Author: David Shama

AAA Minneapolis should consider an endorsement deal with NFL star Larry Fitzgerald Jr., a Minneapolitan who loves to travel.

Does Gophers coach Tubby Smith realize that the players who transferred and the ones that are still here but disappoint him are his recruits?

Wonder if Tony Oliva misses the old family farm in Cuba during these Minnesota winters?

Does Joe Mauer ever get lost in his new Florida mansion?

Could former Twin Carlos Gomez run faster backward than Delmon Young does forward?

Two ways to screw up the Target Field money machine: put bad teams on the field or lose fan favorites like Justin Morneau.

Don’t count on the marquee football foursome of Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio State and Penn State pulling the newly organized Big Ten even with the mighty Southeastern Conference.

Wake me up when the U has winning teams in football, basketball and hockey, and the women’s basketball program breaks even financially.

Happy birthdays this week to Wolves broadcaster Jim Petersen, 49, and KARE 11 sportscaster Dave Schwartz, 32.

This is no ordinary February for those who revere Mickey Mantle.

It was 60 years ago this winter that “The Mick” first went to spring training with the Yankees.  In 1951 he was 19, Godly gifted and already being crowned a “wonder boy.”

It was also the last year of Mantle’s life when he would be healthy.  The Oklahoma son of a miner raised to switch hit, Mantle was destined to be a great baseball player from the time of his birth when he was named Mickey after hall of fame catcher Mickey Cochran.

By the time the Yankees were barnstorming in late March of 1951, the Mantle legend had begun.  Playing against the USC Trojans in Los Angeles, Mantle hit two towering home runs, including one that may have travelled over 600 feet.  USC coach Rod Dedeaux and other onlookers were amazed as they watched Mantle’s power during a perfect 4-for-4 day at bat.

“The greatest show in history,” Dedeaux said in Jane Leavy’s extraordinary book, The Last Boy, Mickey Mantle.

Mantle started the season with the Yankees but by summer had been sent to the minors to polish his batting.  He earned his way back to the Yankees later in the season and played in his first World Series in October of 1951 against the New York Giants.  In one of the most famous and tragic plays in baseball history, Mantle tripped on an outfield drain pipe cover and had to be carried off the field on a stretcher.

Mantle’s badly injured right knee would never be the same, nor would his potential.  Decades ago medical procedures were archaic compared with today and he played his 18 year big league career victimized by physical problems, at times almost playing on one leg and at least once with blood drenching his uniform.

I don’t remember the early years of Mantle’s career but by the late 1950s he mesmerized me and millions more.  He was blond, handsome and had forearms to be envied by a blacksmith.  No player ever filled out a uniform more perfectly than Mantle.

Switch hitting was a phenomenon that swept across the ball fields of America in the 1950s and 1960s. I learned to be a switch hitter because of Mantle.  It didn’t motivate me that it was an advantage when hitting against both left-handed and right-handed pitching.  You batted on both sides of the plate because that’s the way Mantle did it.

He was that cool.  So cool that Emmy Award winning broadcaster Bob Costas carried a Mantle baseball trading card in his wallet.  So special that Billy Crystal said he spoke in an Oklahoma drawl at his bar mitzvah.  So extraordinary that Mantle’s 1952 Topps Baseball Card has for years been the most valuable of all post-World War II trading cards.

The opportunity to see Mantle was never to be missed, even on TV.  Close your eyes and you can still see No. 7 coming to the plate in Yankee Stadium.  In his wonderful baritone voice, legendary public announcer Bob Sheppard says, “No. 7 Mickey Mantle. No.7.”   It is the voice of God introducing a superhero.

By the 1960’s, when major league baseball was first being played here, you weren’t sure if Mantle’s afflictions would keep him from playing against the Twins at Metropolitan Stadium.  The stands were packed when the Yankees were in town and there was reverence when Mantle came to the plate.

Mantle was often booed early in his career but by 1961 he was a hero to most baseball fans throughout the country.  Critics went after Mantle in the early years because he didn’t measure up to their expectations.  Hyped as potentially the greatest player of all time meant that a .300 season and 40 home runs weren’t good enough.

Mantle hushed a lot of the boos in 1956, his best season.  Not yet 25, he won baseball’s revered Triple Crown hitting .353, with 52 home runs and 130 RBI.  Back then Mantle could run better than in his later years and he had yet to injure his right throwing arm that was among the strongest in baseball.

Hall of Fame manager Whitey Herzog was a big league player during much of Mantle’s era including 1956.  He followed a center fielder and base runner who could run and throw with baseball’s best, and a batter that flirted with a .400 average, hit home runs more frequently than anybody playing, and sometimes slugged balls so far nobody was sure where they landed.

“Nobody could play baseball better than Mickey Mantle played in it in 1956,” Herzog said in Jane Leavy’s book.

But even that year didn’t win over the more irrational Mantle critics.  When he hit .365 in 1957 and “only” 34 home runs, there were fans who wanted more.  And there were people who never accepted the Army draft board verdict that Mantle was exempted from military service because of his osteomyelitis.  “If he can play baseball, why can’t he be in the Army,” they growled.