Mantle of Greatness

He looked like a refugee from a Ma and Pa Kettle movie. Sporting a straw hat, brown shoes, freckles, and $4 straw suitcase, he walked out of Commerce, Okla., and into the pin-striped uniform of the New York Yankees. Now, 18 seasons and 2,401 games later, Mickey Mantle put on a $155 pair of black alligator shoes, slipped into a $150 plaid sport jacket, and announced that he was retiring from baseball.

In a blunt, drawling litany, he recited his reasons for calling it quits: "I can't hit when I need to. I can't steal when I want to. I can't score from second when I have to. It was time to quit trying."

Instant Hero. The end was a long and painful time coming. The problems really began during his first year in the major leagues; while chasing a fly ball in the second game of the 1951 World Series, he slipped and tore the ligaments in his right knee. This was the first of a plague of injuries that slowly but decisively broke him down. But Mickey did not break easy. Bull-necked and broad-backed, he leaned his 195 Ibs. into high, hard fastballs and hit drives that were things of wonder. At first, when he was a rookie training in Phoenix, Ariz., no one believed it. The thin atmosphere, they said, made the ball carry farther. Yankee Manager Casey Stengel had one look and roared: "Stratmosphere my eye! This kid doesn't need help. He hits the ball over buildings."

Mantle could also bunt a team to death, because he was that rarest of all ballplayers, a switch-hitting slugger who could outsprint every big man in the league and most of the little men. That combination, plus his aw-shucks, farm-boy manner, made Mighty Mick an instant folk hero. In his first 14 seasons, he led the Yankees to a remarkable twelve pennant victories, won the Most Valuable Player award three times and the triple crown once, in 1956, when he batted .353, slammed 52 home runs and drove in 130 runs. His lifetime mark of 536 homers ranks only behind Babe Ruth's 714 and Willie Mays' 587.

Desire to Play. Great as it was, Mantle's achievement still causes some baseball men to ponder how much greater it might have been. "With good legs," says former Yankee Catcher Elston Howard, "he would have hit 70 home runs in a season." Adds Casey Stengel: "In the years to come, when they read about him in the record books, nobody will ever believe he was a cripple."

Mantle believed it. He underwent surgery five times to remove torn cartilage from his knees and bone chips from his right shoulder. For eight seasons he had to bind each leg from ankle to thigh with 7-ft. strips of foam-rubber bandages "to hold things together." Even so, in his final years, he was reduced to hobbling around the field like a cart horse. And at the plate, each time he swung the bat he noticeably winced and grunted with pain.

In the end, though, it was pride and not pain that caused Mantle to quit. He was thinking about retiring last season but, shortly before spring training, while driving from downtown Dallas to his ranch home in the suburbs, he spied some kids playing ball. "I stopped and watched them for a few minutes," he recalls, "and suddenly this great desire to play came over me. I just had to go to Florida."

Mantle will go to Florida no more--at least not to play baseball. He plans to travel around the country tending to his string of Mickey Mantle's Country Cookin' restaurants. The desire to play will undoubtedly always be there but, as he said last week, "I no longer can deliver what the fans expect of me."

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