Young Man on Olympus

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In Chicago one day last week. White Sox Pitcher Billy Pierce, a lefthander, stared moodily down the 60-ft. stretch between the mound and home plate and faced a special problem. At the plate stood a corn-haired youngster just four years out of an Oklahoma high school, with NEW YORK spelled out in block letters on his flannel shirt, a big numeral 7 on his back. As it must to all other clubs in the American League, came the plaguing question: What does a pitcher throw to Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees?

Bat cocked righthanded. fingers flexing and caressing the handle, Mantle crouched at the plate and waited. As the pitcher went into his windup. Mantle dug his spikes more firmly into the batter’s box, hunching his fullback’s body (5 ft.11 in., 195 Ibs.) into a deeper crouch. The pitch bulleted toward him at something like 80 m.p.h.—a fast ball, letter high, over the outside corner of the plate.

Mickey Mantle set a muscular chain reaction in motion. Starting in the ankles, rippling through knees, hips, torso, broad shoulders and 17-in. bull neck, he brought his bat around in a perfect arc to meet the ball with a sharp crack. High and deep it sailed. The White Sox centerfielder. playing deep, went a few steps back, then stood, face upturned, as the ball sailed over the fence for a 425-ft. home run.

The next night in St. Louis it was the turn of another pitcher, a righthander this time, to face New York’s No. 7. To gain the slight advantage which lefthanded batters are religiously believed to enjoy against righthanded pitchers (and vice versa), switch-hitting Mickey Mantle batted lefthanded. He let four pitches go by, then drove the fifth into the right center-field stands 405 feet for another homer. All in all. Mantle’s week was an excellent demonstration of why pitchers turn grey. It was also one of several good reasons why the 1953 New York Yankees have opened a long early lead on all the other clubs in the league, and may be heading for something without precedent in baseball : five pennants in a row.

Turnstiles & History. As the proprietors of an expensive ten-acre layout of steel, concrete and lovingly tailored grass in The Bronx known as Yankee Stadium, the New York Yankees Inc. are today full of a rich and understandable satisfaction. The Olympian Joe DiMaggio is gone, and there will never be another DiMaggio—just as there has never been another Babe Ruth or another Lou Gehrig (Yankees all). But with only one full season in the major leagues to his credit, Mickey Mantle already shows signs that he may be another Olympian in the making.

Like a few stars of the past, and like the St. Louis Cardinals’ Stan Musial, or Boston’s Ted Williams (now a marine fighter-pilot in Korea). Mantle is that combination of color, speed and power at the plate that makes baseball turnstiles spin. Naturally, the Yankees are delighted. So, with duly diminished enthusiasm, are the other American League club owners. Mantle makes their turnstiles spin, too, and in a year when TV has all club owners worried.

Baseball fans are still talking about the historic homer Mickey hit in Washington this spring. The 565-ft. hit, the first that ever carried over Washington’s centerfield wall, was the longest home run ever measured (TIME. April 27). It sent sportswriters scurrying to the records, trying to compare it with some of Ruth’s reported (but unmeasured) 600-footers. Like Ruth. Mickey hits towering homers. Like Ted Williams, he smacks crackling line drives. Like DiMaggio. he beats out hot-to-handle grounders if an infielder makes a split-second bobble. Blessed with a sprinter’s speed—he has been clocked at 3.1 seconds traveling the 90 feet to first base —he is one of the fastest men in baseball.

As a centerfielder. Mantle still has trouble judging line drives hit directly at him. and occasionally he misjudges a fly ball. But he has proved a quick study in the job of covering Yankee Stadium’s center-field acreage, and his throwing arm (his right) has whipping speed. Base runners have learned not to take liberties with him.

Mantle’s best fielding advice came from Yankee Coach Tommy Henrich two years ago. Said “Old Reliable”: “Do what I tell you—and watch DiMaggio.” Outfielder Mantle has a confidence born from experience, now: “Standing around the outfield. I used to hope that they wouldn’t hit to me. I was afraid I’d drop it. But now I just catch it and throw it in.”

