The Last Boy (52 page)

Boog Powell

Jim Price

Brooks Robinson

Frank Robinson

Ed Roebuck

John Roseboro
^*

Al Rosen

Red Schoendienst

Lou Sleater

Duke Snider

Alfonso Soriano

Bob Speake

Ted Spencer (Hall of Fame)

Rusty Staub

George Steinbrenner
^*

Charlie Stobbs (son of Chuck Stobbs)

Evan Stobbs (grandson of Chuck Stobbs)

Joyce Stobbs (wife of Chuck Stobbs)

Ron Swoboda

Wayne Terwilliger

Jake Thies

Bobby Thomson

Jeff Torborg

Dick Tracewski

Fred Valentine

Ed Vargo
^*
(umpire)

Mickey Vernon
^*

Bill Virdon

Bob Willis

Eddie Yost

Charles Ane
^*
†

Tod Anton
^†

Walt Babcock

Bill Bagwell

Al Billingsly

Stan Charnofsky
^†

Dave Cesca
^†

Phil Costa

Rod Dedeaux
^*
†

Justin Dedeaux
^†
(batboy)

Lee Dodson

Dan Dollison

Dick Getter

Joan Getter

Tommy Gott

Jack Hasten

Herb Heiserer

Bob Hertel
^†

Ed Hookstratten
^†

Howie Hunt

Don Keeter

Carl Lombardi
^*

Tom Lovrich

Bob Mallon

Nick Najjar

Cal Neeman

Bob Newbill

Dave Newkirk
^*

Dave Rankin
^†

Tom Riach
^*
†

Dean Rothrock

Dick Sanders

Lilburn Smith

Cromer Smotherman

Keith Speck

Joe Stanka

Charlie Weber
^*

Len Wiesner

Mike Witwicki
^*

Joe Barker

LeRoy Bennett

Brent Brassfield

Charles Brinkley
^*

Paul Churchill

Ben Craig

Nick Ferguson

James Haynes

Jim Hays

Don Hicks

Donna Hicks

Lee Jeffrey

Billy Johnson
^*

Irene Keheley

Ben Lee

Charlene Lingo (wife of John Lingo)

Delbert Lovelace

Jim McCorkell

Mike Meier

Bill Mosely
^*

Lee Mosely

Howard Moss
^*

Larry O’Neal

Kim Pace

Wylie Pitts

Ivan Shouse

Sue Sigle

Corrine Smith

Marshall Smith

Paul Thomas

Colleen VonMoss

Jerry VonMoss

Brian Waybright

Bill Whipkey

Jim Abercrombie

Bart Alexander

Carmen Basilio

Ed Beshara, Jr.

Dick Biley

Marjorie Bolding

Tommy Bolt
^*

Roy Clark

John Crouse

Billy Crystal

Bill Dougall

Frank Gifford

Bill Grainger

Jack Hamlin

Darrell Hammie

Kathleen Hampton

Jickey Harwell

Bill Hooten

Linda Fetters Howard

Julie Isaacson
^*

Jack Jackson

Greer Johnson

Warren “Rhubarb” Jones

Katy Klepfer

Mike Klepfer

Bill Liederman

Glenn Lillie

George Lois

John Lowy

George Macris

John Matney

George Matson

Dave McLaurin

Larry Meli

Tom Molito

Wayne Monroe

Ed Nelson

Jimmy Orr

Don Perkins

Frank Petrillo, Jr.

