This Day in Baseball History (Ryne Duren Sets League Consecutive K’s Record)

June 9, 1961—With a new team and new pitching role, Ryne Duren—a right-handed hurler with a reputation for having as little control of himself as over his overpowering fastball—looked on the verge of turning over a new leaf, striking out an American League record seven consecutive Red Sox on his way to 11 in 6 2/3 innings, in the veteran’s first start in his major-league career.

An All-Star reliever with the New York Yankees, Duren had been traded the month before to the expansion Los Angeles Angels when his off-the-field behavior became increasingly erratic. His new manager, Bill Rigney, saw enough potential to convert him to a starter.

For a while, the experiment worked splendidly. Three weeks later, he earned some revenge against the Bronx Bombers, not only fanning a career-high 12 batters in eight innings on his way to a 5-3 victory but even uncharacteristically contributing to his own cause by singling in two runs.

But the emotional vulnerability afflicting Duren even when batters feared his fastball returned when he was at his zenith in 1961, while getting ready to play in his third All-Star game in four years. The news that his two-week old infant son Craig had died sent Duren on an alcoholic spree that ended his marriage and, four years and three teams later, his professional career.

In a way, Duren’s notoriously poor eyesight (his Yankee catcher, Yogi Berra, observed, “he had several pair of glasses, but it didn’t seem like he saw good in any of them”) was symbolic. 

An alcoholic in deep denial, he did not see how much his drinking was endangering his performance, his livelihood, his teammates, and his family for too long. Out of baseball after 1965, he was reduced to a series of dead-end jobs and living in a flophouse and made two suicide attempts.

Fortunately, the story of Ryne Duren doesn’t end there. After a 22-month treatment in DePaul Hospital in Milwaukee, he became sober, and from 1968 to his death at age 81 in 2011, served as an addiction counselor, advising not only youths about how to avoid or forsake alcohol and drugs but also many current and former major leaguers.

One, Yankee teammate Mickey Mantle, was in denial when Duren initially tried to coax him into recognizing his problem. But when the slugger finally embraced sobriety in 1994, his decision to publicly reveal his registration at the Betty Ford Clinic was influenced by his fellow ex-carouser’s public example.

“That guy [Duren] when he was playing ball, was a wreck and he whipped it,” he told friend Bill Hooten, according to Jane Leavy’s Mantle biography, The Last Boy. “He got around talking, and he does a lot of good. If I can go out there and come back and the fact that I’ve whipped the drinking can help somebody else, then sure, I want that known.”

Duren was one of a small but significant group of ex-ballplayers who, after recognizing their problem, went on to help others as substance abuse counselors, including, most prominently, Don Newcombe of the Brooklyn Dodgers, “Sudden Sam” McDowell of the Cleveland Indians, Dock Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and 1970s journeyman Michael Jackson. I am sure there are others who played different positions, but all of the people I just mentioned were pitchers.

I became interested in this subject for several reasons: a couple of friends who are substance abuse counselors, my long-time fascination with everything related to the New York Yankees, and my interest in baseball history.

In the case of the latter, I have thought often about another friend who, through his career, has become a mother lode of baseball history. He told me once that the incidence of alcoholism in America’s pastime was high. It was possible, he thought, that as many as one out of four Baseball Hall of Famers had drinking problems. 

One, “Big Ed Delahanty,” died from a fall into the Niagara River after a drunk-and-disorderly incident; other past members, such as Mantle, Babe Ruth, and Hack Wilson (whom I profiled in this 2010 post), are well known; and more recent ones have not been publicized, so to protect their privacy I will leave that to disclosures by themselves or their eventual biographers.

Quantifying substance abuse among past ballplayers is difficult, but my reading indicates that the problem was common. 

Any genetic susceptibility to alcohol was worsened by the environment of past decades: clubhouse drinking as a means of celebrating or even simply unwinding after games; late-night games followed by after-hours companionship; travel and isolation from family and friends on the part of young men who still feel invulnerable; and stressed-out managers in no condition to preach after leaving their own difficulties in the bar.

Today’s players struggling with addiction, though, benefit from changes in the game and society since Duren’s time in baseball:

*Alcoholics Anonymous has become a better known and recognized form of help;

*Awareness of fitness and nutrition includes substance abuse prevention and recovery, as well as liquid alternatives such as cherry juice, smoothies, and protein shakes;

*Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement has formalized the process of evaluation, treatment and recovery;

*High payrolls have increased the incentive for owners and general managers to become proactive about abuse, including some teams that have banned alcohol use in clubhouses and on planes;

*Social media decreases the likelihood that alcohol-fueled indiscretions will be hushed up and perpetuated;

*The stigma of admitting to substance abuse has lowered;

*Many players see marijuana as an acceptable alternative to alcohol.

Other Yankees had longer, more consequential careers than Duren, but even while playing—well before his great contributions to substance abuse awareness among athletes—he had impacted the game as a pitcher.

When he entered games, the slang used for his position was “fireman,” the relief pitcher designated to prevent or contain the damage from mound emergencies. Nowadays, with the use and responsibility of these hurlers refined and defined, they are called “closers.”

