, say, 190 attempts, I don’t see any reason why you would have a lower rate of success in, say, 440 attempts. It might be argued that Mantle, playing on a better team, could be more selective as to when he attempted to steal. I disagree. I think it can be assumed that Mickey tried to steal only when games were close. Or why try at all?