Troy Phillips

Randy Pietro
^*

Dan Reeves

Lon Rosen

Darrell Royal

Dominic Sandifer

Martha Stewart

Pat Summerall

Roy True

Bobby Van

Lanny Wadkins

Roger Wagner

Joe Warren

Dale Wittenberger

Barbara Wolf

Ron Wolf

Bill Abernathy

Henry Akers

Don Arken

Johnny Barnes

Jim Barrett

Paul Berkman

Greg Bischoff

Gail Blackwell

Jack Bottash

Alfonso Brooks

Johnnie Brown

Steve Bryant

Alan Budno

Rosa Burroughs

Glenn Cafaro

Terry Cashman

Pete Cava

Sarah Chase

Will Corbitt

Nelson Diaz

Marv Diemer

Donald Dunaway
^*

Kenneth Dunlap

George Enterline

Sandra Epps

Alan Feinberg

Kimberly Fox

Emilio Furiati

Mike Green

Roberta Green

Kevin Hannon

Bobby Harper

Jim Hartley

Fred Heller

Jerry Holt

Lauretta Jackson

Jim Jay

Jerry Joseph

Walter King

Bob Kleinknect

Bobby Lane

Rob Liebner

Frank Martin

Cathy McCammon

Larry McCosky

Maxine McCollough

Walter McCollough

Steve Meeds

Len Melio

Joe Montanino

Paul Nuzzelese

John Nicolossi

Bill O’Connor

Bernadette O’Donnell

Bruce Orser

Jean Piper

Alicia Pratt

Rahmin Rabenou

Barney Rapp

Ed Rudofsky

Joe Saccoman

Bob Schiewe

Warren Sherman

Mary Ambush Smith

Cecil Stouts

Paul E. Susman

Randall Swearingen

Al Taxerman

Todd Ulitto

Cornelius “Nini” Wooten

Robert Wuhl

Larry Zaback

Maury Allen

Richard Andersen

Dave Anderson

Dave Baldwin

Allen Barra

Jim Belshaw

Alex Belth

Sy Berger

Mike Berkus

Steve Borelli

Talmadge Boston

Sandy Brokaw

Charlie Brotman

Bill Brubaker

Judy Burr

Lonnie Busch

Tom Callahan

Fredrich Cantor

Tony Castro

Bob Costas

Richard Ben Cramer

Robert Creamer

Clay Davenport

Frank Deford

Bill DeOre

Anthony Dohanos

David Falkner

John Fox

Samuel Freedman

Warner Fusselle

Herb Gluck

Tom Goldstein

Hans Gumbrecht

John Hall

Arnold Hano

Bill Handleman
^*

Ernie Harwell
^*

Dick Heller

Clay Henry

Ed Hinton

James Hirsch

Phil Hochberg

Jerry Holtzman
^*

Tom Horton

Stan Isaacs

Jerry Izenberg

Steve Jacobson

Dave Jamieson

Bill Jenkinson

Richard Johnson

Phil Jordan

Christina Karhl

Peter Keating

Aviva Kempner

Erik Kesten

Dave Kindred

Dan Klores

Jack Lang
^*

Robert Lifson

Robert Lipsyte

Jeffrey Lyons

Bill Madden

Murphy Martin
^*

Jeffrey Marx

Gail Mazur

Bill McCaffrey

Terry McCaffrey

Peter Mehlman

Robert Moss

Richard Mueller

T. S. O’Connell

Tim Peeler

Phil Pepe

Robert Pinsky

Angelo Pizzo

Diane Prang

Wendell Redden

Richard Reeves

Vin Russo

Richard Sandomir

Ralph Schoenstein
^*

Matt Schudel

Diane Shah

Glenn Sheeley

Eddie Simon

Curt Smith

Dave Smith

Brad Snyder

Jill Lieber Steeg

Norman Steinberg

Charley Steiner

Glenn Stout

Andy Strasberg

Bert Sugar

Ozzie Sweet

John Thorn

Calvin Trillin

George Vecsey

David Vincent

Anvil Welch

Howard Williams

Warner Wolf

Bob Wolff

Phil Wood

Vic Ziegel
^*

Daniel Zwerdling

Robert Adair

Mike Anderson

Dave Bary

Beth Bryant (daughter of Dan Yancey)

Arthur Caplan

Jennifer Coleman

Christine Courtois

Arthur DeLarios, MD

Steve Donohue

George Ehrlich, MD

Amy Engelsman

Robert Fine, MD

Richard Gartner

Andrew Gaynor (son of Sidney Gaynor)

Deborah Gaynor (daughter of Sidney Gaynor)

Rob Gray

Mark Greenberg

Stephen Haas, MD

Carole Horn, MD

Thomas Jacobson, MD

Scott Kahan, MD

Eric Kandel, MD

Ed Keheley

Göran Klintmalm, MD

Stan Krukowski

Kenneth V. Luza

David Mulligan, MD

Alan Nathan

John Neuberger

Joel Newman

J. Mark Osborn, MD

Preston Peavy

David Pelcovitz

Marilyn Pink

Don Porter (brother-in-law of Sidney Gaynor)