After being acquired from the Kansas City A’s midseason in 1957, Duren took over the fireman/closer niche that Joe Page had once occupied for the Yankees. He soon became a fan favorite, with his routine recounted vividly in Marty Appel’s Yankee history, Pinstripe Empire:

“…scaling the low right-field bullpen fence, glancing at the auxiliary scoreboard to check the situation, tossing the warm-up jacket to the waiting batboy, kicking the dirt off his spikes against the rubber, and then firing his first warm-up pitch into the backstop (to frighten the waiting hitter).”

This Day in Baseball History (Willie Mays Clubs 1st HR)

May 28, 1951—Decisively ending an 0-12 hitless streak that seemed to confirm his initial fears about joining the major leagues, 20-year-old New York Giants rookie Willie Mays hit the first of his 660 career home runs.

In his first at-bat at the team’s home, the Polo Grounds, their newly installed center fielder smacked an offering from star Boston Braves southpaw Warren Spahn over the left-field fence, for what was also his first career hit.

My blog post from 10 years ago briefly reviewed the amazing career of the man that many have proclaimed the best all-around ballplayer of all time. But I think it’s worth spending a little time here on his introduction to the big leagues, as well as how it compared and contrasted with that of rookie and legendary Hall of Famer, Mickey Mantle.

These two were not the only future Hall of Famers to experience difficulties when first exposed to the big leagues. Others, such as Willie Stargell, Brooks Robinson, Pie Traynor, and Roberto Clemente, had relatively subpar campaigns even over their first five seasons, as demonstrated in this 2012 Jim McLennan post on the “AZ Snake Pit” blog.

But the spotlight shone more intensely in New York, the media and sports capital of America—and Mays wasn’t yet over his yips at the plate. He then proceeded to go on another hitless streak: 0-13. At this turning point in his career, as he sat sobbing in front of his locker, he found reassurance from a manager not otherwise known for being soft-hearted: Leo Durocher.

Though he had clashed with Jackie Robinson while managing the Brooklyn Dodgers, Durocher took a gentler approach with this less mature but still immensely talented player now under his wing.

When Mays repeated what he had told him previously while in the Giants’ top minor-league club, the Minneapolis Millers—i.e., that he doubted his ability to hit major-league pitching—Durocher answered, “As long as I’m the manager of the Giants, you are my center fielder. … You are the best center fielder I’ve ever looked at.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, and justifying his manager’s confidence, Mays went on a 14-for-33 tear. He sparked the team’s thrilling pennant run that season, winning Rookie of the Year honors with 20 home runs, 68 RBIs, and a .274 batting average in 121 games—not to mention playing dazzling defense.

There couldn’t have been a more dramatic contrast to another much-heralded outfielder that year, Mantle. Though some veteran New York Yankees like Hank Bauer sought to make him comfortable, the “Commerce [Oklahoma] Comet” was well aware that he was regarded as an interloper and ultimate threat to job security by the Bombers’ proud but fading superstar fixture in center field, Joe DiMaggio.

In contrast to Durocher, Yankee manager Casey Stengel—after successfully overriding the advice of general manager George Weiss that their hot young prospect was not ready for the majors—felt the need to send Mantle back to the minors when his strikeouts began to mount.

It’s now part of Bomber legend how a tough-love visit from Mantle’s father Mutt led his son to surmount his funk and for Stengel to call him back up—as the team’s current rightfielder and centerfielder-in-waiting—in late August. Mantle ended the season hitting .267 with 13 home runs, 65 RBIs, and a .792 OPS.

While Stengel managed Mantle for the first 10 years of his career, Durocher only benefited from having Mays in his lineup for three. (The “Say Hey Kid” served in the Army from May 1952 through March 1954, causing him to miss most of one season and all of another, and his manager was fired after a third-place finish in 1954.)

Nevertheless, that short period of time was enough to make the crusty Durocher speak glowingly about him for the rest of his life, as seen in this passage from his autobiography, Nice Guys Finish Last:

“If somebody came up and hit .450, stole 100 bases, and performed a miracle in the field every day, I’d still look you right in the eye and tell you that Willie was better. He could do the five things you have to do to be a superstar: hit, hit with power, run, throw and field. And he had the other magic ingredient that turns a superstar into a super Superstar. Charisma. He lit up a room when he came in. He was a joy to be around.”

If Durocher served as a kind of proud surrogate father to his young superstar, Stengel often acted as a demanding, frequently disappointed one to his. Early to see Mantle’s immense gifts, he also frequently grew frustrated with him for not paying attention to constructive construction and for not measuring up to a standard for what he could be.

The dissing of his best player may have reached a nadir in 1959, when Stengel listed Hank Bauer, Yogi Berra and Phil Rizzuto as his best players, according to Jane Leavy’s The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood. Pressed by Bauer about this noticeable exclusion, Stengel answered, “You gave 110 percent every time you were in the lineup.”

I couldn’t finish this post without looking at one particular aspect of this landmark game in the career of Mays.

The at-bat against Spahn was not only an indicator of his future greater greatness, but also a sign of his comfort at the plate against the Hall of Fame hurler. In 253 plate appearances against him, Mays hit 18 homers (the most he accumulated against any pitcher), while batting .305. with a .955 OPS.

