Measuring Mantle Author Strips Away The Layers Of Hype And Mystique Around Mickey Mantle To Reveal A Foundation Of Insecurity

“The Last Hero: The Life of Mickey Mantle” By David Falkner (Simon & Schuster, 255 pages, $24)

When Mickey Mantle entered the Betty Ford Center to combat his drinking problem, and when he entered the hospital 17 months later with liver cancer, many people reacted with a surprising cynicism and callousness that hardly seemed warranted for one of baseball’s greatest and most popular stars.

Those detractors, who said the home run (and strikeout) king deserved his fate because of his decades of excessive drinking and the accompanying cases of boorish behavior, would better understand the forces that shaped - and the demons that chased - the New York Yankee great by reading David Falkner’s new book, “The Last Hero: The Life of Mickey Mantle.”

Mantle’s fear of dying before age 40 - his father, grandfather and two uncles had died young of Hodgkin’s disease - has been well-documented. But when his cousins describe what it was like growing up and watching a generation of Mantle men die prematurely, Mantle’s obsession and lack of self-regard become real.

A cousin, Ron, recalls the death of Emmett Mantle, the youngest and last of the Mantle brothers who included Mickey’s father, Mutt:

“We were all together, and this doctor came along and said to us … it would be interesting to see if the cancer carried on to the next generation. Well, I know it scared the hell out of all of us at the time because all those men in our family had died in their thirties, and that didn’t leave much sense of security. And I know that hit Mick the hardest because he was so much more sensitive than the rest of us.”

Mantle also drank excessively as a way of coping with the tremendous pressure he felt playing the national pastime in the baseball and media capital of the world. He thought of himself as - and wanted to be - just one of the guys, so he never understood the phenomenon of being a celebrity.

Yet his humility was one of his most endearing qualities. Teammates and opponents universally liked him. He treated them, and the game, with respect. He would never show up an opponent by strutting or showboating like Barry Bonds or “Neon” Deion Sanders.

Mantle’s mystique also stemmed from his physicality. Other professional players marveled at his size, strength and speed. He was a Bo Jackson or an Eric Lindros who stood out from his contemporaries like a man among boys.

Yet this same physical specimen who was blessed with so much natural athletic ability was plagued by crippling injuries throughout his career. His ability to withstand and play with pain further impressed and inspired those around him. He, however, did not think he was doing anything special; rather than use his suffering as an excuse, he tried to keep mention of it out of the media.

While “The Last Hero” covers Mantle’s career from his peewee days through 18 seasons with the Yankees to his enshrinement in the Hall of Fame, David Falkner did not write a baseball book. There is no listing of Mantle’s statistics, and many career highlights are mentioned only in passing.

Rather, Falkner succeeds in portraying Mickey Mantle the superstar and then stripping away the layers of image and hype until he reaches Mickey Mantle the insecure and fearful man.

Falkner talks to Mantle’s former teammates, opponents, coaches, scouts and bosses to paint the picture of Mantle’s life outside the white lines. But the book’s strength lies in the first three chapters, when Falkner talks to Mantle’s relatives about growing up in a rural Oklahoma coal-mining region, and in the last three chapters, when relatives, friends and old buddies describe the changes Mantle made in his personality and his life.

The controversy surrounding Mantle’s liver transplant is barely mentioned, but Falkner does document Mantle’s last days. As for Mantle’s legacy, Falkner says:

“Mantle believed he could never make amends for the life he felt he had wasted; that was his torment, his boundary… . The miracle of his last days was that in them he transformed his life, and made himself into an even more enduring kind of hero.”

Hardly someone deserving of the public’s scorn or ridicule.