Mickey Mantle Research Articles

The hardest-hit home run?

We present a problem to be assigned or done as an in-class activity in an upper-division undergraduate course on computational physics. The problem involves a home run hit by Mickey Mantle on May 22, 1963, which he famously called “the hardest ball I ever hit.” Is this home run truly one for the record books, or has it been eclipsed by players in the modern era? Modeling the trajectory of a baseball involves consideration of both wind resistance and the Magnus effect and is an interesting application of numerical solutions to ordinary differential equations. Ultimately, the answer is that Mantle would compare favorably to the most powerful batters currently playing, but to arrive at that conclusion we must reflect on the plausibility of results and sources of uncertainty.

The Boy of Summer: The Art and Anger of Roger Kahn

The Boy of SummerThe Art and Anger of Roger Kahn Mitchell Nathanson (bio) In the summer of 1970, the future came to America’s pastime. It arrived in the form of, of all things, a book. This one was titled Ball Four, and its renegade author, Jim Bouton, used it as the medium by which he intended to shake a game that had grown stale out of its seemingly perpetual doldrums. Reaction to it was swift and extreme, with much of it coming weeks before the book even hit the shelves. This was largely the result of the work of his editor, former newspaperman Leonard Shecter, who placed an advance, titillating excerpt of it in Look magazine, making sure to include as many spicy scenes as he could shoehorn into it to juice sales of the forthcoming book through conversation, debate, outrage, and praise.1 He was successful on all counts. Before Look readers could even turn the page twice, they read about a hungover Mickey Mantle hitting a pinch-hit home run and pushing little children away as they begged him for his autograph and about players faking injuries and milking their contrived lameness for applause. Quickly on the heels of those stories came accounts of players cheating on their wives and “beaver shooting” on the roof of the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC. Tales of “greenies” and make-out sessions with airline stewardesses followed those, and then, when it seemed as if there were no revelations left to expose in the few paragraphs remaining in the piece, boom! The game’s ultimate taboo was broached through a story of drunk players kissing each other on the team buses and planes.2 And this was just the first excerpt. Even more was guaranteed in the follow-up, promised two weeks hence.3 The excerpt, along with the book that arrived in bookstores just in time for Father’s Day, succeeded spectacularly. While it ruffled the feathers of the players who were exposed and the old guard baseball men who protected them and their now tarnished images, it was hailed by most others, including a large swath of the literati, as a generation-defining success.4 This was not baseball writing per se; rather, it was a piece of writing that just happened [End Page 97] to use baseball as its canvas. In this it was hailed as revolutionary. And given the revolutionary nature of the times, it was, at last, a baseball work that felt like it was pushing forward rather than reaching back. The future had come to sportswriting, and for the legion of Ball Four fans, not a moment too soon. One writer, who was unquestionably not of the old guard or the protector of the clay-footed heroes now exposed and who himself was considered not merely a baseball writer but a writer who painted in baseball, was most definitely not amused by what he had read, however. His pique took a half year to make its way into print, but when it did, it landed with not only a bang but a veiled proclamation that a counterpunch was coming. Writing in the December 1970 edition of Esquire, Roger Kahn, late of the itself late New York Herald Tribune and frequent commentator on not merely baseball but the world it inhabited, announced that he, like Bouton, found traditional baseball writing stodgy, boring, and worst of all, fake. The ghostwritten jock pseudo-diary format, which Ball Four had blown to bits, was a piece of trite fiction passing as vanilla fact that needed to go, Kahn wrote. These works “promised to the public inside tips from the secret life of Babe Ruth, Dizzy Dean and Warren Spahn. This was (and is) questionable business. Ballplayers are unlikely to tell on themselves, even for cash advances.”5 Recalling one such piece that ran under Casey Stengel’s byline (but was actually written by someone else), Kahn wrote that the resulting read was “pale as beer foam and just about as substantial. The old man appreciated the money but was damned if he was going to tell about drink, cash and other hard elements in his epochal life. He...

A Season in the Sun: The Rise of Mickey Mantle

A Season in the Sun: The Rise of Mickey Mantle

Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams Hitting a Baseball

This paper interprets the batting styles of Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams utilizing key concepts of the Michael Polanyi Reader. In doing so it demonstrates the thoughtful organization of Polanyi’s work in the Reader, on the one hand, and the explanatory and descriptive power of Polanyi’s thought about practices on the other. Key Polanyi concepts utilized in this paper include: indwelling, the specifiable and the unspecifiable, connoisseurship, a-critical and critical judgment, knowledge and knowing as action, understanding, and commitment with its personal and universal poles.