Since the run he gave up to Mays was his only one in his 4-1 victory, Spahn took the first round-tripper by Mays in stride, joking later, “For the first 60 feet, that was a hell of a pitch."

I suspect that it was harder for him to accept another he yielded in July 1963, when, on the mound for the Milwaukee Braves, he lost his chance at outdueling the (now San Francisco) Giants’ Juan Marichal in the 16^th inning when, after 16 innings and 201 pitches, he watched his chance at a complete-game shutout disappear through  Mays’ solo HR.

Flashback, May 1966: Floundering NY Yankees Replace Keane With Houk

Only a year and a half from managing the St. Louis Cardinals to a seven-game World Series championship over the New York Yankees, then resigning to take over the team he defeated, Johnny Keane (pictured) was fired 60 years ago this month after enduring a sixth-place finish in the American League in 1965 and a 4-16 start to the next season.

The Bronx Bombers may have felt confident that replacement Ralph Houk—who had managed the squad to three straight pennants and two world championships before becoming general manager for two seasons—would turn the club around. Indeed, the team proceeded to win 13 of the first 17 games after the return of “The Major” (a reference to his World War II service).

It was all a mirage, however. By the end of the year, the team had fallen into last place—a finish predicted by fading slugger Mickey Mantle in a private conversation with a reporter in spring training—and the first time the team had sunk to this level since 1912.

That ugly denouement was in keeping with the way the team’s top brass terminated Keane (not to mention his predecessor, beloved icon Yogi Berra, dropped after losing the 1964 World Series). 

It happened on a Friday—within 24 hours of now-minority owner Dan Topping scorning the rumors of the skipper’s departure as ridiculous—and, following a loss in Anaheim, Calif., conveniently timed so that most fans would not hear the bad news until they opened their Sunday papers.

Nobody realized that the team’s precipitous slide was not a temporary blip but the start of a decade in the wilderness before it returned to the postseason.

The days when the team’s fans could rely on seeing their team in October—when fans in other cities would grumble that cheering for them was like rooting for U.S. Steel—were long gone. “A sequence of historic events and bad decisions in 1964 changed the course of baseball history, ending four decades of Yankee dominance,” wrote sportswriter Leonard Koppett.

Those multiple, interlocking forces included:

*A bad managerial fit: In his memoir Uppity, St. Louis Cardinals first baseman (and future Yankee broadcaster) Bill White bluntly stated that Keane, the former manager he had come to admire, “tried to apply a National League hard-work ethic to an American League team of complacent, aging superstars and was resented for it.” The Yankees saw what White and others recognized—that he demanded much from players—and missed, beneath his strait-lacked, religious exterior, what they well knew: that he respected and rewarded effort. The team was particularly incensed when Keane fined clubhouse leader Mantle for showing up to a game hung over. Despite the players’ pro-forma statements to the press after Keane’s termination that they felt their underperformance had let him down, they admitted years later that he’d effectively lost control of the locker room.

*Injuries: It was bad enough that the team’s cornerstones in pitching (Whitey Ford, blocked artery in his pitching arm) and the plate (Mantle, hurt shoulder and pulled hamstring; Roger Maris, broken right hand) were sidelined for much of 1965 and still adversely affected in 1966. But the squad was also reeling from ailments that debilitated shortstop Tony Kubek, starting pitcher Jim Bouton, and catcher Elston Howard—and the team was on notice that second baseman Bobby Richardson, though still young at 31, would retire by the end of the season.

*A lost advantage in the new amateur draft system: The draft gave underperforming teams a better chance at picking prized prospects, undercounting powerhouse franchises like the Yankees.

*New ownership in the Kansas City Athletics: In the 1950s and early 1960s, the Yankees and A’s engaged in several trades that were so lopsided in the Bombers’ favor that many observers suspected something nefarious, even charging that the Midwestern team was, in effect, a “farm team” for the Bombers, giving them key players like Maris, Ralph Terry, and Clete Boyer. Whatever the truth of the arrangement, new A’s owner Charles O. Finley was so annoyed by what he heard that, in February 1961, he had a “Shuttle Bus to Yankee Stadium” burned as a not-so-subtle indication that the old ways were over.

*New ownership in the Yankees: In 1964, owners Dan Topping and Del Webb sold an 80% share in the Yankees to CBS. The transaction, shifting control of the club to the number-one television network, signaled a shift from a sportsman model of ownership to one owned by a conglomerate. (David Halberstam’s October 1964 is especially good at explaining the shock this represented to the baseball establishment.) As it happened, CBS had not done as much due diligence as they should have into the problems associated with the most famous franchise in sports.

*Corporate disinvestment in baseball operations: In trying to maximize the worth of the ball club in the late 1950s in preparation for an eventual sale, Topping and Webb had been told that, to stay on top, the team had spent heavily in several areas. The partners then cut their expenses in areas such as the farm system, scouting, and roving instructors. After a year or two, the realization dawned on CBS that Topping and Webb that, with their top stars aging—and even younger ones unexpectedly hurt—they had few options coming up who could replace them.

The nadir of the Bombers came on September 22, when only 413 fans showed up at Yankee Stadium for a drizzly weekly makeup game with the Chicago White Sox. Announcer Red Barber lost his job for highlighting the empty stands during the game.

