'Like a damn baseball machine.'

Sporting News, The, August 21, 1995 by Dave Kindred

An outfielder whose name escapes memory once was bold enough to suggest he might hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in the same season. The thought excited interest in many observers, but not in an old outfielder named Mickey Mantle. "If I'd known 50-50 was such a big deal," Mickey Mantle said, "I'da done it lots of times."

At his strongest and fastest, the best center fielder who ever played, Mickey Mantle did work Willie Mays never came near doing. He outran everyone, he hit balls farther than anyone. Righthanded, he believed he should never make an out. Lefthanded, he believed everything he hit should leave the park, and leave it now. He threw out anyone foolish enough to think he couldn't do it. And, not the least of it, no one ever looked more like a ballplayer or caused more people to stop and take in a breath at seeing a man so beautiful.

We came to see him as a symbol of power and grace, the first slugger with speed. Because we knew the costs in pain and fear, we admired him all the more. We looked in wonder at Mickey Mantle, amazed that anyone could do any of the things he did, let alone all of them -- and all of them done in baseball's cathedral, Yankee Stadium, where Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio walked before the kid named Mantle came up from nowhere.

Nowhere began in Oklahoma. At the turn of the century, lefthander Charley Mantle pitched for a lead-and-zinc mining company team in Spavinaw. His son, Mutt, a righthander, pitched for the same miners' team. With pitchers enough, Mutt Mantle named his first-born Mickey Charles Mantle, honoring the grandfather and Philadelphia's catcher, Mickey Cochrane.

The Mantles took turns pitching to the boy, first the lefthanded grandfather and then the righthanded father. With each change in pitchers, young Mantle moved across the plate. To be a pro ballplayer, his father had decided, it would help if Mickey learned to switch-hit at an early age.

"I first heard of Mickey when he was in his third year at Commerce High in 1948," Yankees scout Tom Greenwade said in the spring of 1951. "A fellow named Kenny Jacobson, who was in the Commerce Fire Department and served as a sort of emergency umpire in local ball, told me about him.

"I went over to see him play at Alva, Mo., but I wasn't particularly impressed. The boy was only 16. They used to call him 'Little Mickey Mantle' in those days. I couldn't have signed him, anyway, because he was still in school, but Kenny kept giving me reports on the boy."

The third time Greenwade saw the boy, he saw more than a boy.

He saw the man. The future.

"Mickey had leg problems, so not too many scouts paid attention to him. I saw him in two games, but I didn't really see him. He looked kind of small -- he hadn't filled out yet -- and I just didn't recognize how coordinated he was.

"I didn't know he was a switch-hitter! In those first two games he'd only batted left-handed ... In the third game, he stepped into the batter's box from the right side, and I didn't know what to make of it.

"Mickey's father was sitting right next to me, and I asked him how long his boy had been a switch-hitter. He said, 'Since he was about 8.' Then I looked again at Mickey, and he pulled a lineshot to left for a double, and it all came together.

"Finally I could see that 17-year-old body, how it worked like a damn baseball machine, and how it was gonna fill out. I understood how he'd been blessed. And I was blessed, too."

For a bonus of $1,100 and $400 in salary for the rest of a summer in Class D, Mickey Mantle signed with the Yankees and played shortstop at Independence, Mo. The next spring, Hall of Fame catcher Bill Dickey threw batting practice to the Yankees' best prospects, one of them Mantle.

Dickey in 1951: "The boy hit the first six balls nearly 500 feet, over the lights and out of sight. He hit them over the fences righthanded and lefthanded and he hit 'em over the right-field fence righthanded and the left-field fence lefthanded.

"When he was at short, he didn't impress me as being particularly fast, but when we divided the boys up for a series of 75-yard sprints, Mickey finished first in his group, looking over his shoulder at the others. Then we had a sprint for the winners and he won that, too. Then he got sick and explained that he wasn't in shape.

"I honestly believe Mantle is the fastest man I've ever seen in a baseball uniform."

Seeing Mantle for the first time himself, baseball genius Branch Rickey passed a blank check to Yankees Owner Dan Topping. "Fill in the amount for the kid Mantle," Rickey said, the gesture made for the theater of it more than for any hope Topping could be such a fool.

In 1951, at age 19, Mantle joined the big club. New York sportswriter Dan Daniel described him as a "kid in bad need of a haircut with a sport coat that barely came down to his wrists." Casey Stengel, the manager, didn't care about the kid's wardrobe. "My God," he said on seeing Mantle at work, "the boy runs faster than Cobb."

Though always a shortstop, Mantle moved to the Yankees' outfield because Stengel already had Phil Rizzuto at short and didn't want to wait three years to get Mantle into the lineup. But early that season, big league pitching was too much for the kid; the Yankees sent him to their farm team at Kansas City, where his slump continued.