Mickey Mantle: America's Prodigal Son

by Tony Castro

Book Overview

In the life of the great cultural icon baseball slugger Mickey Mantle, we see America's romance with boldness, its celebration of muscle, and its comfort in power during a time when might did make right. But if his life symbolized the great expectations of America in the 1950s, it also epitomized the dashed dreams of a troubled generation in the 1960s and its unrealistic hopes for achievement. Mickey Mantle: America's Prodigal Son is both...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1574885316
• ISBN13: 9781574885316
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Potomac Books
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The man and the legend!

It results a common place to state the New York Yankees captured along the past Century (and still does) the absolute attention of the great audiences inside and overseas to become a true epic legend. Every five years new and emblematic names inscribed his names with golden letters to enhance still more this living legend. But Mickey Mantle' s charisma literally surpassed all the possible epithets; his powerful wrists at the moment to make that magic swing so imitated for many sluggers, constituted by himself a justified motive to assist the Yankee Stadium. That' s why the simple fact of spelling his name was immediately an attraction motive; because that generation of sluggers was compensated for an impressive generation of formidable pitchers; this admirable conjunction of fortunate events made even, much more emotive and mesmerizing the homerun considered as the maxim climax; the definitive feat. And this distinction was proportionally rated according the pitcher' s status. The Big Mickey was a true mass media`s idol. Perhaps there has not been another baseball player (with the notable exceptions of Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig) with such astonishing ability to inflame multitudes with that emotion level. The admirable dimensions of his homeruns are part of the collective memory, but the most aspect worthy to remark was precisely mantle was not an ultra developed musculature, or a febrile consumer of supplementary hormones. You should to take into account in those times, the numbers of hours you spent in an airplane made still, more tiring the daily effort, the number of hours of rest was considerably minor respect those actual times. This sensational biography contains abundant information, graphical and zealously descriptive around the greatest moments in the Big Show, his personal records in the Stars Game and World Series. For those generations who had the chance to see him, for all those who knew about him in his historic moment, but specially for this newcomer generations, for whom his name is simply synonymous of a legend, it would be very advisable to acquire this invaluable testimony of one of the most emotive, passionate and committed Baseball players in any time. Farewell Mickey, because your Promethean effort has been compensated for the myth force to become a everlasting legend and motive of continuous, renovated and future references about your tenacity and discipline in the infield.

meticulously researched

if this is your first interest in a book about "the mick", castro's work is a great place to start. i wish this one was available before i read the other three in my collection. what sets this book apart, is the journalistic integrity that is apparent with it, and the avoidance of sensationalism just for the sake of it. it is complete with dozens of anecdotes told by those that knew mantle - a feature that undoubtedly serves to make it more interesting than standard biographical non fiction. it is obvious that the author, seeking to be impartial, had a love for the player and the person. if you are looking for a mantle biography that is an honest portrayal of mantle as a ballplayer with the dynastic yankees, and as a man with weaknesses, look no further. if you are a american history buff, you will also enjoy how santos weaves events of the day and the flavor of the time into the flow of his book. all and all a great read. i highly recommend it, especially to those who, like myself, grew up "worshipping" the yankees of the 50's and 60's and, of course, their centerpiece center fielder from oklahoma.

How and Why Mickey Mantle Was Our Troubled Public Hero

No American athelete has ever been revered by a higher percentage of Americas youth than was Mickey Mantle. We needed for somebody to write a book about how and why America made Mickey Mantle an unprecedented and enduring national sports icon and to what degree Mickey was and was not prepared for the ramifications. As one of those life-long fans of Mantle, I think I've read every book about him, in addition to absorbing forty years of magazine articles. Tony Castro's research and writing produced the best sports biography I've ever read. "MICKEY MANTLE, America's Prodigal Son," is a beautiful composition of history and emotion and revelation. The depths that Castro explored took us to the troubled inside of Mickey the boy and Mantle the man. Castro clearly defined the public star who exposed his personal conflicts only toward the end of his famous life. Secondarily it it also teaches us about the interactions of the Yankees and explains why Mickey's teammates and opponents were always so loyal and supportive of him. (Joe DiMaggio excepted.) Actually, Castro's whole approach to the subject was masterful. The reader benefits from more than just new insights into what made Mickey what he was and wasn't; the reader learns about why Mickey became what he ultimately became and how he became so much a part of us. This book should be required reading for fathers and sons of all ages. It teaches us about ourselves and about the times we all shared with Mickey Mantle--from those days when he was what we all we wanted to be, to those days when he became what we all hoped he and we wouldn't become. In the end Castro explains to us the many reasons why we were fascinated with Mantle. The dark side of our flawed idol having been explained for the first time in detail, sets the stage for the bittersweet end where Castro describes the salvation that all of us desired for Mantle to attain. Castro paints the canvas with the events leading to Mantle's death. The end of the ride allowed the public to bury The Mick in the same glow it always wanted for him as a real American hero, strong, but at the same time, understandably and forgivably fragile.