The visual impact of all of this might have been embarrassing, but not any more so than the Yankees’ fall from contention and grace. The team would not appear in the postseason again until two more seismic forces appeared in the Seventies: free agency and the new owner who exploited it, George Steinbrenner.

This Day in Yankee History (Mantle Summons Fading Magic in Last Days of Dynasty)

Sept. 17, 1964— Mickey Mantle reached his 2,000^th career hit in the same game he recorded his 450^th home run, a 6-2 victory over the Los Angeles Angels that kept momentum going in a pennant race for the proud but aging veteran core of the New York Yankees.

With a sixth-inning single to go with a double and his milestone home run, Mantle was just a triple shy of hitting for the cycle. His bat and leadership by example were proving more essential than it ever had been before, as the Bronx Bombers, in a grim portent of the future, was fending off a younger, hungrier Baltimore Orioles squad.

In third place and 4 ½ games out in mid-August—and having endured a much-publicized bus “harmonica incident” between infielder Phil Linz and manager Yogi Berra—the Yankees would go 30-13 through the rest of the season to secure their fifth straight World Series berth. But they won the pennant by only one game.

Mantle was not the only reason the team was able to survive: rookie pitcher Mel Stottlemyre, for instance, was virtually lights out when called up in October, and Roger Maris’s return to something like peak offensive form and late-season replacement for Mantle in centerfield took much of the burden off his power-hitting teammate.

But Mantle’s consistency and dominance (35 homers, 111 RBIs, .303 batting average, 1.015 OPS) throughout the season were recognized by sportswriters now in a way that finally matched how his admiring teammates had felt for years. When the season was over, he finished second in the voting for Most Valuable Player, surpassed only by Orioles third baseman Brooks Robinson.

Just as the team fed off Mantle’s offensive brilliance in 1964, they collapsed when their string of injuries began to mirror his own the following season. Maris, catcher Elston Howard, shortstop Tony Kubec, and starting pitcher Jim Bouton would join Mantle on the injured list in 1965. The team would not make it back to the World Series again until 1976.

It turned out that 1964 would be the last great year for the 32-year-old Mantle. His power, batting average, and speed steadily declined over the following four seasons, only staying on because the Yankees implored him to lend his leadership to a team transitioning to youth. When he retired following the 1968 season, he was mortified that his career batting average had dipped below .300. 

This Day in Yankee History (Bobby Murcer Retires, Just Short of Greatness)

June 20, 1983— Bobby Murcer, saddled with the burden of succeeding superstar Mickey Mantle as the great hope of the New York Yankees—and one of the few bright spots in the Bronx during the wilderness years out of the postseason from 1965 to 1974—was released by the team and took up duties in the broadcast booth.

As a youngster in the late Sixties and early Seventies, I was just a little too young to experience the Yankees in the golden era of Mantle, Maris, and Ford. I became interested in the team when a trio of young players gave them a glimmer of hope of a return to glory: Thurman Munson, Roy White, and Bobby Murcer. It was Murcer, above all, who became my childhood baseball idol.

I listened breathlessly on the radio on June 24, 1970, when he tied a major league record by clubbing four consecutive home runs in a doubleheader against the Cleveland Indians. I thrilled when, during his first two full seasons with the team (not shortened by injury or military service) in 1969 and 1970, he took advantage of the short rightfield fence at Yankee Stadium by swatting 49 homers.

I imitated that slight crouch at the plate that helped earn Murcer five All-Star berths. In my greatest delusions, I dreamed that, like him, I would win a Gold Glove and succeed him in centerfield at Yankee Stadium, in the same hallowed ground once also patrolled by Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Earle Combs—all Baseball Hall of Famers.

And I mourned in late October 1974, when Murcer was traded straight up for another star saddled with outsized expectations: Bobby Bonds, who had been hailed as the next Willie Mays for the San Francisco Giants.

No matter the electrifying all-around play that Bonds flashed in his single season with the Yankees, he could never replace Murcer for me. I was angry with the Yankees for exiling this leader who sparked the club on the field and won over teammates in the clubhouse with his easygoing manner.

And I was absolutely delighted 4½ years later when the Yankees arranged a trade that brought him back to the team he had dreamed of joining as a child and never wanted to leave. As much as he gave all to the San Francisco Giants and Chicago Cubs in his time away, it was obvious he never really felt at home away from the Bronx.

The three words that may have best defined Murcer’s career were “just short of.” In the first, most substantial part of his career, he fell just short of the postseason, as the team continually lost to the more powerful Baltimore Orioles. In his return, now as a part-time role player with eroding skills, he made it only once to the World Series, recording just one hit in 11 at-bats over two postseasons.

Ultimately, missing out on the postseason in his prime may have meant Murcer fell short of overall greatness. His career statistics over 17 years—252 homeruns, 1,043 RBIs, .277 batting average, .802 OPS—could not match Mantle’s stellar 536 homeruns, 1,509 RBIs, .298 batting average, and .977 OPS. But repeated, excellent play in the postseason during his best years might have earned him more serious consideration as a Hall of Fame candidate.

