During the 1950s and '60s,
a professional playing centerfield in New York City was on center stage
constantly.
The New York Giants had Willie Mays, the Brooklyn Dodgers had Duke Snider
and the New York Yankees had Mickey Mantle. New York baseball fans had lots
to argue about, and we constantly compared and measured these three outstanding
centerfielders.
Only once I saw a ballgame at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. I'm a Brooklyn
boy. The thought of going into Yankee Stadium smacked of treason in my young
mind. The only way a Brooklyn fan could justify entering Yankee Stadium
or the Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan where the Giants played was if the
Dodgers were the visiting team.
I went to watch the Yankees play the Chicago White Sox.
I didn't like Yankee Stadium. It was too perfect. It was big and geometric.
Its stands sloped comfortably up and away from the playing field the way
the seats in an opera house or a grand theater might.
In the upper decks of Brooklyn's Ebbetts Field, fans practically hung out
over the playing field. Even in the twentieth row of the upper deck if one
leaned too far forward the sensation of falling onto the field arose.
Ebbetts Field was a bandbox,
disorderly and eccentric.
Worse than my feelings of lostness in ``the house that Ruth built,'' however,
was the foreboding I had that everyone in the stadium that day knew I was
out of place, a Brooklyn fan spying on the Yanks.
The White Sox pitcher that day was Bob Shaw, one of the better consistent
pitchers of that era, and he was locked in a pitching duel with a forgotten
Yankee pitcher who left the game in about the sixth inning. The White Sox
held a one-run lead into the ninth.
In the bottom of the ninth, with a man on base, Mickey Mantle, swinging
from the left side, powered a game-winning homer into the right field stands.
As the stadium erupted in joy, I watched Shaw. I'd been silently rooting
for him the whole game.
When Mantle's shot sailed into the stands, Shaw walked to the visitor's
dugout without a gesture, without a change of expression, without a word
or a glance, like a man who'd just heard the five-o'clock whistle and left
his tools where they lay to head for the time clock.
Shaw came back that season and won more games. His attitude when I saw him
spoke volumes about the shades of the game to a boy who hated to lose.
That was the only time I'd seen Mantle play live, and I came away impressed
with the workmanship of the man Mantle had defeated.
Many times I'd seen Mays
and Snider play against each other. I'd listened to all the arguments about
who was the best; I generally held back from those arguments because I saw
greatness in them all.
I won't run statistics and heroics by you. Each of these fine centerfielders
had statistics on his side in some category.
Instead, let me run by you a young boy's impressions.
Willie Mays excelled in excitement. If each of these three players was judged
by untutored skill and enthusiasm for the game, Mays proved the better by
far. Mantle himself gave the edge to Mays.
Mays could hit-- for average and power-- he could throw, he could run and
he could make catches that seemed impossible for other players. Oddly enough,
Mays never seemed to grab the headlines the way Snider and Mantle did. I
wonder if racism played a role in that.
Mays simply didn't get the adoring press that Snider and Mantle got in New
York City.
Snider played slick. A smooth Californian with a lazy summer's day approach
to the game, he made everything look easy-- too easy. In fact, Snider often
was tagged as being lackadaisical. In later years, he admitted he didn't
always hustle the way he should have, didn't always give the heroic extra
effort that the game deserved. He excuses himself as being young. Fans often
thought him uncaring.
Mantle was something of an enigma. He wore lucky number seven. He ran faster
than most men in the game, but he ran in a quirky, almost humorous, manner.
When jogging to the bench or trotting out a homer, Mantle's elbows swung
up and out like the wings of a bird that couldn't quite get airborne, and
his legs churned lightly like those of a man walking on eggs or hot coals.
We knew Mantle had bad
knees, we just never knew how bad; we didn't know that he played hurt most
of his career; we didn't ever read about the braces and bandages that held
him together every day he took the field.
We did know he learned to hit by belting corn cobs around his hometown and
that his father taught him early to bat both right-handed and left-handed.
Mantle was the best switch-hitter we ever knew, although everyone, Casey
Stengel included, seemed to think Mantle played short of his potential.
Now as a man and a journalist, I've been forced to reassess my understanding
of these three stellar centerfielders of my youth.
Mays, Snider and Mantle, it has been disclosed in the decades since they
retired, had their private problems with life off the field.
Mays, who probably played longer than he should have, got connected to gambling
and was rebuked by the baseball profession.
Snider, it was recently disclosed, was involved in tax fraud and trying
to block a government investigation; it's possible he'll go to jail in the
years to come.
Mantle, ever the smiling good ole Okie, finally admitted to alcoholism and
wound up losing his liver and his life.
Despite their shortcomings
of character, I like these ballplayers still, but in death Mantle stepped
up a notch and gave Snider and Mays another challenge to compete against.
In listening to and reading the words of Mantle in his last hard battle
with cancer of the liver, I found new respect for his tardy honesty and
his insight into his own shortcomings.
His teammate, Bobby Richardson, now a lay minister, says Mantle expressed
faith before he died-- another late-inning triumph for the Mick.
My impression is that Mantle's ego died well before he did, and that may
have been his finest hour.
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