At lunch with a book editor six years ago, I broached the idea of doing a baseball book. He had two words of advice: Mickey Mantle.
For the last four decades, the great Yankee slugger has spawned a whole catalog of books devoted to his life and legacy. In the 1994 version of his autobiography, “Mickey Mantle: All My Octobers” (HarperPaperbacks, $5.99), he wrote, “I saw no reason to recycle my life story.” But he and others did, over and over again. Since Mantle died in 1995, even more forests have fallen to meet the seemingly insatiable demand.
The baseball-book craze has ebbed from its peak a few years ago when Ken Burns’ trend-setting PBS documentary aired. But books about other baseball subjects besides Mantle are now having a hard time competing for shelf space with those about the Mick, as he was affectionately known.
This genre’s popularity has little to do with its quality. None of the Mantle books comes close to the baseball classics by Roger Kahn, Roger Angel or Bill James. The prose is pretty pedestrian, and there are few profound insights into strategy or the personalities in the game besides Mantle. Indeed, in one of his memoirs, it appears as though Mantle gave up following baseball years ago. In “All My Octobers,” he proclaimed the improbability of any player ever beating Lou Gehrig’s iron-man string of 2,130 consecutive games played. He neglected to mention the approaching Cal Ripken Jr., who finally broke the record in 1996.
Mantle mania is one of those cultural phenomenons–like Elvis, Jackie Kennedy and Martha Stewart–that generates industries built on the cult of personality. “Yes, (Mantle) was a confessed drunk; yes, he shorted his potential–he himself said so. And still, looking at the slightly uplifted square jaw, all we see is America’s romance with boldness; its celebration of muscle, a continent’s comfort in power during a time when might did make right,” explains Richard Hoffner in “Mantle Remembered” (Warner Books, $14.95), a superb compendium of Sports Illustrated magazine’s articles and photos over the years. “Mantle was the last great player on the last great team in the last great country, a postwar civilization that was booming and confident, not a trouble in the world.”
The longing for days of yore that pervades all Mantle books conjures up an old adage: nostalgia is a matter of grammar–the past is perfect and the present is tense. Phil Pepe writes in the introduction to Mantle’s memoir “My Favorite Summer 1956” (Island Books, $6.50 paper), that Mantle’s legend sprang “from a wonderful time in this country when everyday life was much less complicated.” Beyond the baseball field, the man represented strong cultural forces that resonate with many Americans.
Many fans would be loath to admit how race colors their views of players. Breaking into the big leagues in 1951, four years after Jackie Robinson integrated the game, Mantle was arguably the last great white player to virtually dominate the game. Boxing fans refer to his kind as the Great White Hope. The Ken Griffey of his time, Mantle was, writes Robert Creamer in the Sports Illustrated volume, “that rare combination of awesome power and lightning speed.” Yet in “All My Octobers,” Mantle admits that among his contemporaries, Willie Mays was the better player. Few baseball historians would differ.
Then why does Mantle’s 1951 rookie card sell for 2 1/2 times more than Mays’? That Mantle played more years in New York and in far more World Series accounts for only part of the gap. A bigger reason is probably that only one of the two men fits Maury Allen’s description in “Memories of the Mick” (Taylor Publishing, $29.95): “wickedly handsome with that short blonde hair and those piercing blue eyes.” Mantle was the boy next door. In “The Illustrated History of Mickey Mantle” (Carroll & Graf, $28.95), the Technicolor-like boldness of the vintage Kodachrome images magnifies those “all-American” features. Mantle looks positively deified, like some 3-D Jesus.
His mass appeal cut across demographic lines. As Allen explains, Mantle captivated “men and women, young and old–the farmer, lawyer, blue-collar worker, and academic alike.” Mantle’s middle-class status enabled him to belong to everyone. Of all the statistics filling all the books, perhaps the most striking is that throughout his 18-year career he never topped Joe DiMaggio’s $100,000 salary. That’s serious wage stagnation, considering Mantle was the elite in his profession and his employer, the Yankees, was baseball’s Ft. Knox. In the era before free agency turned players into Wall Street Journal readers, fans claimed they could identify with their heroes. During retirement, Mantle earned his living signing autographs for a fee. “How much would you pay for a signed jock?” he once asked hypothetically. The superman was really the Everyman who had to hustle like everyone else.
Late in life, David Falkner notes in “The Last Hero: The Life of Mickey Mantle” (Simon & Schuster, $24)–one of the better books–“Mantle seemed to reemerge in mint condition from inside pristine wrapping to satisfy (a) need to recreate a past that never existed.” In “My Favorite Summer 1956,” Mantle recalls taking the subway to work at Yankee Stadium. On “nice days,” when he had a day game, the world-famous celebrity hiked from his midtown Manhattan hotel through Central Park. He then walked up through Harlem–where blue-eyed blondes were few and far between–over the bridge to the Bronx and to the stadium. “Nobody bothered you.”
The world depicted in these books is pure Camelot. I’m sorry I missed it.