Comparisons with Mantle cropped up from the moment Murcer arrived at the Yankees’ training camp in 1965, as they both:

*hailed from Oklahoma;

*were signed by the great scout Tom Greenwade;

*started as shortstops before their erratic arms convinced the team they were better suited for center field;

*earned the affection of teammates through their country-boy charm.

Yet, though these comparisons were inevitable, they were also superficial because they obscured significant differences during their careers in the game and afterward. Murcer lacked Mantle’s gasp-inducing natural skills, especially his almost unparalleled power-speed explosiveness.

On the other hand, once their playing days ended, Murcer was not dogged by Mantle’s inner demons. Wondering if he could have been even better if he’d taken care of himself, unsure what to do in retirement, Mantle took refuge in womanizing and alcoholism that depressed those who knew him, while Murcer earned three Emmy Awards as live broadcaster for the Yankees and enjoyed a stable, happy family life.

Murcer’s return to the Bronx in 1979 came during a lost season for the Bombers: not just the only time that the club would miss the playoffs from 1976 through 1981, but one darkened by the tragic death of Munson in a plane crash.

It was a season painful for the Yankees and their fans alike except for August 6, when, after delivering a stirring eulogy at Munson’s funeral, Murcer flew back to the Bronx for a nationally televised game against the Baltimore Orioles. With the Yankees down 4-0 in the seventh inning, he brought the crowd to its feet with a three-run homer, then won the game with a two-run single in the ninth. (See this YouTube clip for footage of his heroics.)

With other lefty-hitting outfielders on the squad in Reggie Jackson, Oscar Gamble, and Ruppert Jones, Murcer found his playing time limited, and after the 1980 season he never played a position again, finding himself confined to pinch hitting. The emergence of the smooth-hitting 22-year-old first baseman-outfielder Don Mattingly meant that the Yankees needed to clear space on the roster for him, and Murcer accepted George Steinbrenner’s offer to become a broadcaster.

The title of Murcer’s memoir, Yankee for Life, testified to his steadfast loyalty to the team. It also proved sadly prophetic, as he died of complications from brain cancer only two months after publication.

Former Yankee publicist Marty Appel spoke for many in explaining how gracefully Murcer adjusted to the mantle of greatness thrust upon him:

"He had an easy, Oklahoma politeness and a modesty that isn't normally associated with elite athletes. He was a fans' player and he was a players' player.

"He was just a terrific kid who was handed an oversized assignment and he handled it with grace and honesty and dignity, as he did everything until the very end....He made you a better person just to know him. No man ever wore the New York Yankee uniform better.”

This Day in Yankee History (Much-Heralded Mantle Gets Hit in Big-League Debut)

Apr. 17, 1951—So anxious about his hype as the successor-in-waiting to Joe DiMaggio as centerfielder for the New York Yankees that he couldn't sleep the night before his major-league debut, Mickey Mantle got his first of 2,414 career hits, contributing to the team’s 5-0 season opener victory over the rival Boston Red Sox.

Yankee veterans and fans alike were curious to see the 19-year-old rookie. His output that day, a single in four at-bats, gave only the slightest indication of the exhilarating combination of power and speed that led the Oklahoma native to be nicknamed “The Commerce Comet.”

Over the years, Mantle’s statistics for his first season and his own recollections underscore 1951 as a sometimes painful period of adjustment. (It wasn’t this much-heralded minor leaguer who was named AL Rookie of the Year but his teammate, infielder Gil McDougald.)

But it wasn’t until after Mantle’s death that a circle wider than his intimates realized how a traumatic childhood and the heavy burden of expectation combined to produce what he called the worst day of his life.

Start with his family background. His father, Elven “Mutt” Mantle, had drilled him in the basics of baseball, in the hope that the boy’s talent would carry him far from life in the zinc and lead mines where Mutt worked.

But Mickey was not only carrying family hopes but terrible secrets, a fact not disclosed in depth until Jane Leavy’s 2010 biography The Last Boy. As a youngster he had been sexually abused multiple times—by a half-sister, neighborhood boys and a high-school teacher. Few realized at the time the psychic damage (including Mantle’s adult promiscuity and alcoholism) caused by such events.

In coming to the Bronx, he was also the proverbial fish out of water—a country boy in a city environment, removed from his normal emotional support and painfully aware of how inarticulate he could sound.

All of this he carried inside. What people saw on the outside was a ballplayer that Bob Sheppard---also making his debut that game, in the stadium public-address role he would have for the next half-century—described, in contrast to a later Yankee centerfielder, Mickey Rivers, as “Mick the Quick with muscle.”

Manager Casey Stengel put it even more memorably, in his eccentric fashion, to sportswriter Bob Deindorfer: “He has more speed than any slugger and more slug than any speedster—and nobody has ever had more of both of them together. This kid ain’t logical. He’s too good. It’s very confusing.”

One gift the youngster did not have was the ability to play shortstop. But Stengel converted him to right field—a position he himself had played—and then took the time to teach him the rudiments of the position.

Anyway, it was just a marker until DiMaggio—a superstar that Stengel had difficulty relating to—retired, as so many expected him to do the following year, given the increasing toll that injuries had taken on his body.