Cecil Priebe, MD

Dave Ringer, MD

Greg Rybarczyk

Don Seeger

Benjamin Shaffer, MD

Pam Silvestri

Merrie Spaeth

Frank Sundstrom, MD

Kenneth Thompson, MD

Barbara Weinschel, MD

David Whitney

Frank Wood

Dillard Worthy

Alice Yancey (daughter of Dan Yancey)

Mark Zibilich, MD

Faye Davis

Barbara DeLise

Pauline Klineline

Danny Mantle

David Mantle

Larry Mantle

Max Mantle

Merlyn Mantle
^*

Jimmy Richardson

T
ED
W
ILLIAMS WAS WRONG
. The hardest thing in sports isn’t hitting a baseball—the hardest thing in sports is hitting a baseball equally well from both sides of the plate. That doesn’t stop parents from begging hitting coaches like former major leaguer Mike Epstein,
Make my boy a switch-hitter
. “They all say the same thing,” Epstein said. “ ‘Well, you know, Mickey Mantle…’”

Epstein tries to break the news gently: there was only one Mickey Mantle.

Joe DiMaggio was wrong, too, when he told the
San Francisco Chronicle
in 1951: “He’s the only switch-hitter I ever saw that has the same stance and mannerisms from both sides of the plate—hits the ball the same way, strides the same, hits equally hard from left or right.”

There may have been only one Mantle, but he was two very different hitters, right-handed and left-handed. In an effort to illustrate the differences—to show how he generated his power, as well as to highlight the strengths that distinguished him and some of the tendencies that contributed
to his physical deterioration—I asked hitting coach Preston Peavy to produce a set of mini-films called kinematics for Mantle the way he does for students at Peavy Baseball in Atlanta, Georgia. Peavy, who works with youth, high school, and college players, uses his motion-analysis system to convert high-speed videotape into computer-generated stick figures that move through space like animated cartoon characters. Similar technology is used throughout the country at golf schools and by major league baseball teams. Kinematics allow coaches to see a hitter’s form in its purest state, to offer guidance when “mechanics” go awry and to illustrate when things are working right.

Creating a kinetic Mick wasn’t easy, which may be why it hasn’t—to the best of my knowledge—been attempted before. Although Mantle was the most telegenic and most televised ballplayer of his time, the quality of much of the available footage wasn’t good enough for analysis. Peavy screened hours of film and video that I collected in order to cull ten to fifteen of Mantle’s best swings. To create the kinetics, he picked the most representative of them: a right-handed swing from the 1959 Home Run Derby with Willie Mays, and a left-handed swing from George Roy’s 2005 HBO film
Mantle
.

Today, Peavy would have hundreds of swings from which to discern a pattern. Obviously, no analysis based on one swing can be definitive. But Claude Osteen, who spent eighteen years in the major leagues as a pitcher and fifteen more as a pitching coach, was impressed when he reviewed the kinematics at my request. He knew intuitively and from experience (Mantle batted .533 against Osteen with a double, a home run, and a slugging percentage of .800) that Mantle was a very different hitter from the left and right side. “You have a perception in your mind of the kind of hitter he was both ways, but the silhouettes prove it,” he said. “The difference was extreme, but you couldn’t see it with the naked eye. I didn’t think the differences would be as extreme as they were.”

According to the
Oxford English Dictionary
, the first use of the word
swing
as a noun, meaning “to stroke with a weapon” dates from 1375. The act of swinging—instinctive in children and habitual to manual laborers—must conform to the laws of physics in order to generate power and leverage. “Cavemen who needed to be able to throw rocks to protect themselves discovered that if they put a lever under a rock, it went
farther,” said Marilyn Pink, Ph.D., P.T., who has studied batting and throwing biomechanics in conjunction with team doctors. “The principle is the same in all ground reaction sports—pitching, batting, and golfing. All the power is generated from the lower leg. Good batters have huge butts because they have huge muscles back there. There has to be a stable tube, a rigid pipe, for the power to go through. The trunk muscles have to be firm so that the energy isn’t dissipated through wiggly muscles.”