Hidden under the mantle of time

Sporting News, The, Feb 14, 1994 by Marty Noble

The Mick's alcohol abuse is cause for reflection - and hope - of better times

A photograph of Mickey mantle in the follow-through of that ferocious swing was published by one of the New York tabloids in its January 29 editions. Just a simple black-and-white picture. And wasn't that wonderful and nostalgic to see again! His body was trim, and all those thick, farm-strong muscles were straining to stop the most powerful swing in the game. His face was contorted from the effort exerted, not from the effects of alcohol. The image stuck in my mind.

Something else stuck m my throat when I considered the reason photos of Mickey Mantle were running in newspapers one day before Super Bowl XXVIII. A day earlier, Mantle's business manager had issued a statement acknowledging that Mantle had entered the Betty Ford Center seeking professional help in what was identified as "a 43-year battle with alcohol abuse."

There was no picture of that, thank God.

I've seen thousands of photos of Mantle in various positions of power. Scrapbooks made thick - when I was 7 and he was "7" and this city had seven newspapers - are stored in my attic, each one filled exclusively with photos similar to the ones I saw January 29 - with Mickey swinging. Mickey swinging lefthanded and righthanded, at Yankee Stadium and anywhere else. Mickey in black and white. Mickey in color. Mickey in indelible ink.

I assumed - or pretended - that each photo had captured a home-run swing. I cherished them, memorized them, studied them until they were worn through.

Those are the only photos of Mantle I want to see now. I can do without the ones taken at Old Tuners Days and card shows, the ones show the effects of 62 years of gravity four decades at the bar. Give me Mickey those old, baggy flannels.

Indeed, I don't want to read any news stories about him now. With him at age 62 and with blackouts and memory loss afflicting him, chances are the stories aren't going to be very uplifting.

Instead, I'll read Phil Pepe's book about Mickey's wondrous 1956 and Bob Sheppard's poem about the Mick's monster home runs and look through some of those bulging scrapbooks. I'll read some of the saved newspaper accounts of his exploits, accounts that prompted me to read more than I would have otherwise.

I'll remember meeting Mickey when I was XXVIII and so certain my objectivity could handle it. I was wrong. And I'll recall taping a commercial for Newsday with him and Whitey Ford and wondering what Paul and Dennis and my other third-grade buddies would do if they saw me.

And I'll do what, it seems, I've done for as long as I can recall - root for Mickey.

I can't stop it. The feelings that developed when I lived less than a mile from Yankee Stadium persist. By now I should be able to walk into a room, recognize Mantle and not immediately require dabs of antiperspirant on my palms. By now, having worked in this often calloused business for 25 years, I should have developed objectivity about him or at least manufactured a reasonable facsimile.

But no. I can kid with Dave Winfield, kibitz with Bob Gibson, laugh with Dan Quisenberry and make small talk with Reggie. I can handle being in the same room as Yogi and at the same bar as Whitey and any of those other Yankees from my childhood. But with Mantle, forget it. I stare shamelessly. I crane my neck to follow him. My attention is focused with such intensity that he must feel it. I know better. But when you've grown up in the Bronx one block off the Grand Concourse and had regular access to box-seat tickets and the subway, well . . . Few activities then filled an afternoon or an imagination to the same extent that watching Mantle did. The feeling was special then, and it's a permanent part of my baseball baggage. I mastered long division quickly because I wanted the ability to update Mantle's average after each at-bat. My first "Baseball Encyclopedia" still opens automatically to his page.

It was intense, myopic hero worship that began at a time when athletes' habits, thoughts, comments and foibles were unknown to most fans. We didn't know enough about real-life heroes then to be put off. And watching Mantle hit one out, or even watching him strike out, was a better way to spend an afternoon and 50 cents than shoving quarters into the vacuum of a video arcade.

I still root for him. But I also lament - for and all of us.