As for DiMaggio himself: perhaps he was jealous of the attention given Mantle by the press and Stengel, or perhaps this most graceful of centerfielders disdained how green the youngster next to him looked. But the proud, touchy Hall of Famer remained aloof from his teammate, further increasing Mantle’s unease.

In mid-July, Mantle—with a high propensity to strike out—had been reassigned to the Yankees’ Triple A Kansas City Blues unit. But, still slumping, and now with his power seemingly snuffed out, the despondent Mantle called his father to say he wanted to come home.

That would be fine, Mutt Mantle told his son. “But, if that’s all the man you are, then get your clothes and let’s go home.”

How much of Mutt’s reaction was due to frustration that the boy in which he’d invested so much emotionally wasn’t turning out as planned? How much of it was an attempt at tough love? How much was it a secretly ill man who would be dead within a year of cancer simply unable to contain his emotions?

Whatever the source of his reaction, it led Mickey to reconsider going home. He stayed and began drilling the ball again with the power and authority everyone had predicted. He was recalled to the majors, this time with his old uniform number 6 exchanged for #7, the one he wore for the rest of his career (and which the Yankees retired when he stopped playing 17 years later).

One more trying event remained for Mantle in the 1951 campaign: In Game 2 of the World Series against the New York Giants, pulling up short when DiMaggio called him off on a fly ball between the two, Mantle tripped over an exposed drain pipe in right center and injured his right knee. He would be dogged by the pain from that knee for the rest of his playing days.

Even so, he would progress steadily in the next few years. The following season, he batted over .300 and placed third in the voting for MVP. In 1956, he put all his offensive skills together by winning the Triple Crown, leading the league in home runs (52), RBIs (130) and batting average (.353).

Over the years, some have seen Mantle as a real-life embodiment of Roy Hobbs, the astonishingly gifted player who never achieves his full potential, in the novel and movie The Natural. In addition to injuries, Leavy has pointed to the personal flaws that crippled him inside. In an interview with sportswriter Bill Madden, she observed: 

“The tragedy of Mantle is that he had so little time, at the beginning of his baseball career, and at the beginning of his sober life, to be his best self. He was a decent man who was genetically pre-disposed to alcoholism and enabled his whole life by the trappings of his celebrity.”

Yet other players with the gift-curse of potential never went on to enjoy the Hall of Fame career that Mantle did. When he stepped down at the end of the 1968 season, he ranked indisputably among the greatest players in baseball history:

*He influenced players of subsequent generations to become switch-hitters, and though many became Hall of Famers themselves (e.g., Pete Rose, Eddie Murray), he remains, by common consent, the best;

*He hit home runs so far—particularly one he blasted out of Griffith Stadium in Washington in 1953—that a new term was coined for the phenomenon: the “tape-measure homer”; and,

*Most important to him, he became the cornerstone of the Yankee dynasty after DiMaggio retired as anticipated after 1951, leading the team to 12 pennants and seven World Series championships.

Quote of the Day (Learned Hand, Revealing Limits to the Majesty of the Law)

"I don't know what Mickey Mantle is or does. Is it a man?"--Longtime federal Judge Learned Hand, quoted in “Nation: A Matter of Spirit,” Time, August 25, 1961

Harry Blackmun, a baseball fanatic, would never have come out with this kind of howler about the New York Yankee Hall of Famer. But that might have been the only measure by which the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court surpassed Learned Hand.

I’ve thought a good deal lately about Hand, who died on this date in 1961 at age 89, while still serving, after 52 years, on the federal bench. He’s often considered the best judge never to be appointed to the Supreme Court. More’s the pity for our country that he never ascended to the highest court in the land, for he had already demonstrated sagacity and literary grace in his opinions.

The latter quality is not to be taken for granted among the Supremes, as Jeffrey Rosen shows in his recent New Republic piece favorably comparing the quality of Elena Kagan's prose to her colleagues. I do have my beef with how Rosen could praise Antonin Scalia for his readable opinions without putting on the short list of quotable justices Robert Jackson, but at least he offers some choice other historical examples of winners and sinners on the Supreme Court.

Rosen cites among the latter Harry Blackmun’s Roe v. Wade opinion, but there’s another case that’s even more relevant to today’s “Quote of the Day”: Blackmun’s decision in the Curt Flood case.

The justice decided to prove the veracity of the nickname “Minnesota Twin” (Chief Justice Warren Burger also hailed from the Land of a Thousand Lakes) by larding one of his footnotes in the case with a list of just about every baseball legend going back to Cap Anson. Potter Stewart, scanning the eye-glazing list, told Blackmun that he’d join the majority in the case if one of his favorite players was added. Blackmun complied.

And guess what? After that silly display of his baseball knowledge, Blackmun still decided the case incorrectly.

On the other hand, the likelihood is high that, despite not knowing the difference between, say, Lou Gehrig and Lou Boudreau, Hand still would have been able to cut to the core of the case: i.e., whether major-league owners were using the reserve clause to restrict players’ ability to sign with their employer of choice and, thus, whether baseball deserved to be only sport not subject to federal antitrust law. At very least, one expects that he would have taken one look at Blackmun’s treasured footnote and come up with one of his lines that belong in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations: “Judges can be damned fools just like everybody else.”