This kind of casual, frank statement, given in an offhand manner, has raised some doubts among professional worriers about Mantle’s competitive spark. Ordinarily phlegmatic, like DiMaggio, Mantle was not cast in the same hot mold as the fiercely competitive Ty Cobb or the fiery Frankie Frisch, the most notable switch hitter baseball produced before Mantle. But in the Yankee dugout, out of sight of the crowd. Mickey has been known to kick the water cooler or bruise his knuckles on the concrete walls in moments of angry frustration after striking out. Nowadays, reflecting the restrained professional pride of the Yankees, Mantle has learned to bottle up his anger over a strike-out or a miscue. “I try not to let it bother me,” he says placidly.

Mickey lets his bat do his talking for him. This week Switch-Hitter Mantle was the No. 1 batter in the American League, with a .347 average, 39 runs batted in and eight home runs.

Day & Night. For this kind of work, and for the customers he draws to Yankee Stadium by day and by night, Mickey Mantle is being paid about $18,000 a year —not high as star salaries go, but a nice start for a 21-year-old playing his third season as a major leaguer. Moreover, in addition to his salary, Mickey’s new public eminence brings him a variety of other rewards. This season he is profitably endorsing Wheaties, Camel cigarettes, Gem razor blades, Beech-Nut chewing gum, Esquire socks, Van Heusen shirts, Haggar slacks and Louisville Slugger bats.

Like a movie star, he can no longer handle the steady stream of fan mail which pours in at the rate of 1,200 letters a week. The Yankees answer it for him. This spring, with the help of a New York baseball writer named Ben Epstein, he published one of the very few autobiographies ever written of a man barely old enough to vote: The Mickey Mantle Story.

He is learning, if he has not learned already, the routine of the big-city celebrity, including banquets, TV and radio appearances, thrusting autograph books, phone calls from strangers at all hours. He takes all this with a mixture of dutiful politeness and a country man’s caution. But he can also rise to an occasion. Last month he was presented to the Duke of Windsor, who had just watched the Yankees for the first time in his life. The duke wanted “particularly to meet that switcher fellow.”

“I’ve heard about you,” said the duke. Said Mickey, embarrassed but not to be outdone: “I’ve heard about you, too.”

With endorsements and personal appearances, he stands to earn about $30,000 above his salary this year. After one television appearance, for which he got $400 for speaking a few lines, Mickey said: “My father used to kill himself for eight weeks earning that.”

A Star Is Born. Mickey Charles Mantle, born and raised in Oklahoma, was dedicated to the major leagues before he was even born. His father, Elven Charles Mantle, known as “Mutt,” spent most of his working life in the Oklahoma lead and zinc mines around Commerce (pop. 2,442), but the big interest of his life was baseball. Mutt Mantle had been a sandlot player; Mutt’s son was to be a big-leaguer.

Mickey remembers that his father never bothered to read anything except the sports section of the Daily Oklahoman. “Baseball, that’s all he lived for,” says Mickey. “He used to say that it seemed to him like he just died in the winter, until the time when baseball came around again.”

Two years before Mickey was born, in tiny (pop. 213) Spavinaw, Okla., Mutt Mantle told his wife Lovell that their first child would be a boy, and that his name was already picked: it would be “Mickey,” in honor of Mickey Cochrane, the hard-hitting catcher of the Philadelphia Athletics. (“I don’t think he ever knew that Cochrane’s real name was Gordon,” says Mickey.) In good time the baby came, and Mutt Mantle had his way. The baby’s middle name. Charles, came from both of Mickey’s grandfathers, but especially from Grandpa Charley Mantle, another sandlot ballplayer.

Before his eyes could focus, Mickey got his first baseball. His father offered the baby his choice between a bottle and a ball, and was momentarily frustrated when Mickey did not reach for either.

“First, Second, Third.” At six months, Mickey’s mother officially clothed the baby for his future work by making him a visored baseball cap, complete with button on the top. Mutt taught him to count by reciting the bases, “first, second, third.” At six years, he had his first uniform, cut from a pair of Mutt’s old playing pants.

By that time the Mantles had moved to nearby Commerce, and Mickey’s official baseball training had begun. With his lefthanded father and his righthanded grandfather taking turns tossing a tennis ball to him, he was taught switch-hitting from the start: his natural righthanded swing against father, a lefthanded swing against grandfather.

In the Mantle game, a ground ball or a pop-up was an out; a line drive off the side of the house was a double, off the roof a triple, over the roof a homer. The daily drills often lasted five hours. Recalling it without rancor, Mickey says: “I’m probably the only kid who ever made his old man proud of him by breaking a window.”

