89 Facts About Mickey Mantle

Mickey Mantle played his entire Major League Baseball career with the New York Yankees as a center fielder, right fielder, and first baseman.

Mickey Mantle was one of the best players and sluggers and is regarded by many as the greatest switch hitter in baseball history.

Mickey Mantle was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974 and was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team in 1999.

Mickey Mantle was one of the greatest offensive threats of any center fielder in baseball history.

Mickey Mantle has the second highest career OPS+ among center fielders, and he had the highest stolen-base percentage in history at the time of his retirement.

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Mickey Mantle was able to hit for both average and power, especially tape-measure home runs, a term that was born when a play-by-play caller reacted to one of Mickey Mantle's 1953 home runs.

Mickey Mantle is the only player in history to hit 150 home runs from both sides of the plate.

Mickey Mantle was safe three out of four times in which he attempted to steal a base.

Mickey Mantle won the MVP award three times, finished second three times, and finished within nine votes of winning five times.

Mickey Mantle later wrote a book about his best year in baseball.

Mickey Mantle was an All-Star for 16 seasons, playing in 16 of the 20 All-Star Games that were played during his career.

Mickey Mantle was an American League Most Valuable Player three times and a Gold Glove winner once.

Mickey Mantle appeared in 12 World Series including seven championships, and he holds World Series records for the most home runs, RBIs, extra-base hits, runs, walks, and total bases .

Mickey Mantle was of at least partial English ancestry; his great-grandfather George Mantle left Brierley Hill, in England's Black Country, in 1848.

Later in his life, Mickey Mantle expressed relief that his father had not known Cochrane's true first name because he would have hated to be named Gordon.

Mickey Mantle spoke warmly of his father and said that he was the bravest man whom he had ever known.

Mickey Mantle batted left-handed against his father when his father pitched to him right-handed, and he batted right-handed against his grandfather, Charles Mickey Mantle, when he pitched to him left-handed.

When Mickey Mantle was four years old, his family moved to the nearby town of Commerce, Oklahoma, where his father worked in lead and zinc mines.

Mickey Mantle played halfback and Oklahoma offered him a football scholarship.

Mickey Mantle's parents drove him at midnight to Oklahoma City, where he was treated at the children's hospital with the newly available penicillin, which reduced the infection and saved his leg from amputation.

Mickey Mantle began his professional baseball career in Kansas with the semi-professional Baxter Springs Whiz Kids.

Mickey Mantle was assigned to the Yankees' Class-D Independence Yankees of the Kansas–Oklahoma–Missouri League, where he played shortstop.

Shulthis Stadium, the baseball stadium in Independence where Mickey Mantle played, had been the site of the first night game of organized baseball in 1930.

In 1950, Mickey Mantle was promoted to the Class-C Joplin Miners of the Western Association.

Mickey Mantle was invited to the Yankees instructional camp before the 1951 season.

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Mickey Mantle, playing right field, raced for the ball together with center fielder Joe DiMaggio, who called for the ball .

In getting out of DiMaggio's way, Mickey Mantle tripped over an exposed drain pipe and severely injured his right knee.

Mickey Mantle was selected an "All-Star" for the first time and made the AL team, but did not play in the five-inning All-Star game that had Boston Red Sox Dom DiMaggio at center field.

Mickey Mantle played center field full-time for the Yankees until 1965, when he was moved to left field.

Osteomyelitic condition of Mickey Mantle's left leg had exempted him from being drafted for military service since he was 18 in 1949, but his emergence as a star center fielder in the major leagues during the Korean War in 1952 led baseball fans to question his 4-F deferment.

Mickey Mantle had high hopes that 1953 would be a breakout year but his momentum was stopped by an injury.

Mickey Mantle missed several weeks, so his numbers were modest but respectable, especially with 92 RBIs.

Mickey Mantle had his first 100 plus RBI year, in 1954, in a full season and regained.

Mickey Mantle had his breakout season in 1956 after showing progressive improvement each of his first five years.

Mickey Mantle is the only player to win a league Triple Crown as a switch hitter.

Mickey Mantle won his second consecutive MVP in 1957 behind league leads in runs and walks, a career-high.

Mickey Mantle reached base more times than he made outs, one of two seasons in which he achieved the feat.

Mickey Mantle made the AL All-Star team as a reserve player in 1959, as his numbers had tailed off from previous seasons, he was used as a pinch runner for Baltimore Orioles catcher Gus Triandos and replacement right fielder for Cleveland Indians Rocky Colavito in the first game with Detroit Tigers Al Kaline playing the center field position.

Mickey Mantle was the starting center fielder in the second All-Star Game's lineup, getting a single and a walk in four at bats.

In 1960 Mickey Mantle started in both All-Star games, getting two walks in the first and a single in the second game.

Mickey Mantle hit one over the right center field roof at Briggs Stadium, which is said to have traveled 643 feet.

Five years earlier, in 1956, Mickey Mantle had challenged Ruth's record for most of the season, and the New York press had been protective of Ruth on that occasion.

When Mickey Mantle finally fell short, finishing with 52, many of the traditionalists were relieved.

The New York press was harsh in its treatment of Mickey Mantle in his early years with the team, emphasizing that he struck out frequently, was injury-prone, was a rube from Oklahoma, and was perceived as inferior to his predecessor in center field, Joe DiMaggio.

