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Repairing the despair

Booze. Sex. Redemption. 7: The Mickey Mantle Novel revisits the legend's earthly failings by using an unconventional approach.

By WILLIAM MCKEEN
Published April 3, 2007

I can't remember what I'm supposed to pick up from the store on the way home tonight, but I can tell you the lineup of the 1961 Yankees: Whitey Ford on the mound, Elston Howard behind the plate. Boyer at third, Kubek at short, Richardson at second and the Moose at first. In the outfield: Yogi in left, Maris in right, and Mickey Mantle in dead center.

Mantle was the hero for millions of boys in the 1960s. He was heir to the King Yankee legacy of Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio and seemed like the kind of affable all-American boy that every kid wanted to be.

But then the reputation got tarnished. Ball Four, a 1969 tell-all book by Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton, portrayed the Major League life on the road as one long booze-filled orgy, with Mantle as the most voracious of the horndogs.

That revelation was followed by a couple decades' worth of stories of Mantle as the bitter ex-ballplayer, actively rude to fans at card shows, a sometimes-violent drunk terrorizing the strip clubs of North America.

Mantle was already a tragic figure, even without the slavery of booze. A symphony of injuries meant that he played hurt most of his career, and, great as he was on the field, he was haunted by the ghosts of how great he might have been.

He died in 1995 after decades of alcohol abuse. Now, 12 years later, St. Petersburg author Peter Golenbock has written 7, subtitled The Mickey Mantle Novel.

Golenbock is a prolific writer about sports, and several of his books - Balls, The Bronx Zoo, Red Sox Nation - have been bestsellers. He could have played it straight with the Mickey Mantle story and done a biography. But he chose to write the story in Mantle's voice, and so it's fiction by definition.

Golenbock says most of what comes out of the mouth of the character Mickey Mantle is true to what the man himself would have said - and he interviewed Mantle (and many of his friends) enough to know.

So what's the deal here?

It's hard to say. There's the salacious part of this story - and the fact that the book got caught up in the whole Judith Regan-O.J. Simpson "confession book" mess. When HarperCollins kissed off Regan and her often-sleazy ReganBooks imprint, Golenbock's novel was thrown into publishing limbo. Now it's being published by another company but still has that ReganBooks taint.

And all of the sex in the book adds to the sleaziness. The first hundred pages read like a womanizer's diary. On every page, Mantle enjoys the carnal pleasures of flight attendants, fans and even the soon-to-be-wife of teammate Joe DiMaggio: Marilyn Monroe.

Mantle and teammate Billy Martin were both sex addicts: They liked it, they liked it a lot and they liked it often. They also liked multiple partners, twin sisters if possible, and there had to be lots of booze.

It gets old. You read the book and you wonder: Does the dude ever talk about baseball?

Yet at the same time . . . there's a heart to this book. Mantle is telling his story in heaven, and he knows it's time for forgiveness. So he tracks down Leonard Schecter, Bouton's co-author on Ball Four, and apologizes to him and all of the other sportswriters he despised.

Schecter becomes Mantle's father confessor. They sit at a table in heaven that looks suspiciously like Toots Shor's New York saloon as the ballplayer looks back on his life. Like all great athletes, Mantle can dissect almost every moment on the playing field, so eventually there is a lot of baseball talk. There's a lot of sex, too. The warning label on the cover isn't a joke. If you idealized the grinning icon Mickey Mantle, then stay away. You wouldn't recognize this guy.

But somehow, during the course of this novel, this unfeeling, callous jerk becomes a lovable character. So much of his life was a misunderstanding. He was rude to fans because he thought they wanted something from him. Turns out all they wanted was to love him. He was monstrously cruel to his wife, who repaid him with a lifetime of love and loyalty. Turns out all she wanted was to love him.

Mantle went through life with a chip the size of Oklahoma on his shoulder, and when it was all over, what had he done? He was a great ballplayer, but an amateur husband and father.

It's the Mickey Mantle we all saw at the end of his life who narrates this novel. As he faced a death brought on by a lifetime of alcohol abuse, he spoke through the press to his millions of fans. He apologized for his rudeness to fans and for his epic bad behavior.

He finally acknowledged that he had been what he said he did not want to be: a role model. Now, he said, he embraced that position, because he had a message. "Don't be like me," he said.

And at that point, few could argue that Mickey Mantle was a hero.

What makes 7 ultimately endearing is that it's that Mickey Mantle who tells the story, and - despite it all - you can't help but love the guy.

William McKeen teaches journalism at the University of Florida.

*   *   *

7: The Mickey Mantle Novel

By Peter Golenbock

Lyons Press, 286 pages, $24.95

REVIEW BY WILLIAM MCKEEN

ON THE WEB

All about Mantle

Golenbock discusses his latest book and his friendship with No. 7 at mrmedia.com. At left, scroll down and click on "Peter Golenbock/7: The Mickey Mantle Novel."

[Last modified April 3, 2007, 07:32:18]