The Last Boy (51 page)
Authors: Jane Leavy
Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Moose Skowron, Hank Bauer, Johnny Blanchard, and Bobby Murcer were the honorary pallbearers. “I seen more Yankees than Andrew Jackson,” Faye Davis told her brother later.
Kathleen Hampton arranged for the service to be held at her church and for a dry wake later at True’s home. Mantle’s friend Jim Hays said Mickey, Jr., greeted mourners, saying, “Welcome to the house my dad built.” Hampton stationed friends at every door of the church in an effort to intercept Greer Johnson. She arrived with Pat Summerall and Georgia governor Zell Miller, and, she says, with True’s knowledge and approval. Hampton orchestrated the family’s departure from the service during the Lord’s Prayer so that Johnson would not be able to follow them to the private burial.
When an usher offered Summerall a seat up front near the family, he declined, staying with Johnson in a section near the back of the church reserved for players and their wives. “I couldn’t leave her,” Summerall said. “She couldn’t sit up. She couldn’t look at the service. I held her in my arms the whole time.”
Years later, Johnson told me, “My best friend, my lover, my employer, my everything was gone. It was like I was gone.”
Bobby Richardson officiated, keeping the promise he had made to Mantle at Maris’s funeral a decade earlier. Roy Clark sang “Yesterday, When I Was Young,” telling the congregation he hadn’t expected to have to keep his promise so soon. When Richardson whispered Merlyn’s unexpected request for a chorus of “Amazing Grace,” Clark blanched. Arthritis in his fingers made guitar picking hard, and he wasn’t sure he remembered all the words. “I’m going to try this,” he said. “As Mickey would say, ‘When you’re on the golf course with a two-foot putt, just get it close.’”
Bob Costas gave the eulogy, speaking for the child he once was, the children we all were before Mickey Mantle forced us to grow up and see the world as it is, not as we wished it to be. Costas remembered him as “a fragile hero to whom we had an emotional attachment so strong and lasting that it defied logic.”
Mickey Mantle did not go home to Commerce. He was laid to rest in the Sparkman Hillcrest Memorial Park, a posh Dallas cemetery that is
also the final resting place of the cosmetics queen Mary Kay Ash, Cowboys coach Tom Landry, Alice Lon, Lawrence Welk’s champagne lady, and Judge Sarah Tilghman Hughes, who administered the oath of office to President Lyndon Baines Johnson aboard Air Force One on November 22, 1963.
Directions to his plot (NE-N-D14–15) in the Saint Matthew Mausoleum are posted online at www.ehow.com/how_4392292_visit-mickey-mantles-grave.html and its coordinates (N 32° 52.064 W 096° 46.857) at www.waymarking.com. Findagrave.com invites visitors to send e-flowers and e-mails to The Mick. On the fourteenth anniversary of his death, he received fifty-four digital notes and bouquets.
In this august, austere, and climate-controlled precinct of death (crafted by fine Italian artisans from rare marble and granite, the Web site says), the footsteps of the living resound like the trumpets of angels, loud enough almost to wake the dead. Mantle is interred in a crypt illuminated by flickering sconces and graced with plaster angels whose wings shelter cards and letters left by his fans. Fixed to the wall is a plaque, not unlike the one that marks his place on another wall in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium:
MICKEY CHARLES MANTLE
October 20, 1931 · August 13, 1995
A magnificent New York Yankee
,
true teammate and Hall of Fame centerfielder
with legendary courage
.
The most popular player of his era
.
A loving husband, father and friend for life
.
He was buried in pinstripes.
F
AR FROM THE CHILLED
silence of Mickey Mantle’s tomb, the living continue to trade on his memory. On the day he would have turned seventy-seven years old, a “tiny hair strand speck from Mickey Mantle” was offered to the highest bidder on eBay. In 1997, Greer Johnson auctioned off more than two hundred lots of personal effects, including his birth certificate, a neck brace, four prescription bottles, and a clump of barber-bagged hair.
She says she tried to contact his family and received no reply other than notice of a lawsuit, which successfully blocked the sale of thirty-three of the most personal items. After the final hammer came down, she went to Mickey Mantle’s to lift a glass to The Mick, and was escorted out of the restaurant by the maître d’. Johnson says she placed the money, $541,000 minus her executor’s commission, in a charitable remainder trust, all of which was invested and all of which will go to the American Cancer Society and Baseball Assistance Team upon her death.
