Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Mantle, the recent HBO documentary on the life of Mickey Mantle, was how many full-grown men, well into middle-age, they were able to find who could be brought to the edge of tears in their reminiscences of the Mick. I became a baseball fan as a youth in the '70s, when there was no EA Sports and baseball was still played on the sandlots with the neighborhood kids, but I can think of no figure from that time who would incite such emotion in me now, nor can I imagine today's young fans weeping over the memory of Derek Jeter thirty years hence. Of course, there are two possible reasons for that: either there hasn't since been anyone like Mantle, or the game, and more likely the world, has changed.
Mantle was one of those perfect man for the perfect time in the perfect place stories. The place was New York City, before the rot of the sixties and seventies set in. The time was the fifties, when the post-war media blanketing was new and exciting, not a source jaded by derision.
How deep were the bonds of culture to the idols of the time? — think Elvis and Marilyn. You could manufacture a hero then. You could place a famous face on every product and every street corner and people were impressed. Now we've learned to tune out the PR. Now we're all too cynical to imagine heroes in public life. Instead we manufacture shameless, superficial exhibitionists and congratulate ourselves on our prescient cynicism even as we reap the voyeuristic thrills.
But even with the perfect combination of time and place you still need the man, and Mantle was certainly that. He was an enormously skilled ballplayer with a combination of speed and power that only his cross-town rival Willie Mays could match. He, along with Mays, brought a previously unknown level of athleticism to a game that had been populated by merely average athletes with sets of unique and well-developed skills.
Article comments
1 - Marcey Carver
The media was different back in Mickey Mantle's day. If it was like today, then all the bad boy behavior would be out there and I doubt you would get teary thinking back on Mickey.
As for Derek Jeter, he seems to be more like Joe DiMaggio. In a complicated town, he does his job well, projects positive values on the field and off and he speaks intelligently and carefully.
I think in 30 years my daughter who thinks the world of Jeter now, will get teary eyed when she thinks back on her hero...and believe me heroes are hard for a kid to find these days. There are plenty of jack-asses in sports today. Derek Jeter isn't one of them.