C H A P T E R 2

The Mick

As the spring of 1968 began, I knew that year was gonna

be different. The previous year, our freshman baseball

team was a joke. Our team had a record of one win and

seventeen losses—nothing much to be proud of. Sure, we

had lots of characters who weren’t really JV material, and

I didn’t expect a lot of them to try out this year. Dionne,

our left fielder, went out for the golf team. It was just

as well. I mean, he was the only guy I’d ever seen who

thought the strike zone was from the shoe tops to the

knees. But he was deadly. If a pitcher made a mistake and

got one too low to ole Dionne, he’d drive the ball three

hundred feet, and boy, could he put a slice on the ball.

Reggie, our center fielder, didn’t come back either. He said

he wanted to stick with a “real” sport: basketball. Reggie

thought he was an all-around athlete. He thought he

could play baseball, but I thought the real reason he didn’t

go out for the JV team was because he never lived down

the time he tried to make a Willie Mays basket catch of a

line drive. Reggie made the catch all right, but he didn’t

realize that when Willie Mays made his basket catches,

they were always swishes, not bank shots. Poor Reggie

took the line drive squarely on the chest, and the ball

bounced right into his glove. The batter was out, but so

was hot dog Reggie for a whole month with a cracked rib.

I was ready. Of course, I hadn’t stopped practicing

since last season ended. All during the fall, I’d gone to

the batting cages in Brookfield, and during the winter,

I’d worked out down in the cellar. I knew it would be

tough this year. There could be no messing around, and

I wanted to be ready. I did the usual garbage exercises,

including push-ups and sit-ups, both of which I despised.

I’d swing my lead bat about thirty to forty times. I’d also

throw my cement balls, which were pretty great. Maybe

I should patent the idea, I thought. Sell ’em to the Yankees.

Maybe get together with Ellie Howard and sell my cement

balls with his batting doughnuts. Last summer, my father

put a patio in the backyard. While he was working, I put

some of the cement through the holes in some whiffle

balls I had. When they hardened, I had me a few cement

balls. I stored them until the winter, and after the first

snowstorm, I took out the little gems and went up to

the snow-covered field, where I threw them around. I’d

throw them as far as I could. It wasn’t easy to throw

them, but it built up my arm. I was so used to the cement

balls that when the season came along, a normal baseball

felt like a whiffle ball, and unfortunately, when I started

throwing a regular baseball again, it would curve like a

stupid whiffle ball. I’d always had some trouble throwing

the ball straight anyway.

I was going out for shortstop, but my secret desire was

to play center field like the Mick. However, I figured I was

better defensively, and if I was going to make the team,

I’d have to do it with my glove, unless my hitting made a

miraculous improvement. Anyway, the Mick started out

as a shortstop. I was going to continue my switch-hitting,

even though everybody was telling me I should stick with

batting righty. Heck, they were probably right since I

could hardly even hit righty, but I was thickheaded. I

had always been a switch-hitter. I figured I might as well

go down as a switch-hitter. I mean, most of us grew up

as switch-hitters. All of us Yankees fans sure did. Back

when I was a kid, my friends were divided into Yankees

fans and non-Yankees fans, and way out on the outskirts

were the ones who didn’t even like baseball. If you were a

Yankees fan, you had to like the Mick, and since the Mick

was a switch-hitter, well, everybody had to try it. Most

of us were natural righties, so we’d have to learn to bat

lefty. The few guys who were weird enough to be natural

lefties had enough trouble learning to hit lefty with any

coordination to begin with, so they really didn’t try to

imitate the Mick.

I always had the best success switch-hitting, probably

because I was the most dedicated Mickey Mantle fan in

town. Way back when I was four years old, my brother

and I would play the Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra

Game. It was just a dopey game in which my brother

would pretend he was Yogi Berra, and I’d be the Mick,

and we’d whack an old, beat-up tennis ball around the

backyard. Since I was the Mick, I’d have to bat lefty and

righty. So I guessed I kind of had gotten a head start

on everybody, and I guessed that was why I refused to

change. I mean, you couldn’t just go around changing

something you’d been doing for eleven years. I probably

started the switch-hitting craze in our town. When I

started playing Little League, there I was, imitating the

Mick and switch-hitting, so everybody else gave it a try—

except for the lefties. Gradually, as I got older, everybody

kind of gave up on the idea, except me—and I wasn’t

about to when we tried out for JV.

I thought the Mick was the greatest. I mean, that was

an objective opinion. At fifteen, I probably was a little too

old to have baseball players for heroes, but in all honesty,

the Mick was the greatest. Seriously. The first Yankees

game I ever went to was really a big deal, and heck, it

should have been. People made a big deal out of the first

day you walked, your first trip to the stupid dentist, your

first day of school, and all that kind of crap. Well, as far as

I was concerned, none of that even came close to that first

day at Yankee Stadium. Oh, and I knew how my father

liked to make a big deal out of taking his little kids to the

big ballpark in the Bronx. He had to get his kicks about

his little fatherly duty. But heck, it was all right with me.

