Mickey Mantle was the ultimate sports hero of my time. No one came close to him in popular appeal. This biography by Jane Leavy will be definitive for our time.
No one came close to him even though Willie Mays was probably the better all-around player. My conclusion from what I've read recently is that Mantle was better with the bat in his hand, but Mays was the better all-around because he was certainly better in the field.
In his rookie season, in the World Series of 1951, Mantle stepped into a drain hole in Yankee Stadium going for a ball that Joe Dimaggio ultimately caught, a ball amazingly hit by Willie Mays, and blew out his knee. This injury kept Mantle from being an even greater player than he was.
Mantle ruined his life and that of his family with alcoholism. He acheived a kind of redemtpion during his last 18 months of sobriety. Yet finally his life can be reduced to one word: TRAGEDY. So sad for he might have done so much good to the country if he had not been drunk all of the time.
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