It's baseball season and... I miss Mickey
by Bryce Martin

The faint recognition of early spring brings revival to the spirit and, with it, another Major League baseball season in slow bloom. Always this time of year I can't help but being overcome by an old and kindred feeling -- the nostalgia that is Mickey Mantle.

This is the time of year I really miss Mickey, when the sky's clouds are crisp over a background of light, dreamy blue, much the same as on his 1951 Bowman Gum Co. rookie baseball card, #253.

Most of Mickey's fans, I believe, were his fans first and baseball fans second, with no big drop-off. It was true for me. Sure, keeping tabs on Mickey and his New York Yankees teammate Roger Maris while they chased Babe Ruth's magic 60 home runs benchmark in 1961 was incredible theater. I was even astonished by the Tigers' Norm Cash and his surprising long-ball power that summer.

The fact that the small Kansas town I lived in was only about 35 miles from Mickey's house made my hero accessible. He wasn't just some snowy image on a black-and-white TV that you saw occasionally on one of three, and only three, venues: CBS, NBC, ABC; or a gloriously smiling figure posed in a magazine layout with singer Teresa Brewer, whose 45 rpm vinyl, "I Love Mickey," was hot.

He was the Mickey that I caught on KSWM-TV, Channel 12, out of Joplin, Mo., late in 1955, telling sports host Johnny Holmes that he was seriously considering quitting baseball and taking up professional golf. I didn't have my cap pulled over my ears. He said it, and I worried about it all winter. The next year, when nothing more came up on the subject, I still had concerns. Mickey earned a rare Triple Crown in 1956 -- leading the American League in homers, runs batted in, and batting average. What more did he have to prove in baseball?

Then there was the thrill of playing on the same dusty baseball fields as the adolescent Mickey, especially the one in Baxter Springs, Kan., hearing the old-timers describing one of the legendary clouts the young son of a lead and zinc miner -- many of whom knew and worked alongside the elder Mutt Mantle -- had witnessed, and his blazing speed and raw ability.

There was the chance to see his cousin, Max Mantle, a smooth-fielding centerfielder, twin brothers Roy and Ray, boyhood chum Barney Barnett Jr., a giant hulk of a man, all playing in "townball" games, where a collection hat (usually straw) was passed around to pay the civvies-clad umps.

Where Mickey lived and where he played his first two minor league seasons -- Independence, Kan., and Joplin -- were short car rides to all who lived in the Tri-State area of northeast Oklahoma, southwest Missouri and southeast Kansas. Everyone in the Route 66 region knew and discussed all things Mickey.

In 1955, I got to meet him.

It was my grandfather's idea. It was a simple plan to execute. Just drive to Commerce, Okla.

Arriving in Commerce, unannounced as it was, we found a modest home, no different than any other in the tiny hamlet. A station wagon was parked in the driveway. The front door was swung open to the inside and blocked by a closed screen door, the preferred manner of most households back then on pleasant mornings. Two hunting rifles stood upright against an outside wall.

Then, as if on cue, Mickey emerged, along with pal teammate and second baseman, Billy Martin (who much later would be peddled to Detroit and cited as a "bad influence" on Mickey). Relating that they were going on "a little hunting trip," they were, nonetheless, cordial and friendly and didn't seem to be in a hurry.

Oddly, I recall little of the meeting. Maybe it's not good that we actually meet our idols in the flesh, and maybe God has a way of suppressing such epiphanies, an idol-check of sorts for our own good.

I miss keeping up with the young Mickey in all those golden, eternal summers. Mickey, the promise, dream and inspiration that he was. Always, I miss him the most around right now.

I feel sure that poet Robert L. Harrison would not mind if I share his tribute to Mickey, one concerning a "pro-de-jus" blast at the Tigers' Briggs Stadium in 1953. The poem is, of course, about more than that.

1953 Young Mantle Hits One

It was a shot like no other
tearing into the breath of God,
leaving earth and grass and fans.

A sphere for the ages racing along
casting no shadow in frozen space
finally arching for the great fall.

Described on the radio as a new star
a stellar moment of freedom expressed
bright and clean as a summer's dream.

...

-30-