Maury
Allen |
|
|
|
Named for Mickey |
 MICKEY MANTLE |
Mantle would have loved
having a school named for him
By MAURY ALLEN
of TheColumnists.com
The new plaque on the side wall of the old school building
on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, first built in 1882, glowed
in the early afternoon of a splendid New York June day.
“Mickey C. Mantle” read the copied autograph in glistening
gold and under that it simply read, “The Mickey Mantle School
Dedicated June 4, 2002.”
David Mantle, 45, and Danny Mantle, 42, the two surviving of
four sons of Yankee slugger and baseball immortal Mickey Mantle
and his wife, Merlyn, held the strings of the cloth covering
the plaque.
Now the audience, assembled on West End Avenue and 82nd Street
in Manhattan in front of the four story school building, could
read the plaque.
They had cheered loudly a few moments earlier when a red ribbon
was cut by the two Mantle boys and the obligatory politician
on the scene, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields,
as balloons floated high and school children applauded.
More than half a century after he first walked on the glistening
grass at Yankee Stadium in 1951, the name of Mickey Mantle would
now forever be enshrined in a New York school, this one for 200
children, mostly minorities, who were sent to this location as
physically or mentally challenged students.
“Our dad suffered from a lot of crippling injuries in his
career,” intoned young David Mantle, a significant look-alike
for his late father. “One thing that typified his career
was the idea that he would never give up.”
Mantle’s notoriety came, of course, from 18 seasons with
the Yankees, 536 homers, those blond good looks and his flamboyant
lifestyle during those winning Yankee years.
As described in my recent book, “Memories of the Mick”
(Taylor Publishing) Mantle reached an even greater level of attention,
affection and appeal in his final months of life before his death
of liver cancer on August 13, 1995.
He took the time then to truly inspire youngsters, to warn them
of the evils of alcohol, a clear factor in his death at age 63,
to admit mistakes in his years as a carousing husband and father,
to motivate others to cleaner and clearer goals.
Mantle had first come to New York with a big reputation as a
young power house and an attractive shyness naturally earned
as a native of a tiny mining town of Commerce, Oklahoma.
His father, Elvin, called "Mutt" Mantle by friends,
was a zinc miner and he wanted the fresh air of baseball not
the darkness of the mining holes for his son. He dropped a baseball
into his crib and worked with him the next 18 years until the
Yankees took over.
Mantle started in the spring of 1951 in Phoenix, Arizona and
his teammate, Joe DiMaggio, was winding down his career in angered
bitterness and just enough jealousy as attention shifted to the
handsome youngster.
DiMaggio made no efforts to welcome Mantle to the Stadium scene
but that was typical of him. He was far too lordly in Yankee
lore for any efforts in that direction.
“I was just afraid of him,” Mantle once told me. “I
couldn’t talk to him. That was Joe DiMaggio for crissakes.”
They almost collided while both were chasing a fly ball hit by
Willie Mays in the 1951 World Series. Mantle suffered knee damage
when he stepped into a drain as he halted his chase of the ball
at DiMaggio’s request.
DiMaggio was gone the next year and Mantle took over as team
icon. In 1956 he won the Triple Crown. In 1960 he was joined
by Roger Maris and in 1961 they shared the most dramatic home
run chase in history, as they challenged the Babe Ruth record
of 60 homers in 1927, the stupid asterisk ruling concerning 154
games by Commissioner Ford Frick and the public antagonism.
Mantle’s body, damaged by alcohol and injury, gave out in
the middle 1960s and he walked away from the game with a disappointing
.298 lifetime average after the 1968 season.
“I won’t miss playing,” he admitted, “but
I will miss being with the other guys.”
He tried several things, broadcasting and coaching among them,
private business, uncomfortable public appearances for pay and
card shows in the middle 1980s.
A New York restaurant owner named Bill Liederman convinced Mantle
to allow him to use his name on a new sports hangout.
“I wanted to make Mickey Mantle’s restaurant into the
new Toots Shor’s, the famous sports place of the 1940s and
1950s. Mickey agreed and he really loved being part of the place,”
Liederman said.
Mantle would show up at the restaurant, sign autographs, kid
with customers, entertain old teammates and revel in the glory
of his past.
“A kid came up to Mickey one day and saw that lobster ravioli
was listed on the menu as one of Mickey’s favorites,”
said Liederman. “He asked Mickey if he really ate that stuff.
Without batting an eye Mickey said, ‘Kid, I grew up in Oklahoma
eating that stuff almost every day.’ It was a precious moment.”
Mantle was diagnosed with liver cancer early in 1995. He was
placed on a list for a transplant and, surprisingly, a match
was discovered the next day. Some people howled about that. Others
just smiled and quietly said, “It was for Mickey Mantle.”
The cancer had spread and despite a healthy new liver, he passed
away in Dallas. Bob Costas handled the eulogy and reminded the
huge crowd that Mantle’s fame cut across all barriers.
“Mick, we checked the record,” Costas quoted St. Peter
as saying when Mantle came to the pearly gates. “We know
what went on. Sorry we can’t let you in. But God wants to
know before you go if you’ll sign these six dozen baseballs.”
Shortly after Mantle’s death a school principal named Philip
Santise got the idea that a new name on his school would inspire
the handicapped kids.
“We thought of a lot of names like John Lennon who lived
in Manhattan and a bunch of old politicians. Then I thought of
Mickey. Why not a Mickey Mantle school? I started working on
it,” he said.
Seven years later, chopping laboriously through the New York
City school bureaucracy, he was given approval.
The Mickey Mantle School was engraved in front of what had started
as public school 9 about 120 years ago. Photos of Mantle filled
the halls. The plaque was built.
On that June afternoon the school band played, “Take Me
Out to The Ball Game,” and “New York, New York,”
before the ceremonies began.
Family and friends spoke of Mantle. The students all seemed thrilled.
One youngster, sitting in a wheelchair, put down his trumpet
when the music was finished. He studied the words on the plaque.
“I know who Mickey Mantle was,” he said. “He was
a great baseball player and he died too early.”
© 2002 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel.
You
can comment on this column online. Please address your message
to either "The Editors" or Maury Allen. To send an
email, click here: talkback@thecolumnists.com
| Home | About Us | Archives | Talkback | Shopping Mall |