The "Sucker List" and the Evolution of American Business Fraud

The "Sucker List" and the Evolution of American Business Fraud Edward J. Balleisen (bio) in the early 1950S, mickey mantle burst onto the american sporting scene as a power-hitting outfielder for the New York Yankees. After a bumpy first year in the majors in 1951, this young man from rural Oklahoma soon became a star, attracting close attention from fans, the press, and promoters of all kinds. As a 1957 article in the Saturday Evening Post recounted, Mantle proved especially willing to listen to the pitchmen who promised to multiply his new sources of income. Within a mere week of arriving in New York City, he had signed a contract with a predatory agent who generously promised to secure all manner of endorsement and business deals, modestly reserving a full 50 percent of Mantle's earnings. Over the next few years, the Yankee phenom periodically took flyers on a series of ill-advised investments, including $3500 ($1000 paid in cash, the rest through a promissory note) for shares in a fake Oklahoma insurance company, hawked by a notorious sharper "who had served three prison terms and had an 'FBI file an inch thick.'" Mantle's remarkable lack of financial acumen meant that he "led the sucker list." And yet, the Saturday Evening Post profile also noted that Mantle learned from his mistakes rather quickly. By 1957, he had employed a reputable agent who identified excellent endorsement opportunities, which dramatically increased his income (Povich 1957, 19–20). This vignette incorporates several key features of the broader history of deception and misrepresentation in American marketplaces. [End Page 699] In the young Mantle, one can see several stock figures: the country bumpkin, the callow youth, and the credulous celebrity, but also the savvy pupil who became "more wise" through instruction in the school of wily charades. In the brief depiction of those who eagerly sized up Mantle and took advantage of him, one gets a sense of the omnipresent American snake-oil salesmen who have found fertile ground in a society that has often celebrated entrepreneurial innovation and aggressive marketing. That same discussion hints at the steady growth of antifraud institutions that took aim at duplicitous economic actors, shared intelligence about them across government agencies and jurisdictions, and at least sometimes curtailed their capacity to operate. Taken as a whole, the Saturday Evening Post article contributed to a longstanding public discourse about all the lies lurking throughout American commerce, a dialogue that sought to caution consumers and investors but simultaneously offered pointers to those who would deceive. A SONG OF SAFETY My morning mail is a penance to me. Long, fat envelopes meet my eyes, Filled with advice that is proffered free, Telling of many a wondrous prize. Old hooks baited with new disguise, Bundles of bunkum, a daily grist, New revamping of same old lies—PLEASE take my name off the Sucker List! Hawkers from Maine to the western sea, Selling unsalable merchandise. Proffer me many a golden key—Me, who've been bitten in too many buys. Towers with no roof but the bright blue skies, You and my earnings good-by I've kissed! I have sought plums in poor fruitless pies—Please take MY name off the Sucker List! Booms in oil? (bring my snickersnee!) Rising industrials? Let 'em rise! All my visions of Araby Are gone where the last year's bird's nest lies. I'm a year older—I hope more wise! Dreams of Golconda? I can resist. Buy for a fall? Then watch things rise! Please take my name OFF the sucker list! ENVOI Prints and pamphlets, circulars free, That paper the nation so lavishly. Let me alone. You'll never be missed! PLEASE TAKE MY NAME OFF THE SUCKER LIST! —Anonymous, Logansport Pharos-Tribune, Jan. 13,1926 The Mantle profile also referenced, without comment, a specific tool of duplicitous marketing: the "sucker list." Rosters of easy marks, compiled by and circulated among the purveyors of consumer fraud and [End Page 700] get-rich-quick schemes, have been around for at least a century and a half, and have become a mainstay of commercial duplicity in the United States. The emergence and evolution of...

