Mickey Mantle

There's a classic photograph from the late 1950s of Mickey Mantle on a cabin cruiser with a few other New York Yankee buddies off the coast of Florida during spring training. The players wore crew cuts as severe as a Marine's and the kind of tank top undershirts that men wore when all men wore undershirts. Cigarettes dangled from lips. Meaty hands grippedlong-neck beers. And every subject in that shot wore something else on his face: a macho swagger.This was post-war America. They were the Yankees.

June 7, 2001: At the White House, President George W. Bush greets the NFL champion Ravens, who present him with an autographed football and a personalized jersey. "It was cool, man," defensive tackle Tony Siragusa says. "[But] I was depressed that they didn't have the buffet ready. " June 2, 1983: At his first news conference of the year - a rambling, ominous discourse - Colts owner Robert Irsay promises that the team will remain in Baltimore "unless you throw us out. I could pull up 30 vans and be out of here Sunday ... but I haven't done it. " June 7, 1977: Harold Baines, 18, a hard-hitting outfielder from St. Michaels, goes to the Chicago White Sox as the first player taken in baseball's free-agent draft.

Washington -- I love baseball, and like all true fans, I mourned the passing last week of Mickey Mantle, the great Yankee center fielder. But I found something missing in the nation's reaction to Mantle's death. It almost seemed as if I were in one of those futuristic Hollywood thrillers in which a time traveler makes some alteration in the environment -- and changes the future.Amid the odes-to-the-Mick and laments of Lost Innocence by the bow-tied, baseball-is-Americana crowd, I kept listening for two lyrical words that would reassure me that I was in the real world, that the nation's past had not somehow been altered.

As the years had passed, they had all scattered to some degree. They owned restaurants, they ran companies and small businesses, they sold products, marketed products, produced products, and one in particular - whom Calvert Hall's class of 1992 will never forget - served as a paramedic for the state police. But there they were, drawn together by unexpected phone calls, jarring e-mails and news reports that just didn't make sense. Did you hear? They were coming home from vacations. Enjoying the weekend.

As a genuine American sports legend, Mickey Mantle was always accorded star treatment. When cops realized whom they had just pulled over for drunk driving, they inevitably closed their ticket books and drove the Yankee slugger home. When he drunkenly barreled his car into a telephone pole, nearly decapitating his wife Merlyn, the whole affair was hushed up. Not a word made the papers.But now, a little more than a year after Mantle's death, a new book has been published that lays bare Mantle's shortcomings, which seem every bit as titanic as his tape measure home runs.

Mickey Mantle, an alcohol abuser, lived ten years longer than Jerry Garcia, a heroin abuser. So there.Japan's prime minister has apologized for his country's torturing, maiming, colonizing and enslaving its neighbors, 50 years after the practices stopped. Germany's president said something comparable after only 40 years.

In Mickey Mantle's final weeks, there was ample hand-wringing over his long abuse of alcohol and rapid selection for a replacement liver. But upon his passing at age 63 in Dallas early last Sunday, there was no equivocation."

DALLAS -- Mickey Mantle always said he wanted to be remembered as a good teammate, but loyalty works both ways. Mickey Mantle might best be remembered -- and even judged in some earthly way -- by the awe and the respect of the teammates who stood with him yesterday.Some of the teammates at his funeral service had never met Mickey Mantle. They were fans who had gaped at his long blasts or chuckled at a story he told on television. Others had met him once, and they all treasured that fleeting moment yesterday.

DALLAS -- The family of Mickey Mantle yesterday carried out his last wish, unveiling a new "organ donor" trading card with the baseball great's picture and autograph that will be passed out at major-league stadiums."

NEW YORK -- As soon as you walked in the door on Central Park South, a framed Yankees uniform with the "7" on the back told you where you were. And if you were lucky that lunch hour or dinner time, down past the big rectangular bar the color of baseball bats, in the last booth on the right, Mickey Mantle would be sitting with a drink."

A scout's take On Hanley Ramirez, Florida's 22-year-old rookie shortstop, who is batting .273 with 19 steals and 50 runs scored Defense -- He's got quickness, great instincts with his feet and hands and has a plus arm. He's just instinctive. He gets great jumps and has tremendous range and arm strength. He'll be in the top class of shortstops. He'll be in the discussion as one of the game's best shortstops in the next two or three years. Attitude -- He was a little maligned in his makeup with the Red Sox, but this is a great, great kid. He has a great work ethic, has fun playing and is a great teammate.

