Mickey Mantle’s Early Years

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Mickey Mantle’s Early Years

“He’s the greatest prospect I’ve seen in my time, and I go back quite a ways. I’ll swear I expect to see that boy just take off and fly any time.” Yankee Hall-of-Fame catcher Bill Dickey speaking of Yankee prospect Mickey Mantle

“He’s got more natural power from both sides than anybody I ever saw.” –Casey Stengel, speaking of a young Mickey Mantle.

I stumbled on to this great photo above of Mickey Mantle sliding, and I thought it would be a good idea to say a few words about his early days in baseball together with some photos of a young Mickey Mantle. But first, a few words about his great career:

Mickey played 18 years in the majors all with the Yankees. He hit .298 with 2415 hits, 536 home runs, and 1509 RBIs. He led the American League in home runs four times. Mickey was a 20-time All-Star and appeared in 12 World Series including seven championships. Mickey holds World Series records for the most home runs (18), RBIs (40), extra-base hits(26), runs (42), walks (43), and total bases (123). He won the American League Triple Crown in 1956, the American League MVP three times, and a Gold Glove award once. He was named the Associated Press Athlete of the Year for 1956.

Mickey’s Early Years in Professional Baseball:

Mickey began his professional baseball career with the Baxter Springs, Kansas Whiz Kids. In a game attended by Yankee scout Tom Greenwade in 1948, Mantle hit three home runs and was later signed to a minor league contract, assigned to the Yankees’ Class-D Independence, Kansas team as a shortstop.  Mantle hit .313 for the Independence Yankees and hit his first professional home run – a shot over the center field wall 460 feet away – on June 30, 1949 at Shulthis Stadium.

Mickey’s next stop was with Class-C Joplin Miners of the Western Association in 1950 where he won the Western Association batting title with a .383 average, adding 26 home runs and 136 RBI. In spite of his offensive output, he struggled defensively at shortstop. Mantle was invited to the Yankees instructional camp before the 1951 season. After an impressive spring training, Casey Stengel promoted Mantle to the Yankees as a right fielder.  He was assigned uniform #6, signifying the Yankees’ expectations that he would develop inyo the next great Yankees star, following Babe Ruth (#3), Lou Gehrig (#4) and Joe DiMaggio (#5)^.

After a brief slump, and with a surprising loss of power numbers, Mantle was sent down to the Yankees’ top farm team, the Kansas City Blues. Frustrated with his lack of progress, he called his father Mutt one day saying, “I don’t think I can play baseball anymore.” Mutt hung up the phone and drove up to Kansas City that very day. When he arrived, he started packing his son’s clothes and, according to Mantle’s memory, said “I thought I raised a man. I see I raised a coward instead. You can come back to Oklahoma and work the mines with me.” A shaken Mantle immediately broke out of his slump and went on to hit .361 with 11 homers and 50 RBIs. After 40 games, he was called back up to the Yankees, this time wearing uniform #7. He hit .267 with 13 home runs and 65 RBI in 96 games, and went to his first World Series.

In the second game of the 1951 World Series, a rookie named Willie Mays hit a fly ball to right-center field. Mantle, playing right field, raced for the ball together with center fielder Joe DiMaggio, who made the catch. In getting out of DiMaggio’s way, Mantle tripped over an exposed drain pipe and severely injured his right knee. This was the first of numerous injuries that plagued his 18-year career. He played the rest of his career with a torn ACL.

-Gary Livacari

Photo Credits: Featured photo from http://mashable.com/2014/03/31/vintage-baseball-photographs/#yRpMdswkEEqp. Others from Google Search

Information: Excerpts edited from the Mickey Mantle Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mantle

Statistics from the Mickey Mantle page at Baseball-Reference.com

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