I felt sorry for any kid with a father who wouldn’t take his

kid out to the big ballpark. Anyway, my father played it

up rather well. It was a summer afternoon when I was six,

and my brother and I were doing—what else?—playing

baseball. We had progressed beyond the Mickey Mantle

and Yogi Berra Game. We were pretending we were other

players, such as Whitey Ford and Hank Bauer. Well, my

father arrived home around his usual time, at about four

o’clock, so we knew we had about an hour before we’d get

the supper call. That was just fine with me because my

brother’s team was beating mine, and I’d need a few more

innings to try to catch up. Well, my father said, “Come

on, boys. Let’s go. Supper’s going to be early tonight.”

I was understandably pissed off and threw away my

bat since I was behind in our game. My brother, though,

was smiling from ear to ear. Not only was he ahead in the

score, but it seemed he had a good idea what my father was

up to. He bolted to the back door and left me—actually,

Hank Bauer—up at the plate with two out and two on

in the bottom of the seventh. I started whining and tore

after him. I just about tackled him at the back door, and

while I was screaming my head off, my father told us to

go wash up, as supper would be early. Then we heard my

mother ask my father if he was going to call Tony. Well,

that did it for my brother. He knew right then because

whenever my father was going to a ball game, he’d ask my

uncle Tony to come. My brother tore into the house, and

I stayed out on the porch, brooding. A few minutes later,

my father came over to the screen door and said, “Hey.

You know, I hear Whitey Ford’s pitching tonight.”

I just sat there and pouted.

“Yeah, and I’d sure hate to miss the first inning,” he

said. “It sure is a long ride over to the stadium. Sure hate

to miss Mickey Mantle’s first at bat.”

Well, that did it. I nearly broke the door down. “We’re

going to Yankee Stadium?” I yelled.

“We sure are,” my dad said, and he picked me up

and spun me around while I practiced my best Yankee

Stadium cheer. I kind of lost my cool, but what the heck?

I was only a little squirt, and that was the biggest day of

my life up to that point.

The rest of the night was one big succession of oohs

and aahs. Ooh, the Holland Tunnel is long. Aah, we just

passed the borderline into New York. It was neat to drive

through the tunnel and see the little sign for New Jersey on

one side and the sign for New York on the other. I always

thought that some guy must have painted some kind of

yellow line down at the bottom of the Hudson River to

divide New Jersey and New York. It was always exciting to

pass from one state to another and was especially exciting

to do so while at the bottom of a river.

Well, when we got to the stadium, there were more

oohs and aahs. Yankee Stadium was positively great. I

would still kind of get goose bumps whenever I went

there afterward. That evening, when we made our way

out from under the grandstand to where we could see the

field, it was beautiful—the huge expanse of green grass,

the beautiful design of the infield, all those blue seats, and

the players down on the field, throwing the balls around

in real life. Afterward, the scene still kind of grabbed me

whenever I thought about it.

The game was pretty tight. Yogi Berra got a two-run

single to put the Yanks ahead in the sixth, which made

my brother’s day. However, the Mick was doing lousy. He

flew out once, then walked, and then struck out twice,

which made me want to crawl under my seat.

My uncle Tony was cheering away with glee. Uncle

Tony was kind of the oddball in the family. Everybody

else, including my father and my other uncles, was a

Yankees fan, except Uncle Tony, who was a Brooklyn

Dodgers fan and then, unfortunately, a Mets fan. Anyway,

Uncle Tony was all right. He was a good baseball fan,

except his loyalties were a little messed up. It must have

been something in his childhood. My father was an old

Joe DiMaggio fan, but he had learned to accept the Mick

as Joe D’s successor. It was good to know that my dad was

there behind me when I really needed him.

Well, the Mick came up in the bottom of the ninth

with one on, two out, and the Yanks losing 4–3. He

worked the count to three and two, and I was so nervous

I could barely watch. Then bam! The Mick hit a rocket

out to deep right-center field! Going! Going! It is gone! Holy

cow! The Mick blasted a fastball halfway up the bleachers

for a game-winning home run. The whole place went wild!

My brother and I jumped around, screaming our heads

off. My dad was on his feet, cheering. Some old geezer in

the row in front of us spilled his beer on a lady next to

him, and she didn’t even seem to mind. Poor old Uncle

Tony just kind of silently sat back. I figured he wished

deep down that he wasn’t cursed with such bad luck as to

be a Brooklyn Dodgers fan and a Mets fan.

The Yankees won the game 5–4. We left the stadium

beaming. We stopped at a crowded souvenir stand, and

my father bought my brother and me each a Yankee

pennant. We got a package of ten autographed Yankee

pictures. I got a Mickey Mantle button, and my brother

got a Yogi Berra button. Then we bought a pen-and-pencil

set with the Yankee emblem, which we said we were going

to give to our mother, but we knew for sure she wouldn’t

really want it, and we’d eventually get it. We tried to get

something for our grandma, but my dad kind of caught

on and said we had enough souvenirs. I was pretty tired

on the ride back home, but I was still glowing inside. I

was snug in the back seat of that big car, with nothing at

all to worry about. The Yanks had won, the Mick was a

hero, and we had another carefree summer day ahead. I

was quiet, and my dad kept turning around to see if we

were asleep. My brother could sleep anywhere, so he was

out like a light, but I was still wide awake. I was content

to gaze out the window and look at the lights of New

Jersey twinkling in the Hudson River as we drove down

the Westside Highway. I had a picture of Mick’s home

run swing in my mind, and I was thinking about how

tomorrow we’d be out in the backyard, whacking around

the old baseball, and I’d try to imitate that beautiful

swing. It had been quite a night. Seriously.