Mantle—The Best There Ever Was by Tony Castro

Reviewed by: Mantle—The Best There Ever Was by Tony Castro Rob Sheinkopf Tony Castro. Mantle—The Best There Ever Was. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. 239 pp. Cloth, $24.95. Since 1951 when Mickey Mantle came into the American consciousness, hundreds of books have been written detailing virtually every aspect of his life. Even more have been published since his death in August 1995, including three by Tony Castro. So much has been written about Mantle's legendary New York Yankees Hall of Fame career and his relationship with teammates Joe DiMaggio, Billy Martin, Roger Maris, and Whitey Ford. We've heard countless stories about his humble beginnings, about his relationship with his father, Mutt, and the influence he had on Mickey's development, his notorious womanizing and extra-marital affairs, his bout with alcoholism and his lewd behavior, his rehabilitation and recovery, and his heroic final chapter when he took responsibility for his failures in life and finally became the role model people wanted him to be as a ballplayer. Tony Castro's Mantle—The Best There Ever Was tells us so much of what we already know, which should not be surprising since Mickey Mantle has been dead for nearly a quarter of a century. So, what could possibly be new about Mickey Mantle? Castro introduces hundreds of interviews with former teammates, friends and family, and some newly released interviews from [End Page 130] Mickey's widow, Merlyn Mantle, that reveal an even more troubled, flawed character than we might wish to remember. The author's promise to Merlyn that he wouldn't publish their conversations until after her death (at age seventy-seven from Alzheimer's Disease), delayed our understanding of her reasons for staying in a marriage that seems to have obviously ended many years before. Revealing the interviews with Mickey's wife of forty-four years and providing first-hand accounts of conversations with his long-time friend, Mickey Mantle, Castro provides some new perspectives on a lifetime that has been dissected, analyzed, and studied to death for nearly seventy years. The many interviews and the author's accounts of personal conversations with Mickey Mantle gives readers new details and a fresh perspective of his well-documented, turbulent personal life. We learned that Mickey was sexually abused as a child by his half-sister, Anna Bea, and that he wet his bed until he was sixteen years old. And while we knew of his father's strict parenting and coaching, we learned troubling details about Lovell, his mother, and her dark side, even meanness toward her grandchildren. In fact, "Merlyn Mantle would go to her grave convinced that Mutt's overbearing fathering unchecked by Lovell's own detached manner left Mickey emotionally and psychologically traumatized, and unable to turn even to his loved ones for help" (44). Merlyn attributed Mickey's "affairs, his one-night stands, the crude and vulgar language he used around women when he drank" to the molestation from Anna Bea, a traumatic scarring that lasted him a lifetime (45). While engaged to Merlyn Johnson when he joined the Yankees in 1951, Mickey met the love of his life, Holly Brooke, a young divorced mother from New Jersey, with whom he would carry on a love affair even after his marriage to Merlyn later that year and throughout his baseball career. Many biographers over the years tried to interview Holly but were unable to locate her, and some concluded that she was no longer living. But Castro was finally able to find Holly through one of her nephews, and they established a decade-long friendship until her death in 2018 at age ninety-four. The conversations with Holly were invaluable in providing "an important missing link to Mantle from his rookie year," according to Castro (229). Holly apparently "was blessed with an incredible memory and a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of New York in that golden age," and gave many new insights, including her memories and insights into Mantle's "friendship" with Joe DiMaggio. Her recollections of Mantle and DiMaggio's relationship are corroborated by Merlyn and by Greer Johnson, Mickey's companion for the final decade of his life, as well...

Long-Distance Love Affair, or How to Root for a Team That's Three Thousand Miles Away

Long-Distance Love Affair, or How to Root for a Team That's Three Thousand Miles Away Paul Hensler (bio) As a lifelong Connectican whose first baseball idol was Mickey Mantle, I was possessed of a fandom that wandered from the New York Yankees in early 1967, to Boston later that year when the Red Sox survived a four-team scramble to win the American League pennant—and almost capture the World Series—and then back to New York in 1969 when the Mets stunned the Baltimore Orioles in the fall classic. With three major league franchises in such close proximity to my hometown, there is a natural inclination for others to assume that one of them is my team of choice. However, when a baseball conversation prompts the question of which club I root for—a group currently titled the Los Angeles Angels—that answer elicits a follow-up query. "Oh, you're from California?" My reply can only be sufficient by way of what follows. After divulging that I've lived in Connecticut my entire life, I explain a number of factors that entered into my confounding selection that occurred in 1970, give or take a year. In the late 1960s, the California Angels—and we'll revisit that name in a bit—were a mediocre team, but their shortstop, Jim Fregosi, was one of the better players at his position, and his keystone partner, Bobby Knoop, wasn't too shabby either. The supporting cast, however, was only fair to middling, so the Angels were destined to be a .500 team. Yet they displayed one sartorial dash that was unique: an actual halo of white that was stitched into the caps they wore. The navy panels of the hats were augmented by a bright red bill, and the white interlocking "CA" at the front made this headgear pretty classy looking, so classy, in fact, that I commandeered a copy of The Sporting News, and got Mom write a check to accompany the coupon [End Page 99] to be sent to a sporting goods dealer—in Chicago, if memory serves—for an Angels cap. After the passage of requisite time, a shoebox-sized carton arrived in the mail, and my excitement was at a level akin to Christmas morning. I couldn't wait to open the package and proudly outfit my pate with my halo-crested cap. Imagine my reaction when I uncrated the contents and discovered that the much-awaited item, while remaining faithful to the color scheme, featured two crushing revisions. Missing was the "CA," its space now occupied by an elongated lower-case "a," but worst of all was the absence of the cherished halo once adorning the top. Well, the halo wasn't completely gone, but it had become miniaturized and placed at a jaunty angle as if to be hanging from the top left of the new "a." Crestfallen but still loyal, I soon after broke out a little bottle of white Testor's model paint and did my own retro-update of the original halo around the top, the new reality and authenticity be damned. With the cap now conforming to my stilted standard, it was time to embark on the business of root, root, rooting for my home team, though located on the other side of the country. In an era predating the arrival of the internet, this posed a serious challenge to finding out the scores of many games, especially those played at night in Anaheim. Our most important local newspaper printed morning and afternoon editions, but you could always count on the composite posting of results to look like this, from May 14, 1976: Boston 2, Milwaukee 1 Baltimore 6, New York 2 Cleveland 6, Detroit 3 Kansas City 7, Chicago 1 Minnesota at California, late Texas at Oakland, late If the game—any game, for that matter—wasn't completed by 11:00 p.m., press time for the morning paper, that result would receive the "late" designation, and if you could hold out for the afternoon newspaper, at least you had the opportunity to catch up on the score. But unless the Yankees or Red Sox were involved...

