Paddock’s Picks: The Last Boy

Editor’s note:  Anita Paddock’s review of books we should read are scheduled to appear on the second and fourth Friday of each month. Enjoy.

review by Anita Paddock
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Jane Leavy, the author of this extremely readable book on Mickey Mantle tell us that he was probably our last hero. He arrived in the same decade as Elvis, at a time when most of us were naïve enough to actually believe there were heroes among us. We weren’t told the real stories of our heroes; even their photographs were touched up.

This book tells it all. Once a sportswriter for the Washington Post, Leavy grew up loving the game of baseball. Born just blocks away from Yankee Stadium, she attended games with her father. Her grandmother bought Leavy her first baseball glove, a purchase that gave approval for Leavy to be a tomboy.

Mickey Mantle was Leavy’s hero. She writes that while other kids mimicked their heroes stance and swinging ability, she tried to match his gimped-up walk. Her book is an honest account of a boy, The Last Boy, from Commerce, Okla., and his rise to New York Yankee’s baseball fame and his fall to alcoholism and autographing baseball cards in bowling alleys.

Mickey Mantle was born in Spavinaw, Okla., in the depths of the depression on Oct. 20, 1931. His father, Mutt, a coal miner, put a baseball in Mickey’s crib, and when he was six months old, he rolled baseballs to him while he had him propped up on the floor in the living room corner. The family moved to Commerce, where the family of 10 slept four to a bed.

Mickey’s mother, Lovell, was a divorcee with two children when she married Mutt. Following the birth of Mickey, there came the twins, Ray and Roy, Larry, and the only girl, Barbara who was called Bob. Lovell was not an affectionate mom, but when her boys were on the playing fields, she was a bulldog in the stands, shouting at the referees and the opposing coaches.

Mickey was kicked in his left shin during high school football practice, which his father didn’t like him playing. His leg was swollen up and red as a watermelon. He was taken to the hospital with a temperature of 103. It was his mother who intervened with a “like hell you are” when the doctor wanted to amputate his leg. It was also she who carried him on her back to the outhouse while he was home recuperating from osteomyelitis, a bacterial infection of the bone, usually caused by trauma.

It was also his mother who applied for public assistance to get him into the Crippled Children’s Hospital in Oklahoma City, where he was treated with sulfa drugs and penicillin. His recovery was dramatic.

“When he got that penicillin in him, boy, his body shot out and the muscles in his arms jumped out,” his boyhood friend, Bill Moseley recalled.

If it was Lovell who was her son’s harshest defender, it was also the rampant alcoholic genes of her family’s DNA that would eventually ruin her son.

Mickey was the big brother who organized the games, made the rules, and played the pranks. He loved country music and was pretty good at playing the guitar, but what he loved most was playing baseball. Under his senior picture in his high school yearbook were the words, “They’re great pals, he and his baseball jacket.” He was also listed as most popular.

Mickey Mantle also wet his bed until he was 16 years old, which had to be embarrassing in a family that lived in such close quarters. Mickey later talked about it in 1969 on Dick Cavett’s show. “ShitIdunno, all I know is I was pissin in my bed,” Mickey told a Washington Post reporter who was writing a story on new treatments for bedwetting. When asked by the reporter if he had ever gone to therapy, Mickey answered, “Hell no, my daddy was a lead miner.”

The coal miner dad drove Mickey like a nail, made him practice every day. Mutt Mantle was a baseball savant ahead of his time in recognizing the future of baseball specialization. He also knew that his son’s talent and personality needed discipline to harvest it. A huge burden was placed on Mickey’s shoulders. If he got out of Commerce, then they’d all get out.

And Mickey Mantle did get out,  but he was weighed down by that burden.

The Last Boy chronicles Mantle’s rise to baseball greatness, his friendship with Roger Maris, the marriage to his high school sweetheart, Merlyn, and the distant relationships he had with his children.

It chronicles his drinking, his whoring, his disrespect for women, his panic attacks, his liver transplant, and the cancer that invaded his left lung. The book exposes the sexual abuse he suffered as a child from his half-sister, Anna Bea, who fondled him in front of her teenage friends. It is not surprising that Anna Bea was never mentioned in any of the interviews Mantle gave about his early years in Commerce.

Mickey Mantle died in Dallas, Texas, on Aug. 13, 1995. His son, David, later wrote:  “Just a little past midnight, an hour he knew so well.”

In the book there’s a picture of Mickey Mantle on the cover of Life Magazine on July 30, 1965. He’s 33 years old and in his 15th year with the New York Yankees. The caption reads, “Mantle’s Misery. He faces physical pain and a fading career.”

I vividly remember that magazine and gazing at the picture of the best-looking guy in the world who was built like a Greek god and came from the state next to mine, Oklahoma.  I was a young mother of 24 then, with the hopefulness of a good and happy life for me and mine. Disappointment and loss had not yet visited me, so I couldn’t imagine how someone so famous and talented could have a care in the world.

•••

Billy Higgins, a professor of history at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, grew up in Fort Smith playing baseball for the Boys’ Club. Like everyone else in the fifties and sixties, he was a fan of Mickey Mantle.

Higgins published his book, “The Barling Darling: Hal Smith in American Baseball,” along with Hal Smith in 2009. Smith was signed by the St. Louis Cardinals and played in the 1959 All-Star Game, one of only two Cardinals to do so that year. He and his wife, Carolyn, reside in Fort Smith. The Barling Darling lived a much admirable and happier life than the boy from Commerce.

The first real book Higgins remembers reading all the way through was “The Land of Oz,”  which he read in the fourth grade. Then he recalls finding “Swiss Family Robinson” at the DuVal Elementary School Library. After that he remembers his mother taking him to the Boston Store book shop where he bought Hardy Boys mysteries.

“Reading became my hobby,” Higgins says. “It whetted my curiosity about people, magic, mysteries, and the world. I am still curious and still reading.”

Higgins is reading “Musial: From Stash to Stan the Man” by James N. Giglio. Other baseball books he’s enjoyed are “Heart of the Game” and “The Luckiest Man.”