| 
View
 

Mickey Mantle

Page history last edited by MickeyMantle 14 years, 2 months ago

Backround:

Mickey Mantle was born on October 20th, 1931 in Spanvinaw, Oklahoma.  His nationality is American.[1]  He was a baseball player for the Yankees, a Major League BaseballTeam.  He played mainly as an outfielder, but at the beginning of his career he started off at short-stop.  He was first signed by the Yankees when he was only seventeen years old, and went right into Minor League training.  In his first fourteen seasons he won the American League pennant twelve times.  Mickey and the Yankees had also won the World Series seven times.  During these years, he had led the Major League in homeruns of a season high as large as fifty-four.  Mantle was also the twelfth player to win baseball's "Triple Crown."  Later on, he was rewarded an "Most Valuable Player" award.  Mickey Mantle wasn't just any normal Major League baseball player, though.  He had a unique way of hitting every baseball into never before reached areas in the stadium decks.  Sometimes he would even launch balls straight out of the ball park.  Throughout Mickey's successful baseball career, he had overcame many injuries.  His osteomyelitis (a chronic bone infection) was a more difficult situation that Mantle had to deal with for many of his games.  Over a certain period of time, fans came to adore Mickey.  Within the year of 1951, Mickey got married to Merlyn Johnson who was a hometown sweatheart.  Within the first few years of their marriage they had four sons, although most of the time Mantle was absent from their lives because of numerous reasons.  In fact, he spent most of his  nights drinking usually with other teammates, instead of spending quality time with his own family.  This became a problem because in 1957, Mantle and his fellow teammate Billy Martin were involved in a fist-fight  at a New York night club.  Shortly after this event, Martin was traded away mostly because of such bad influence on Mickey.  After his Major League years, Mantle entered a medical clinic, and was soon diagnosed with cancer and cirrhosis of the liver (disease).  Once a year had passed the both the cancer and the diesease got worse, and Mickey Mantle died following a liver transplant on August 13th, 1995.[2] 

 

Signed Picture of Mickey Mantle:

 

"During my 18 years I came to bat almost 10,000 times.  I struck out about 1,700 times and walked, maybe 1,800 times.  You figure a ball player will average about 500 at bats a season.  That means I played 7 years without ever hitting the ball." -Mickey Mantle[3]

 

Mickey Mantle Juice Comercial: 

[4] 

 

Significance:

Mickey Mantle had a very important year in 1957 with his career.  First, Mantle was the twelfth player to win baseball's "Triple Crown" title, also mentioned in the earlier paragraph.  As you can imagine, this was an extremely important event and achievement for Mickey.  At this point, it gave Mantle a big boost in his self-esteem and in his career overall.  A "Triple Crown" title consists of three statistical categories: number of home-runs, RBI's (runs batted in), and finally the batting average.  This showed that Mickey was a leader in the American League that he played for.[5]  To top it off, Mickey Mantle received a "Most Valuable Player Award" too and another in the following year.  Mantle's was voted this, "MVP" award by his teammates for such great personality on the field, and also for how he played in the games.  Towards the beginning of his career it was a little rocky, but after a while he came out to be an intelligent player who consistently played well.  There is no reason why Mickey Mantle didn't deserve this wonderful award.  Sometimes an, "MVP" award is given just for a specific match.  It gets handed out to the player who performed the best.  In other words, it's given to the, "man of the match," and Mickey was definitely this man.  These were two important events in Mickey Mantle's career as a baseball player because most people had doubted what Mickey was made out to be.  After these events occurred though, many of those poeple adjusted their opinions to a much better standard because of how hard he worked to win such great awards.  In conclusion, Mickey was a very triumphant player who created a positive impact on the whole sport of baseball. 

Footnotes

  1. http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/bic1/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow?displayGroupName=K12-Reference&prodId=BIC1&action=e&windowstate=normal&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CK3436600379&mode=view
  2. http://popculture.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1468260?terms=Mickey+MAntle
  3. http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/player.php?p=mantlmi01
  4. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4783207331568992748#
  5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_Triple_Crown

Comments (2)

moonshot said

at 4:48 pm on Sep 23, 2010

This is one of the most interesting articles that I have read. Because I never knew mickey Mantle was this good and I learned about his background information. Very interesting article.

Elvis said

at 5:03 pm on Sep 23, 2010

I thought I knew a lot about Micky Mantle but this article proved me wrong. I liked how this wiki was so detailed.

You don't have permission to comment on this page.