BEFORE WE GET to this business of a ballplayer's chewed bubble gum fetching thousands of dollars in an online auction, a word about baseball memorabilia from a simpler time. One day, when I was a young boy living in southern New York, my uncle took me to a game at Yankee Stadium. As we walked near the players' entrance a few hours before the game, I spotted the great Mickey Mantle and asked him for an autograph. At first, Mantle looked at me the way you'd look at a fingernail in your soup.

In 1968, his final year in baseball, an enveloping warmth greeted Mickey Mantle in all the ballparks he visited. As he hobbled to the plate on legs whose resemblance to tree trunks belied a notorious fragility, fans rose to their feet as though choreographed. I remember the singular absence of cheers or chants on those occasions. Just the sound of thousands of pairs of hands clapping. It gave me chills. The Yankees were uncharacteristically toothless in those days, which did nothing to diminish a lusty hostility toward the pinstripes that prevailed across the land.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio, whose classic swing and classy persona made him one of the most revered sports figures of the 20th century, died early yesterday after a five-month battle with lung cancer. He was 84.Mr. DiMaggio passed away at his Hollywood, Fla., home from complications after the removal of a cancerous tumor from his lung last October. His funeral will be Thursday in Northern California, with burial in the San Francisco area, where he grew up and began his professional baseball career.

There were a couple of days last week when "Fat Jack's" place in Easton, Pa., more closely resembled the legendary TV bar "Cheers" than just another sports hangout in small-town America.Thrust into the role of Sam Malone, as portrayed by Ted Danson so ably on the tube, was the owner of the establishment, Jack Fisher.First, ESPN's cameras were there reminiscing about the last days of Roger Maris' charge to supplant Babe Ruth as the all-time, one-season home run king, and Fisher played a significant role.

With the sun spreading its vast Technicolor glow along York Road, and with thousands streaming into the Towsontown Festival, and with the music of their laughter filling the weekend air, this kid was spotted outside the Towson Library. Immediately, he made you want to cancel spring and issue a factory recall for winter.He was maybe 14 years old and wore a black T-shirt and a smirk. The T-shirt said "Nazi Punk." The smirk said: I am a geek who thinks this is cool, and I have no idea what I am doing.

"The Last Hero: The Life of Mickey Mantle," by David Falkner. Illustrated. Simon & Schuster. 255 pages. $24There's no attempt to alter the reputation or rework the imagof Mickey Mantle, who, like the line in one of those country and western ballads he so much enjoyed and sometimes personified, "lived fast, loved hard, died young and left a beautiful memory." jTC The latest book about him, in the lexicon of a game he once dominated with such natural effusion, is an absolute Grand Slam winner.

Topps has been repackaging Mickey Mantle this baseball card season and now is giving him the cereal-box treatment.To honor Mantle, who died last year and whose cards are among the most sought, Topps has reprinted cards from his 19 major-league seasons. Picture this American hero on the all-American breakfast table and you have Mantle's latest morph.The 19 Topps and Bowman Mantle cards selected for 1996 Topps Baseball will be turning up on Topps Baseball Mickey Mantle Cereal Box sets. Each card, plus the redesigned commemorative No. 7 card, will be featured on a box the size of a single-serving cereal box. Each box will be packed with 110 cards from '96 Topps Baseball and a randomly selected Mantle reproduction.

As a genuine American sports legend, Mickey Mantle was always accorded star treatment. When cops realized whom they had just pulled over for drunk driving, they inevitably closed their ticket books and drove the Yankee slugger home. When he drunkenly barreled his car into a telephone pole, nearly decapitating his wife Merlyn, the whole affair was hushed up. Not a word made the papers.But now, a little more than a year after Mantle's death, a new book has been published that lays bare Mantle's shortcomings, which seem every bit as titanic as his tape measure home runs.

When Oakland's Geronimo Berroa hit his 35th homer last weekend, he and Mark McGwire, who had 46 at the time, set a club record for most homers by teammates. McGwire and Jose Canseco set the record in 1987, when that duo hit 80. The major-league record is 115, by Mickey Mantle (54) and Roger Maris (61) of the 1961 New York Yankees.Cleveland finished the year 7-17 against Texas and New York, the other two division leaders.When Mike Greenwell drove in nine runs in Boston's 9-8 win over Seattle on Monday, he broke a record held by Bob Johnson, who drove in eight in the Philadelphia Athletics' 8-0 win over St. Louis on June 12, 1938.