Mickey Mantle: The Commerce Comet by Jonah Winter

Reviewed by: Mickey Mantle: The Commerce Comet by Jonah Winter Elizabeth Bush Winter, Jonah Mickey Mantle: The Commerce Comet; illus. by C. F. Payne. Schwartz & Wade, 2017 [34p] Library ed. ISBN 978-1-101-93353-4 $20.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-101-93352-7 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 3-5 Here, kids, is the guy your grandparents talk about from back in the day: the Yankee switch hitter who demolished records; the slugger who inspired the term “tape measure home run”; the Mick. In Winter’s latest entry in his string of picture-book baseball bios, however, Mantle’s also the guy who was pushed into baseball by his demanding father, and who realized his talent was diminished following an on-field injury: “Turns out Mickey’s right knee has basically become detached from his ligaments. . . . After this, he would never be as fast, and he would always be in pain.” If kids read the author’s note facing the title page, they’ll learn the tragedy behind the legend, that Mantle was sexually abused as a child, struggled with alcoholism as an adult, and was a professional disappointment to Yankee manager Casey Stengel. Given this complicated history, there is a tone of something close to melancholy that darkens this title and sets it apart from Winter’s works on Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, etc. Even Payne’s signature monumental caricatures, which often evoke grins and chuckles, do not mask the pain, nor should they. Mantle’s story is about a different kind of strength than power hitting: “To watch a guy do what he did, with that body, could take your breath away.” Copyright © 2017 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Convict Cowboys: The Untold History of the Texas Prison Rodeo by Mitchel P. Roth