I’ve always felt that literary style is a happy union of sense and sensibility. For an example of this, see this part of Hand’s address to a crowd of newly naturalized Americans in Central Park in 1944:

“The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near 2,000 years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten: that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.”

Would that this quote—a magnificent summary of the stakes in World War II—could only be carved into the Supreme Court building in D.C., where today’s justices would have to see and read it before rendering their decisions.

This Day in Yankee History (Mickey Mantle Dies)

August 13, 1995—Hall of Fame centerfielder Mickey Mantle, a hero to thousands but a disappointment to himself, died of liver cancer at age 63, after a public admission of alcoholism and attempt to redeem the little time he had left.

Long into retirement, but before he sought help for his alcohol problem, Mantle related a continuing nightmare he had: He had come to Yankee Stadium in his uniform, ready to play, even hearing his name on the loudspeaker. But unable to go through the gate, or even squeeze through a hole in the fence, he could not get through to teammates waiting on the other side.

The dream spoke volumes about the problems of adjusting to life when his old career—and youth—had passed, but also to the camaraderie and sense of responsibility he felt to teammates as run producer throughout his career. He was the Achilles of the New York Yankees, a figure of breathtaking physical strength and inner resolution who continually led his team into the autumn World Series wars--but suffering, like the mythological hero, from a weakness in the lower part of his body.

The known stories about Mantle’s alcoholism are many; the ones that have not seen the light of day might well be legion. At the end of his life, Mantle felt like a failure: to his estranged wife, to his family, even to his talent, which, he believed, he might have been brought to its ultimate fulfillment had he taken better care of himself.

I think he was harder on himself than he deserved. Those of us who have known alcoholics in our own lives are all too keenly aware that, for all the damage they might have caused themselves and those in their orbits, so much worthy of love still exists inside them. In this regard, Mantle was no different.

In choosing an image for this post, I thought at first of one from his last months, showing the exhaustion brought on by the slugger's medical struggles. In the end, I picked this one, of Mantle with his long-suffering wife Merlyn, the woman who for years endured the consequences of his self-destructive behavior.

The photo not only shows the vibrancy that drew so many to this young couple, but also restores to them something of the dignity they might have felt had melted away in the cauldron of fame and self-doubt.

One of the formative books I read as a child was Mantle’s The Quality of Courage (1965), ghostwritten by the fine future Babe Ruth biographer Robert Creamer. It had a simple but ingenious device: taking a cue from the recently deceased President Kennedy, it offered, in effect, profiles in courage of 19 baseball players, including Jackie Robinson, Jimmy Piersall, and Ted Williams.

In our revisionist age, the rage is all for debunking heroes. But imperfection is not an argument against their existence. In fact, I’d say, it’s part of the definition of the term. As far as you can get from godlike, heroes are those who face the demons and carry the burdens, day in and day out.

In October 1964, David Halberstam observed that Mantle might have been more of a hero to his teammates, who could see, right in the locker room, the ferocious effort it took him to suit up, than to fans. But, as his physical frailty increased, those in the stands, too, began to embrace him in greater numbers, as they came to understand the staggering weight of expectations on the back of the limping Yankee giant.

Still later, understanding grew of the double shadow lurking behind the fleet young slugger with the impossibly sunny smile: not just the burden of following Joe DiMaggio (who had treated him coldly in his first season) in center field, but also the haunting fear that he was fated to die young from Hodgkin’s Disease, the medical condition that claimed the lives of Mantle's father, grandfather, two uncles, and son.

Several years after his death, Mantle’s family revealed, in A Hero All His Life, an additional psychic burden he had carried his whole life: he had suffered child sexual abuse at the hands of a half-sister. Recent decades have amply revealed the emotional damage such abuse inflicts, including the alcoholism from which Mantle suffered.

Given all this, it is remarkable that Mantle carried on—indeed, that he achieved so much. Here, for instance, are Allen Barra and Allen St. John, assessing him in the December 4, 1998 issue of The Wall Street Journal:

“At peak value - five or six top seasons - Mantle was better than any postwar player. ... Not only was Mantle the greatest power hitter between Ruth and McGwire in terms of home runs per at bat, he hit for spectacular averages and drew a staggering number of walks. ... His on-base average was only ten points lower than that of Ty Cobb. ... The Mick was a Gold Glove-calibre centerfielder who could switch hit and bunt. His base-stealing percentage is virtually even with Ricky Henderson."

It was the Yankee Clipper rather than The Mick who was lucky enough to count a Nobel Prize-winning laureate as a friend. Nevertheless, for all of “the great DiMaggio’s” sterling qualities as a player, I think it was Mantle rather than the other Yankee centerfield legend who best epitomizes Santiago’s observation in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea: “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

This Day in Baseball History (Casey at the Mike)

July 9, 1958—On Capitol Hill, New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel and his cleanup hitter, Mickey Mantle, testified before the Senate Anti-Trust and Monopoly Subcommittee concerning baseball’s antitrust exemption from monopoly laws.

