Mickey Mantle Biography / Pictures

 for the New York Yankees.

He was born in Spavinaw, Oklahoma. He was named in honor of Mickey Cochrane, a famous baseball player, by his father, who was an amateur player and fervid fan. Apparently his father was not aware that Cochrane's real name was Gordon, and in later life, Mickey Mantle expressed great relief that his father had not known Cochrane's real first name, as he would have hated to be named Gordon.

Mantle was a switch-hitter whose career was mostly in center field. He had played shortstop in the minor leagues, but on arrival at the Yankees became the regular centerfielder (playing only a few games at shortstop and third base in 1952 to 1955) until 1967, when he was moved to first base. As a centerfielder, he replaced Joe DiMaggio, whose retirement coincided with Mantle's arrival. Among Mantle's many accomplishments are All-time World Series records for home runs (18), runs scored (42), and runs-batted-in (40).

On January 16, 1961 Mantle became the highest paid baseball player by signing a $75,000 contract.

Mantle announced his retirement from baseball on March 1, 1969 and in 1974 he was inducted into the United States Baseball Hall of Fame; his uniform number 7 was retired by the Yankees. (He had briefly worn uniform number 6, as a continuation to Babe Ruth's 3, Lou Gehrig's 4, and Joe DiMaggio's 5, in 1951, but the pressure on him that this caused led to his being switched to number 7 later in that season.)

Mantle's last days

Well before he finally sought treatment for alcoholism, Mantle admitted that his hard living had hurt his playing and his family. His rationale was that the men in his family had all died young, so he expected to as well. "I'm not gonna be cheated," he'd say. As the years passed, and he realized he had outlived the men in his family -- not realizing that working in mines and inhaling lead and zinc dust aided Hodgkin's and other cancers as much as heredity did -- he frequently used a line popularized by elderly comedian George Burns: "If I'd known I was gonna live this long, I'd have taken a lot better care of myself."

Mickey Mantle's wife and sons all completed treatment for alcoholism, and told him he needed to do the same. He checked into the Betty Ford Clinic on January 7, 1994, after being told by a doctor that his liver was so badly damaged, "Your next drink could be your last."

Shortly after completing treatment, his son Billy died on March 12, at age 36, of heart trouble, brought on by years of substance abuse. Despite the fears of those who knew him, who feared that this tragedy would send him back to drinking, he remained sober. Mickey Jr. would also die of liver cancer on December 20, 2000, at age 47. Danny would later battle prostate cancer.

Mickey Mantle spoke with great remorse of his drinking in a Sports Illustrated article, "My Life In A Bottle." He said that he was telling the same old stories, and realizing how much of them involved himself and others being drunk, and he decided they weren't funny anymore. He admitted he had often been cruel and hurtful to family, friends, and fans because of his alcoholism, and sought to make amends. He became a born-again Christian due to his former teammate Bobby Richardson, an ordained Baptist minister, sharing his faith with him. After the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, he joined with fellow Oklahoman and Yankee legend Bobby Murcer to raise money for the victims.

Mantle received a liver transplant at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, on June 8, 1995, after his liver had been damaged by years of chronic alcoholism, cirrhosis, and hepatitis C. In July, he had recovered enough to deliver a press conference at Baylor, and noted that many fans had looked to him as a role model. "This is a role model: Don't be like me," he said. He also established the Mickey Mantle Foundation to raise awareness for organ donations. Soon, he was back in the hospital, where it was found that his liver cancer spread throughout his body.

Mickey Mantle died on August 13, 1995 in Dallas, Texas and was interred in the Hillcrest Memorial Park cemetery in Dallas.  He was 63 years old. He was interred in the Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery in Dallas. Mantle had asked country singer Roy Clark, his good friend, to perform his favorite song "Yesterday, When I Was Young" at his funeral:

I lived by night
I shunned the light of day
And only now I see how the years slipped away
I ran so fast time and youth ran out
So many songs in me won't be sung
I now must pay for yesterday when I was young.
In eulogizing Mantle, Bob Costas described the legend as "a fragile hero to whom we had an emotional attachment so strong and lasting that it defied logic. In the last years of his life, Mickey Mantle, always so hard on himself, finally began to appreciate the difference between a role model and a hero. The first, he often was not. The last, he forever will be. And, in the end, people got it."

Honors

On Mickey Mantle Day, June 8, 1969, in addition to the retirement of his uniform number 7, Mantle was given a plaque that would hang on the center field wall at Yankee Stadium, near the monuments to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Miller Huggins. The plaque was given to him by Joe DiMaggio, and Mantle then gave DiMaggio a similar plaque, telling the crowd, "His should be just a little bit higher than mine." When Yankee Stadium was reopened in 1976 following its renovation, the plaques and monuments were moved to Monument Park, behind the left-center field fence. Shortly before his death, Mantle videotaped a message to be played on Old-Timers' Day, which he was too ill to attend. He said, "When I died, I wanted on my tombstone, 'A great teammate.' But I didn't think it would be this soon." The words were indeed carved on the plaque marking his resting place at the family mausoleum in Dallas. On August 25, 1996, about a year after his death, Mantle's Monument Park plaque was replaced with a monument, bearing the words "A great teammate" and keeping a phrase that had been included on the original plaque: "A magnificent Yankee who left a legacy of unequaled courage."

Mickey Mantle and former teammate Whitey Ford were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame together in 1974, Mantle in his first year of eligibility, Ford in his second. In 1999, The Sporting News placed Mantle at number 17 on their list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players. That same year, he was one of 100 nominees for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team, and was chosen by fan balloting as one of the Team's outfielders. While most fans who remember them both tend to rate Willie Mays as a better player than Mantle, Mantle remains the most popular player of the 1950s and 1960s, even as Mays, Hank Aaron and others outlived him by many years.

In 2006, Mantle will be featured on a United States postage stamp. The stamp is one of a block of four honoring Baseball Sluggers.