Mickey Mantle was hospitalized with an abscessed hip resulting from a flu shot that he had received late in the season, leaving Maris to break the record .

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Mickey Mantle finished with 54 home runs while leading the American league in runs scored and walks.

Mickey Mantle was selected an All-Star for the eleventh consecutive season and played in the first game, but because of a recurrence of an old injury, he did not play in the second game.

Mickey Mantle was selected an All-Star as the starting center fielder, but for the first time he could not make the 25-man roster because of the foot injury.

Mickey Mantle finished in second place in MVP voting for 1964, as Baltimore's Brooks Robinson won the award.

Yankees and Mickey Mantle were slowed by injuries during the 1965 season, and they finished in sixth place, 25 games behind the Minnesota Twins.

Mickey Mantle was selected an AL All-Star again, but as a reserve player, and he did not make the 28-player team for the second and last time because of an injury.

Mickey Mantle hit some of the longest home runs in Major League history.

In spite of short foul pole dimension of 296 feet to left and 301 feet to right in original Yankee Stadium, Mickey Mantle gained no advantage there as his stroke both left and right-handed drove balls there to power alleys of 344' to 407' and 402' to 457' feet from the plate.

Mickey Mantle was one of the best bunters for base hits of all time.

Mickey Mantle is in 10th place in number of bases-empty bunt singles for his career, with 80 in only 148 at-bats.

Dr Stephen Haas, medical director for the National Football League Players Association, has speculated that Mickey Mantle tore his anterior cruciate ligament during the incident and played the rest of his career without having it properly treated since ACLs could not be repaired with the surgical techniques available in that era.

Still, Mickey Mantle was known as the "fastest man to first base" and won the American League triple crown in 1956.

Mickey Mantle always had that country boy attitude that made you feel at ease.

Mickey Mantle was a huge star, but he never treated you like he was better than you.

Mickey Mantle served as a part-time color commentator on NBC's baseball coverage in 1969, teaming with Curt Gowdy and Tony Kubek to call some Game of the Week telecasts as well as that year's All-Star Game.

Mickey Mantle's lifestyle was restored to its former luxury by his leadership in the sports-memorabilia craze that swept the U S beginning in the 1980s.

Mickey Mantle was a prized guest at baseball-card shows, commanding fees far in excess of those of any other player for his appearances and autographs.

Mickey Mantle insisted that the promoters of baseball-card shows always include one of the lesser-known Yankees of his era, such as Moose Skowron or Hank Bauer, so that they could earn money for their appearances.

Mickey Mantle let others run the business but made frequent appearances.

Mickey Mantle worked as a customer-relations representative for the Dallas Reserve Life Insurance Company.

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In 1992, Mickey Mantle wrote My Favorite Summer 1956 about his 1956 season.

Mickey Mantle was not entirely discreet about them, and at his retirement ceremony in 1969, he brought his mistress along with his wife.

In 1980, Mickey Mantle separated from his wife, and while the two lived apart for the rest of Mickey Mantle's life, they never filed for divorce.

Mickey Mantle made an appearance in the music video for "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" by Paul Simon in 1988.

Mickey Mantle occasionally attended the local Methodist church, and sometimes ate Sunday dinner with members of the congregation.

Mickey Mantle was well-liked by the citizens of Greensboro, and seemed to like them in return.

The town respected Mickey Mantle's privacy, refusing either to talk about him to outsiders or to direct fans to his home.

Mickey Mantle allegedly took his first drink of alcohol at age 19, when teammate Hank Bauer gave him a beer that he "chugged as if it were soda pop, " according to baseball historian Frank Russo.

Mickey Mantle's rationale was that the men in his family had all died young, so he expected to die young as well.

Mickey Mantle's father died of Hodgkin's disease at age 40 in 1952, and his grandfather died young of the same disease.

At the time, Mickey Mantle did not know that most of the men in his family had inhaled lead and zinc dust in the mines, which can cause Hodgkin's disease and other cancers.

Mickey Mantle outlived all the men in his family by several years.

Mickey Mantle spoke with remorse about his drinking in a 1994 Sports Illustrated cover story.

Mickey Mantle said that he was telling the same old stories, and realizing how many of them involved being drunk, including at least one drunk-driving accident, he decided they were not funny any more.

Mickey Mantle admitted that he had often been cruel and hurtful to family, friends, and fans because of his alcoholism, and sought to make amends.

Mickey Mantle became a Christian when his former teammate Bobby Richardson, a Baptist, shared his faith with him.

Mickey Mantle established the Mickey Mantle Foundation to raise awareness for organ donations.

Mickey Mantle's doctors insisted that the transplant was based solely on medical criteria, but acknowledged that the very short wait created the appearance of favoritism.

Mickey Mantle was interred in the Mickey Mantle Family Mausoleum, located in the St Matthew Section of the Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery in Dallas.

Mickey Mantle was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1964.

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In 1969, Mickey Mantle received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

Shortly before his death, Mickey Mantle videotaped a message to be played on Old-Timers' Day, which he was too ill to attend.

That same year, Mickey Mantle was one of 100 nominees for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team, and was chosen by fan balloting as one of the team's outfielders.

In 2006, Mickey Mantle was featured on a United States postage stamp, one of a series of four including fellow baseball legends Mel Ott, Roy Campanella, and Hank Greenberg.