The clump of Mantle’s hair sold for $6,900.
Long after his death, he remained his family’s sole breadwinner. In 1996, an arbitration panel awarded his estate $4.9 million after finding that Upper Deck had unfairly breached his contract. In December 2003 Merlyn emptied the attic—and some of the prized trophy room—selling off bits and pieces of the past to provide for the future education of her four grandchildren—Mallory, Marilyn, Chloe, and Danny’s son, Will. Some things were not for sale. Will, who has his grandpa’s lips and maybe some of his talent, will inherit his Hall of Fame ring.
The auction was held in Madison Square Garden, inside a vault of undifferentiated utility space where the elephant cages park when the circus comes to town. At the preview, strangers ogled the relics of an original American life while Will bounced a pink Spaldeen under the watchful eye of a former NYC cop happy to do his bit for The Mick. Locked behind temporary glass display cabinets were expired passports and credit cards, canceled checks, Yankee pay stubs, coasters from Mickey Mantle’s Country Kitchen, a 1961 commendation from the Texas Board of Corrections for efforts on behalf of the Texas Penitentiary Rodeo, and twelve of those childhood scrapbooks in which he failed to recognize himself.
There were also big-ticket items, including his 1957 and 1962 Most Valuable Player awards, which sold for $275,000 and $250,000, respectively; his 1962 World Series ring, which brought $140,000; and a motorcycle he never rode, an homage Harley tricked out with faux Louisville Slugger wood grain, painted pinstripes, and a leather seat made from one of his baseball gloves. The bike, inscribed with a poem written by David, was purchased for $55,000 by Randall Swearingen, who made it the centerpiece of his Mantle shrine in Houston. The auction netted $3.25 million.
Five days after Mantle’s death, his family announced the establishment of Mickey’s Team. The campaign he envisioned on behalf of organ donation would be funded by the foundation he had created in Billy Mantle’s name. Carl Lewis, the Olympic sprinter, whose best friend had died while waiting for a kidney transplant, presented a check for $25,000. Six million baseball card–style donation forms were distributed. But momentum flagged. Mickey’s Team needed The Mick. The donation card began showing up on eBay. “We found out people were selling them for
ten dollars apiece,” David told me at Madison Square Garden. “We talk about cancer now. My dad had that, too.”
By the end of 2009, the Mantle Family Fund for the American Cancer Society had raised $125,673, which was donated to the Hope Lodge, a home away from home in Manhattan for cancer patients and their families. Danny and David dedicated the Mickey Mantle Suite on September 29, 2009, with the help of Rudy Giuliani.
The family continues to be haunted by the disease.
Mickey Mantle, Jr., entered the Betty Ford Center in October 1995. A patient who had been in treatment with The Mick told him that his father had expressed the hope that Little Mick would come and get sober. Mickey Elven Mantle died of cancer in December 2000 at age forty-seven, telling his brothers, “Can you believe I sobered up for this?”
Danny relapsed after Little Mick’s death, then reclaimed his hard-won sobriety. Merlyn Mantle won custody of Mickey Jr.’s daughter, Mal-lory, rising at six every morning in the golden years of her life to care for another teenager. She was the first of Mantle’s grandchildren to go off to college.
Roy Mantle died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age sixty-five in September 2001.
Merlyn’s hometown was wiped off the face of Google Earth at the close of business on August 31, 2009, when the municipality of Picher, Oklahoma, ceased operations and city hall closed its doors. Two businesses defied the decree: the drugstore and Paul Thomas, the undertaker who buried Mutt Mantle. Thomas stayed open for six months before reluctantly accepting a government buyout. On March 27, 2010, he auctioned off the mining relics he kept in his garage, including a portrait of Mutt’s crew at the Blue Goose Mine. That month the last derrick in Picher, which stood over a void as vast as the Astrodome, was torn down.
Merlyn Louise Mantle died of Alzheimer’s disease in July 2009. In her last days, she sometimes confused Danny and David with their father. She was laid to rest above her husband. Below him rest two of their sons.