By the time he was ten, Mickey was catching in peewee baseball, in Oklahoma’s Gabby Street league. One day Mutt Mantle caught his son batting righty against a righthander. He sent Mickey home with an ultimatum: “Don’t you ever put on that baseball uniform again until you switch-hit like I taught you.” Mickey has not failed to switch since.

Respected Advice. At Commerce High School Mickey was a three-letter man: basketball, football (against his father’s wishes) and, of course, baseball. During a football scrimmage one day, Sophomore Back Mantle got a kick on the left shin. He limped home from practice and his mother soaked the leg. By the next morning Mickey’s whole lower leg was swollen and an ugly blue. Mutt took him to Oklahoma City, where the doctors made a diagnosis of osteomyelitis.

The shin kick had caused a blood clot next to the bone. The clot became infected and inflamed, spreading the bad infection into the bone. There was talk of amputation. Penicillin and diathermy saved the leg, but while such infections can be curbed, they are sometimes impossible to cure. Mickey, who must guard against flare-ups of the infection, has had his share of poison-pen letters demanding to know why he is not fighting in Korea. On medical advice, Mickey’s draft board has rejected him three times.

At 16, Mickey was playing shortstop for the Baxter Springs Whiz Kids in the Ban Johnson League. He was big enough to deserve at least a perfunctory glance from the baseball scouts. But nobody seemed interested in glancing Mickey’s way. The Whiz Kids’ manager, Barney Barnett, tried to get the St. Louis Cardinals interested. They did not answer Barnett’s letter. As they will long remember, ivory hunters for the Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox also passed up the chance to give Mickey Charles Mantle a farmclub tryout.

Help Wanted. That Mickey is now playing for New York is due partly to good Yankee organization, partly to good Yankee luck. Always conscious of the 67,000 seats in their Bronx ballpark, and of the fact that even their stars seldom shine for more than a dozen years, the New York club owners could well hang over Yankee Stadium the sign: HELP WANTED. In the late ’40s they were sending the word down through their scouting and farmclub network (today: some 30 scouts, ten farm clubs) to find a new crop of infielders, outfielders, pitchers and catchers for the Yankees of the ’50s.

One man to whom the message came was Yankee Scout Tom Greenwade, onetime chief scout for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Greenwade watched Mickey Mantle play shortstop for the Whiz Kids one night in 1949. Mickey, who had graduated from high school that day, banged out a single, a double and a home run.

After the game, Mickey, his father and Greenwade talked terms. Greenwade offered Mickey a contract with Independence, Kans., a Class D (bottom rung) Yankee farm club, at $140 a month. Mutt Mantle, who had raised his son from the cradle to be a ballplayer, never considered demanding a bonus. But he pretended to bargain. He pointed out that Mickey could make more by working in the lead mines and playing semipro ball on weekends. In a day when raw rookie high-school talent was selling for signature bonuses of $50,000 and up Mickey Mantle joined the Yankee farm system for an extra $1,150.

At Independence, in 89 games, Shortstop Mantle batted .313. It was good enough to earn him a trial at the Yankees’ training school at Phoenix, Ariz, the next year. After watching the 18-year-old Oklahoman run the others bowlegged in trial sprints, Yankee Manager Casey Stengel spoke his first words to Mickey: “You keep chasing them jack rabbits, boy” Mickey did. He moved up a notch that summer, to Joplin (Class C), and hit a walloping .383.

Shortstop Mantle made a mark of another sort: 55 errors. Scout Greenwade began to despair of his shortstop candidate. He phoned Yankee General Manager George Weiss, who carefully watches the progress of farm boys and records the doings of some 300 of them in an IBM index system. Said Weiss, with his mind on Joe DiMaggio, then 36: “Well, you know we’ve got to be thinking of centerfield. ‘ From that day on, Shortstop Mantle became Outfielder Mantle.

Trumpet Blasts. After his seasons at Independence and Joplin, Mickey reported to the Yankee spring training camp at Phoenix in 1951. What came next was a deluge of headlines. New York sportswriters watched Mickey for three or four days, then they reached for their trumpets. Some of the blasts they blew: rookie of the eons, Magnificent Mantle, Mighty Mickey, young Lochinvar, Commerce Comet, Oklahoma Kid, superstar, one-man platoon. Mickey lived up to the raves at bat. In the field, alternating between left and right (DiMaggio was in center), Mickey was beaned by a misjudged fly ball. But he was learning fast.