Great details, but say it -- Mantle was the best

Tony Castro has done an excellent job recording the life and times of Mickey Mantle. Castro's biography is exhaustively researched, rich in detail, and compellingly written. This book is a must read for any Mantle fan for these reasons. However, I have a single gripe. Like many other writers on this subject, Castro falls prey to the temptation to view Mantle the icon as something larger than Mantle the player, as if the legend of Mantle has exceeded his baseball accomplishments. Today it has become common for baseball fans who never saw Mantle play to downplay Mantle's place in the game. They explain away his larger-than-life reputation as resulting more from him being a good-looking, white Yankee. They look at his career statistics, see 536 home runs, four seasons with 100 RBIs, a lifetime average at .298, and fall into the trap of saying that plenty of players today achieve such numbers (overlooking the degree to which today's statistics have become so inflated). Among his contemporaries, these fans rate Mays (.302 lifetime average) and Aaron (.304) as superior. Although commonly believed today, none of this is true. Mantle was the best player of his generation, and the best player I ever saw in the many years I have watched this game. For an extended period in the middle of his career, from about 1955 through about 1962, Mickey Mantle was baseball's best player. To give you an idea just how feared Mantle was, in 1957, Mantle was walked 146 times and had an on-base percentage of .512. Sure, I know Barry Bonds was passed more in 2001, but he did not have Yogi Berra -- that's right -- Yogi Berra batting behind him. Even though Berra was at the peak of his career at the time, pitchers still saw fit to pitch around Mantle. Comparatively, if Mantle had achieved as many at-bats as Aaron, he would have hit 818 home runs, and as many at-bats as Mays would have resulted in 718 home runs. I say none of this to knock Mays and Aaron, who are both rightly viewed as among the best ever. I say this only to highlight that before Mantle was an icon, he was the most-feared ballplayer of his time. What has robbed Mantle of his rightful claim to the best player of his time is that his career as a productive player was effectively over at the young age of 32, due to numerous injuries which hobbled him before his time. If he played today, of course, those intrusive knee surgeries would have been far less traumatic on his body, and he would have continued to play productively far longer. To assess why Mantle was viewed in his time as the best player in the game, merely review his career numbers at age 32 with Mays and Aaron, and the comparison is eye-popping. The sole shortcoming I see in Castro's book is that he fails to place Mantle's career in proper perspective. This might continue to fuel the misconception that Mantle's talents were overrated.

MICKEY MANTLE: AMERICA'S PRODIGAL SON--A LITERARY GRAND SLAM

He's sexy, he's bad, he's beautiful -- and he's also dead. But in what may be the most brilliant biography ever written about a sports figure, MICKEY MANTLE: AMERICA'S PRODIGAL SON brings baseball legend Mickey Mantle back to life as we never got to know him when he played on all those New York Yankee teams of the Fifties and Sixties. In an era when America desperately needs bonafide sports heroes, we now have Mickey Mantle once more. What makes you love Mantle again is the way author Tony Castro has portrayed him -- highly vulnerable, like an athletic Hamlet fighting with himself to make the ghost of his demanding father proud of him, long after Mutt Mantle died during Mickey's 1952 season with the Yankees. The book, of course, touches on all the requisite Mantle stories and statistics -- but it goes far beyond. Castro's research is astounding. (Should we be surprised? He is Harvard-educated, a former Sports Illustrated staff writer and has also covered presidential campaigns and the civil war in El Salvador.) In MICKEY MANTLE: AMERICA'S PRODIGAL SON, we learn that Mickey was sexually abused as a child... that he wet his bed until his teen-age years because of his father's overbearing demands to succeed ... that he was madly in love with the woman of his dreams -- a New York showgirl -- during his turbulent rookie season with the Yankee and gave her up because of his father's virtual death-bed wish that he marry Merlyn, "one of your kind." You also learn more about Mantle the ballplayer in this book than in any previous biography, starting with the way the Yankees got him -- or stole him, to be more accurate. MICKEY MANTLE: AMERICA's PRODIGAL SON reveals how the Yankees undercut his value when they signed him for $1,500 in 1949 when in another part of Oklahoma another phenom was getting a $50,000 bonus -- and specifically how the scout who made a name for himself signing Mickey broke baseball's laws on dealing with players still in high school, then recruited even Mantle's high school principal to help keep other scouts away. The book is full of other similar revelations that will stun even the most knowledgeable of Mantle fans and devotees.Mantle's well-known self-destructive off-the-field lifestyle is also chronicled, as are his rock star-like tantrums with fans and the media. He was every bit as bad as Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" tell-all portrayed him, yet every bit as rogueishly lovable as Billy Crystal's HBO "61*" made him out to be. But what Tony Castro has done is profiled Mantle fully -- not only the alcoholism that damaged his career and destroyed his family life but also the almost religious epiphany, if you will, that changed Mickey after sobering up at the Betty Ford Clinic and especially in the final weeks of his life in 1995, as he courageously held himself up as the role model of what not to be. MICKEY MANTLE: AMERICA'S PRODIGAL SON is a marvelous tour de force, Pulitzer Prize biography quality. There is sheer genius in the writing,