My Publisher John Gungie Rivera came out with last week’s subscription numbers and I was shocked at the fact that there are well Tens of thousands of readers per week. I absolutely love this for two reasons. Number one … the higher the numbers the more kids from the inner city get to play baseball and number two… besides writing about the Yankees of today I also get to write about the great game of baseball during my childhood and young adult days and get to educate so many today about how beautiful and pure baseball was and can be again!
I love talking about my very first hero Mickey Mantle. I loved being able to sometimes sneak into Yankee Stadium just to see that big number seven across the back of a man that I thought was stronger than Hercules.
One day I ran past a stadium security guard to the front railing because the Mick was on the on-deck circle. I think the year was 1968 and I was twelve years old. I remember screaming at the top of my lungs… Mickey, Mickey … and the Mick actually smiled at me.
That smile made me love the Mick forever.
Seven years later ( 1974 ) I would be a Yankee Batboy and on Oldtimers Day I actually beat Pete Sheehy the historic clubhouse manager to the park that day because I was so excited about the fact that Mickey Mantle was going to be there. To actually meet the Mick was going to be a dream come true. I actually wrote about this incredible day in my book Yankee Miracles… The one thing I so vividly remember about that day is the fact that I was so mesmerized at just staring at the Mick. The other thing that really surprised me was the fact that many of the present-day Yankees were as star-struck as I was.
Three seasons later (1977) the Yankees signed a player who was probably the most popular player in the game… Reggie Jackson. To me, he was exciting and flamboyant. To many players, he was the game’s biggest hotdog. One player actually said that there wasn’t enough mustard to cover Reggie. I remember a reporter asking George Steinbrenner if the Reggie Jackson ego bothered him and he responded by saying that he deserved to have an ego like that because he always backed it up.
I will never forget the first time I saw Reggie together with Mickey Mantle … the respect that Reggie gave the Mick was beautiful. Reggie literally treated him like true royalty… Yankee Royalty!
The look that Reggie had on his face after talking to the Mick was the very same look I had on my face in 1968 when the Mick smiled at me while on the on-deck circle. The thing that I found amazing was that later in the locker room Reggie went up to the Mick and asked him for an autograph baseball.
When I asked Reggie why that was such a big deal for him he said that Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Clemente, and the Mick were the true standard of greatness. He also mentioned that the very first time he met the Mick in 1968 when he was running off the field and Mickey said hi Reggie, Reggie was stunned at the fact that the great Mickey Mantle knew who he was.
The thing that I loved about Mickey Mantle was the fact that to be a Yankee was the greatest thing in the baseball world. The thing that I respected about Reggie was that at the end of the day, he truly did understand the magnitude of being a Yankee…. That’s why he went into the Hall of Fame as a Yankee!