The Yankee timetable called for Mickey to play at Beaumont (Class AA) in the Texas League that season. Mickey, just 19, rewrote the timetable by his hitting in spring training: a .402 average. Casey Stengel took a chance and let Mickey open the season in rightfield for New York instead of Beaumont.

Swinging for the fences, Mickey was soon in trouble: he was driving in more runs than any other Yankee but he was also striking out more often. Playing a doubleheader in Boston, Mickey fanned five times in a row. The fifth time, he dragged back to the dugout and told Stengel: “Put someone in there who can hit the ball. I can’t.” Six weeks later. Mantle got what he expected: a one-way ticket to the Kansas City farm club.

“What’s the Matter?” After six weeks in Kansas City, Mickey was batting .361. Recalled, he found himself in the midst of a pennant chase, then in a World Series with the Giants. In the second game, running: toward a fly ball, Rightfielder Mantle stumbled, tore the ligaments of his right knee and fell hard. Old Pro DiMaggio caught the fly ball, then waved for help. Mickey, who was semiconscious, remembers DiMaggio anxiously asking “What’s the matter, kid?” DiMaggio’s anxiety was a measure of how far Mickey had traveled.

In spring training last year, still favoring the injured knee, Mantle was just another aspirant for DiMaggio’s vacated job. Other rookies were brought up. The Yankees bought Centerfielder Irv Noren from Washington, and there was some speculation as to whether Mickey would make it. By mid-May, Mickey had answered all the speculation. He got the job, put in his first full season as a major-leaguer. After his .311 batting average last season and his fancy .345 against Brooklyn in the World Series, there was no question as to who would be the Yankee centerfielder in 1953. The main question was how long it would take Mickey to become one of the game’s alltime stars.

Box Scores & Westerns. Temperamentally, Mickey seems well-fitted for a durable career as a star. Loaded with physical confidence, he does not suffer from an enlarged hatband. Diffident and uncommunicative around strangers, he seems barely aware of the buzz he creates in a restaurant or strolling through a hotel lobby. Two years ago he married his Oklahoma sweetheart, Merlyn Johnson, and now has a son, Mickey Mantle Jr.

Mutt Mantle, who lived to see his son play in the World Series, died last year. Since then, Mickey has been the head of the Mantle family, which includes his mother, a sister and his three ballplaying younger brothers. Responsibility has left Mickey with a sober interest in security, which is represented for him, among other things, by the house he has built back in Commerce.

With his clubmates he is no sobersides. At ease with them, and fully accepted, Mickey sometimes horses around in warmups, imitating Yankee pitchers.Other players grin at Mickey’s antics; a crouch and a furtive look toward first for Pitcher Johnny Sain; a portentous, aldermanlike rear-back for Allie Reynolds; a waggling arm stretch for Vic Raschi.

Outside the ball park, Mickey fits happily into the standard preoccupations of his profession: thick steaks. Southern fried chicken, sleep (up to eleven hours a night), a close reading of the box scores and comic books. Mantle adds to this a special interest in hillbilly records (his favorite: the late Hank Williams). Since the Mantles have not yet picked a house in the New York area, Merlyn and Mickey Jr. stay in Commerce most of the time, and Mickey lives in hotels when the team is at home as well as traveling, gets his fun by going to the movies with teammates. His favorites: westerns.

Tutor & Plan. On the field. Manager Casey Stengel has been his tutor-in-chief since Mickey became a regular. Casey, who once called Mickey “treemenjous” and hawked him to the skies, now talks of his man in careful understatement (“a pretty good ballplayer”). The job now is to keep the fans from expecting too much from No. 7 whenever he marches to the plate or trots out to centerfield.

If all goes according to plan—Mutt’s plan, Casey’s plan, Mickey’s own plan—Centerfielder Mantle should have a good dozen years ahead of him in the big leagues. The big numeral 7 on Mantle’s back should take its place in Yankee legend with the 5 that Joe DiMaggio wore, the 4 that Lou Gehrig wore, and the 3 that Babe Ruth wore (a number now officially retired by the Yankees). That would mean years of recurring headaches for American League pitchers, years of merrily clicking turnstiles for Yank:ee Stadium.

No. 7 is sometimes asked about all this. One form the question takes: Does he think he will be another DiMaggio. Gehrig or Ruth? “That’s just something some writer said,” answers Mickey Mantle. “I guess he knows more about it than I do.”