Fascination With Mantle Now Blends Fiction With Fact

By RICHARD SANDOMIR

The New York Times
Published: April 5, 2007

Fifty-four years ago, the sports book genre that should be named MickLit was begun with the publication of “The Mickey Mantle Story,” an autobiography of the very young Mantle as told to Ben Epstein.

More than 20 books about Mantle, by Mantle (with the aid of hired writers), or by his widow, Merlyn, and their surviving sons, have been published since. One, “Mickey Mantle of the Yankees,” by the prolific Gene Schoor inspired Marty Appel, a former Yankees public-relations chief, to hand in the same book report in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades.

“Mickey’s kind of like Abe Lincoln; he keeps catching people,” said Robert W. Creamer, who wrote and researched the 1964 book “The Quality of Courage” for Mantle. It was a collection of inspiring stories, including that of Mutt, Mantle’s father, which gave a sports spin to “Profiles in Courage,” John F. Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize winning book.

The newest and possibly strangest addition to the MickLit canon arrived this week: “7: The Mickey Mantle Novel,” a fictional, ribald, rollicking, sad, some-of-it-based-on-fact rendering by Peter Golenbock of the late Yankee’s life, as told by Mantle in heaven to the late sportswriter Leonard Shecter.

The book has upset the Mantle family, teammates like Whitey Ford and some fans who wonder why Golenbock would write a salacious book that features a one-night stand between Marilyn Monroe and Mantle.

Golenbock is certain that some people will love “7” but that many will despise it because the lewd scenes and crude jokes build a detour from the familiar yarn fans love, of the imperfect, dramatic hero who fell short of his promise.

So far, Golenbock said by telephone, “Nobody’s threatened to shoot me yet.”

Golenbock’s publisher, Lyons Press, which acquired “7” after it was dropped by HarperCollins, said the book went out with a giant first printing of 250,000 copies. Its release was backed by full-page ads in The New York Times and The New York Post, and by mobile billboards in Manhattan.

Mary Ellen Keating, a spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble, said that early reviews and press were negative, so the influential chain does not expect significant sales. The reviewer for Publishers Weekly wrote, “This book would make Henry Miller blush,” while The St. Petersburg Times called the book “ultimately endearing” because the repentant Mantle of his final year was the narrator “and — despite it all — you can’t help but love the guy.”

Golenbock, the author of numerous sports books, said he didn’t start “7” as a fictional account, but as a straight biography.

“But it wasn’t Mickey,” he said. “He was one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. Mickey would tell jokes in a group, like the ones in the book, and I’d be on the floor. He was as funny as Chris Rock. To write a book about Mickey that wasn’t hilarious, or didn’t show how troubled he was — I couldn’t figure it out in a straight biography.”

He added, “Maybe Maraniss or Jane Leavy could do it.”

David Maraniss has written acclaimed biographies of Vince Lombardi and Roberto Clemente, and Leavy, the author of a well-reviewed biography of Sandy Koufax, is in the midst of researching a Mantle biography.

“Jane’s job is challenging because we know so much about Mickey,” said Appel, a connoisseur and collector of MickLit. “But he will always fascinate us, because he wasn’t what we believed him to be in the first place, but when we found out more about him, we loved him all over again.”

What is it about Mantle that makes him fascinating enough to have become something of a literary muse? He brought his great talent from the country to the New York spotlight; he hit massive home runs but had a body that was breaking down even before he put on a Yankees uniform; he was a blond, blue-eyed Adonis loved by men and women who played in 12 World Series in his first 14 seasons And in his final acts, which would lead him to that Golenbockian heaven, came alcoholism treatment, public atonement, a liver transplant and death by cancer.

“He was, in a way, a kind of perfect American,” said David Falkner, the author of “The Last Hero: The Life of Mickey Mantle,” which came out soon after his subject’s death. “So vulnerable, so innocent, and he could not hide who he was, which was both beautiful and horrible.”

Mantle could have been the chairman of a department of MickLit Studies, having been an eager participant in his own publishing movement. After collaborating with Epstein and Creamer, he worked with Bob Smith on a 1967 book of memories and lessons called “The Education of a Baseball Player;” Herb Gluck on a 1985 biography, “The Mick;” Phil Pepe on the 1991 memoir of his Triple Crown season, “My Favorite Summer: 1956;” and Mickey Herskowitz on a 1994 World Series reminiscence, “All My Octobers.”

No one, except for Mantle, has been more immersed in MickLit than Herskowitz, a former sports columnist for The Houston Chronicle . He wrote an appreciation of Mantle after his death then worked with the Mantle’s widow and their surviving sons, Danny, David and Mickey Jr., in 1996 on an extraordinarily candid memoir, “A Hero All His Life,” which expressed their love for him but painted scenes of lives damaged by his absences and womanizing and their drinking.

Last year, Herskowitz, along with Merlyn, Danny and David, published “Mickey Mantle: Stories & Memorabilia from a Lifetime with the Mick” (Stewart, Tabori & Chang) that was distinguished by reproductions of artifacts like a love letter written from Mickey to Merlyn on Hotel Cleveland stationery; his 1949 minor league contract, and a letter from Richard M. Nixon written after Mantle’s selection to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“He hasn’t played in almost 40 years, he’s been dead for nearly 12, yet the interest in him is endless,” Herskowitz said from his office at Sam Houston State University, where he is a journalism professor.

Herskowitz said writers cannot fully escape the accepted hagiography of Mantle’s life, which has proved so enduring to baby boomers; nor does the broadcaster Bob Costas, whose readings about Mantle started when he was 7 or 8 with the Schoor biography (a subject that Schoor, still enamored with MickLit, returned to in 2002 with an illustrated biography).

“Look, something about Mantle and the circumstances of his career and life moved people,” he said from St. Louis. “It went beyond his specific accomplishments and beyond rooting interest. These are undeniable, emotional truths and the darker aspects of his life don’t invalidate them any more than what Richard Ben Cramer wrote about Joe DiMaggio invalidates the DiMaggio that Hemingway and Paul Simon were touched by.”