For 45 minutes, the Bronx Bombers’ skipper offered his rapt but bemused interlocutors—and a nationwide audience—45 minutes of prime Stengelese. (Be patient while this audio loads.) The following is a typical example:

"I would say I would not know, but would say the reason why they would want it passed is to keep baseball going as the highest paid ball sport that has gone into baseball and from the baseball angle, I am not going to speak of any other sport."

Got that? Didn’t think so.

At the conclusion of this peerless contribution to the English language (not to mention jurisprudence), Mantle, with his best country-boy sense of timing, brought down the house with one cogent comment: "My views are just about the same as Casey's."

It always kills me, the way Congress picks sports and entertainment celebrities to show up on Capitol Hill. Whether it’s the Hollywood blacklist of the Forties and Fifties, the farm troubles of the 1950s, or steroids a few years ago, I think the 100 gentlemen and gentlewomen of our nation’s greatest deliberative body could care less about the particular issues that keep Bud Selig or George Lucas up at night.

What they’re really interested in are the cameras, which, Senators figure, are bound to find them after inevitably moving past whoever the flavor of the month is out there for the media. Don’t you find the persistence of Senatorial narcissism from 1789 to the present to be deeply reassuring that the republic continues? I sure do. In the end, it’s not about their constituents or even their witnesses. It’s all about them. Charming.

If the Powers That Be really wanted to know how the baseball or film worlds really worked, they’d start with a clubhouse trainer or a gaffer, then work their way up to, say, Brian Cashman or Jeffrey Katzenberg—someone who’s pale from hanging around the inside of their establishments, working the phone, follicularly challenged because they’ve been pulling their hair out to make sure everything goes off like clockwork. The Senate investigators wouldn’t go for the glamour boys.

Really, there’s no discernible reason why Stengel should have had to appear—his expertise was on the diamond, not in any Senate chamber. The need to drag Mantle into the whole thing was even more tenuous—all he wanted was to have a contract shoved over on a table for his signature every year or so he could return to the batting cage and hit those tape-measure, Bunyanesque homers.

None of this is to say, however, that Stengel didn’t know something. And I’m not referring here to instructional camps he instituted for the Bronx Bombers in the early 1950s, the platoon system that worked to perfection, or the way he caught lightning in a bottle with hungry youngsters like Billy Martin, his surrogate son.

I’m not even talking about the fast summary in numbers about his decade up to that point with the Yankees: Eight pennants and six world championships over the last nine years

No, I’m saying that Casey possessed a foxiness beneath that language-torturing exterior. In fact, that exterior didn’t function as a contradiction of folksiness, but as part and parcel of his shrewdness. He belonged to the “if you can’t dazzle ‘em, baffle ‘em” school of communication.

(I’m amazed, by the way, how many media studies students, after thousands of dollars, countless hours, and even advanced degrees, never fail to learn this most vital of lessons.)

And nowhere did he apply this skill to better effect than before Congress.

Whether Casey agreed with the necessity of a reserve clause or not, almost any honest answer could have gotten him in trouble with somebody.

If he really did have his gripes with that system of involuntary servitude, saying it in front of millions was not the way to go—it would only give the Yankee brass (then as now, a notoriously unsentimental lot) a chance to hand him his head.

Even if he liked the idea and said so, that might enable a cagy Senate committee investigator to entice him to spill some sort of anecdote that would demonstrate just how bad it could be.

Dangerous territory all around. Unless, that is, he put on one of those MGM musical numbers. You know: “Be a Clown.” His audience would be too busy laughing to ask hard follow-up questions.

That foolproof method of media management was also employed by another ‘50s master of his realm: Dwight D. Eisenhower. At the time, the political cognoscenti couldn’t be more condescending about him. Somehow they forgot about his wise, effective leadership of U.S. forces in World War II. Instead, they focused on his addresses—especially those impromptu press conferences when a pack of reporters get to play Gotcha.

Almost invariably in these settings, Ike came off like a guy brainwashed after a month-long Rotary Club convention, as can be seen in the hilarious parody of “Eisenhowerese” penned only the year before Stengel’s Capitol Hill appearance by American Heritage editor Oliver Jensen. It imagines what the Gettysburg Address might have sounded like in the hands of a later, less eloquent Republican. Yes, Ike.

Only one thing: Just about all that extra verbiage was an act.

As I mentioned in a prior blog posting, if you were lucky enough to sit in on a Columbia University class addressed by that institution’s president (as well as the future leader of the free world), you’d hear the clearest, most succinct overview of military strategy through the ages that you could ever imagine.

It took nearly a decade after Ike left office before journalists and historians began to notice that the former President’s big smile, wrestling with dependent clauses, and seeming cluelessness disguised a politician of unusual skill and cunning. Liberal columnist Murray Kempton picked up on it first, followed by Garry Wills in Nixon Agonistes. Speaking with staffers privately after one of his press encounters, Eisenhower was especially gleeful that he had said nothing of major consequence.

Both Eisenhower and Stengel left their respective positions after campaigns in 1960, neither by choice. Stengel was fired by Yankee management for a) losing the World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates, and b) being, at age 70, too old. Eisenhower left because the 22nd Amendment prevented him from seeking a third term (though it is likely that heart disease in office would have raised enough alarms with him).

Just remember: In their way, both men used language as craftily as The Bard.