NEW YORK YANKEES
Larry Allen (brother of Mel Allen)
Marty Appel (public relations)
Stan Bahnsen
Hank Bauer
*
Howard Berk (front office)
Carmen Berra
Yogi Berra
John Blanchard
*
Ron Blomberg
Jim Bouton
Clete Boyer
*
Bobby Brown
Tommy Byrne
*
Andy Carey
Bob Cerv
Tex Clevenger
Jim Coates
Jerry Coleman
Bobby Cox
Johnny Damon
Keith Darcy (batboy)
Bobby Del Greco
Joe DeMaestri
Art Ditmar
Al Downing
Ryne Duren
Mike Ferraro
Whitey Ford
Joe Gallagher (broadcast)
Jason Giambi
Jake Gibbs
Eli Grba
Angie Greenwade (daughter of Tom Greenwade)
Bunch Greenwade (son of Tom Greenwade)
Bill Guilfoile (public relations)
Whitey Herzog
Ralph Houk
*
Arlene Howard (wife of Elston Howard)
Janet Huie (daughter of Red Patterson)
Reggie Jackson
Johnny James
Esther Kaufman (sister of Mel Allen)
Steve Kraly
Andy Kosco
Herman Krattenmaker (front office)
Tony Kubek
Tony Kubek III (son of Tony Kubek)
Johnny Kucks
Bob Kusava
Don Larsen
Phil Linz
Hector Lopez
Jerry Lumpe
Lee MacPhail (front office)
Elliot Maddox
Gil McDougald
Lucille McDougald
Gene Michael
Malcolm “Bunny” Mick* (minor league coach, instructor)
Tony Morante (Yankee Stadium tours)
Ross Mosschito
Thad Mumford (ball boy)
Bobby Murcer
*
Ray Negron (special adviser to George M. Steinbrenner)
Irv Noren
Bruce Patterson (son of Red Patterson)
Gregg Patterson (nephew of Red Patterson)
Joe Pepitone
Frank Prudenti (batboy)
Pedro Ramos Willie Randolph
Jack Reed
Mickey Rendine (clubhouse)
Bill Renna
Betsy Richardson (wife of Bobby Richardson)
Arthur Richman
*
(public relations)
Curt Rim (Yankee Stadium architecture)
Mickey Rivers
Pat Rizzuto (daughter of Phil Rizzuto)
Eddie Robinson
Art Schallock
Donna Schallock
Kal Segrist
Bobby Shantz
Rollie Sheldon
Bob Sheppard
*
(public address announcer)
Norm Siebern
Charlie Silvera
Bill “Moose” Skowron
Mel Stottlemyre
Elaine Sturdivant
Tom Sturdivant
*
Frank Tepedino
Ralph Terry
Joe Torre
Tom Tresh
*
Virgil Trucks
Bob Turley
Roy White
Steve Whitaker
Bob Wiesler
Bernie Williams
Stan Williams
Sybil Wilson (wife of Archie Wilson) Hank Workman
Bernie Allen
George Alusik
Joe Amalfitano
Sparky Anderson
Ed Bailey
*
Gary Bell
Clete Boyer
*
Jim Brosnan
Ed Charles
Bill Clark (scout)
Joe Coleman
Alvin Dark
Brandy Davis
*
(scout)
Tommy Davis
Dom DiMaggio
*
Johnny Edwards
Mike Epstein
Carl Erskine
Sam Esposito
Bob Feller
Bill Fischer
Paul Foytack
Herman Franks
*
Jim “Mudcat” Grant
Clark Griffth (Washington Senators, Minnesota Twins ownership)
Dick Groat
Jim Hannan
Ron Hansen
Ray Herbert
Billy Hoeft
*
Frank Howard
Mike Hudson (Washington batboy)
Bobby Humphreys
Monte Irvin
Larry Jansen
*
Nobe Kawano (Dodger clubhouse)
Bowie Kuhn
*
(commissioner)
Jim Kaat
Al Kaline
Jim Landis
Tony LaRussa
Frank Lary
Whitey Lockman
*
Mickey Lolich
Jim Lonborg
Jim Maloney
Juan Marichal
Jim McAnany
Tim McCarver
Mike McCormick
Willie McCovey
Sam McDowell
Denny McLain
Sam Mele
Marvin Miller (Major League Baseball Players Association)
Don Mueller
*
Don Newcombe
Claude Osteen
Jim O’Toole
Camilo Pascual
Billy Pierce
Al Pilarcik