Reviewed by: Convict Cowboys: The Untold History of the Texas Prison Rodeo by Mitchel P. Roth Paul M. Lucko Convict Cowboys: The Untold History of the Texas Prison Rodeo. By Mitchel P. Roth. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2016. Pp. 464. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) For more than half a century, beginning in 1931, the Texas Prison System hosted the “wildest show behind prison bars” (150) near its headquarters at the Walls Unit at Huntsville. In this nicely written, thoroughly researched, sometimes humorous, and yet serious account augmented with rare photographs, Mitchel Roth relates the story of the Texas Prison Rodeo and the incarcerated felons who contributed to the event’s success. Initially established to “provide good wholesome entertainment while raising money for prison education, recreation, and medical programs” (49), the rodeo also enhanced the prison’s public image and offered a diversion from the unpleasant activities that typified the daily lives of most state prisoners. While some of the convict competitors, especially during the show’s early years, were experienced rodeo professionals or ranch cowboys, most were amateurs who auditioned at the various prison farm units where they lived and labored. Prison employees transported performers as well as other inmates from these scattered properties to a specially built arena where they joined “free world” spectators each Sunday in October. Rodeo revenue funded construction of a chapel, supported educational programs, and purchased television sets and athletic equipment as well as eyeglasses, dentures, hearing aids, and artificial limbs for the inmate population. Roth complements his entertaining narrative with a penetrating analysis that uncovers the paradox of a repressive and brutal penal regime coexisting with an extravaganza promoting inmate rehabilitation. As was the case with “many of the warm weather gulags of the South” (230), the state government refused to fund the prison system adequately and instead expected the institution to sustain itself primarily through the tortured labor of its wards. Inmates, however, eagerly anticipated the annual rodeo and welcomed the opportunity to observe dignitaries and celebrities such as John Wayne, Fess Parker, Dizzy Dean, Mickey Mantle, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, James Arness, Dan Blocker, Steve McQueen, and Anita Bryant who visited and entertained at the show over the years. Cognizant that the rodeo flourished during the South’s Jim Crow [End Page 533] era, the author, referencing favorable comments from Ebony magazine, praises the largely desegregated event as “a high point in the prison system” (231). Participants and visitors reflected racial and ethnic diversity, although for many years black and white inmates sat in separate sections of the arena; civilian spectators were likewise racially segregated. Female prisoners also attended and provided musical entertainment during much of the rodeo’s existence, although they did not participate in competitive events until 1972. Competitors engaged in standard rodeo contests such as bronco and bull riding, calf-roping, bull-dogging, and barrel racing, but, according to Roth, it was the more atypical events that evoked the greatest level of audience enthusiasm. Undoubtedly the most popular of these was “Hard Money,” where a multitude of red-shirted male convicts simultaneously entered the arena to retrieve a cash-filled Bull Durham tobacco bag from between a bull’s horns. Other distinctive events included such activities as chariot races, wild cow milking, calf scrambles, wild horse races, and greased pig sacking. During the tumultuous 1980s, the prison system experienced a significant transformation resulting in large measure from the famous Ruiz v. Estelle litigation, which found that Texas prisons practiced cruel and unusual punishment and ordered sweeping changes in the system. Increasing prisoner violence, heightened security and liability concerns, and expenses related to renovating the outdated arena prompted the Texas Board of Corrections to cancel its long-running rodeo in 1987. Roth’s book, however, preserves the rodeo’s legacy and impressively demonstrates its place in the state’s history. Paul M. Lucko Murray State University Copyright © 2017 The Texas State Historical Association

A Season in the Sun: The Rise of Mickey Mantle by Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith

A Season in the Sun: The Rise of Mickey Mantle by Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith

Baseball Fans Can Indulge in the American Pastime in Toronto

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Annual Meeting HighlightsFull AccessBaseball Fans Can Indulge in the American Pastime in TorontoAaron LevinAaron LevinSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:20 Feb 2015https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2015.2b1AbstractToronto’s Blue Jays stalked the free-agent market to stock up on some big bats to get ahead of the competition in the tough American League East.Drought is hardly a word one associates with Canada, but that’s been the postseason story of the Toronto Blue Jays for two decades. While they won the World Series in 1992 and 1993, but they’ve been crawling through baseball’s playoff desert ever since.The upgraded Toronto Blue Jays take to the field in the Rogers Centre on May 18, 19, and 20.Matthew Jacques/ShutterstockHowever, pitchers and catchers report February 20, and what is baseball when spring training starts if not a manifestation of hope?By the time APA’s annual meeting rolls around in May, fans will be able to see whether numerous off-season trades and free-agent signings have changed their fortunes. Meeting attendees will have a chance to watch the Blue Jays play the Los Angeles Angels on May 18, 19, and 20.Last year was a heartbreaker for Toronto fans. There was a glimmer of hope—or perhaps just a mirage—early in the 2014 season, when the Jays stood in first place in the American League East. Their season went downhill after July 4, however, and the team finished in third place, 13 games behind the division champion Baltimore Orioles.The Birds of Toronto decided that maybe the Birds of Baltimore had something they could use, although it wasn’t a player. Rumors swirled in Crabtown for months that the Jays were trying to poach Baltimore’s general manager Dan Duquette, but the effort was ultimately quashed by Orioles’ management.In any case, last year’s late-season slowdown sent general manager Alex Anthopoulos out for some off-season horse trading, with an eye for power-hitting steeds. His biggest pickup perhaps was veteran catcher Russell Martin, who was born in Ontario but grew up in Montreal and, more importantly, hit .290 last year for Pittsburgh. His five-year, $82 million contract was the fattest ever offered by the Blue Jays.The team also traded for Oakland outfielder Josh Donaldson. Martin and Donaldson, together with Jose Reyes, Jose Bautista, and Edward Encarnacion, should form an intimidating core for the Jays’ batting order.As for pitching, the Blue Jays will build around a pair of veteran starters. Right-hander R.A. Dickey won the Cy Young Award in 2012, while lefty Mark Buehrle went 14-10 last year. Marcus Stroman came on strong in the second half of last year’s campaign. Drew Hutchinson struck out 184 batters last year going 11-13, but that was his first year back from Tommy John surgery, and more is expected from him in 2015.Meanwhile, the Angels fly into town with last year’s unanimous American League Most Valuable Player (MVP), Mike Trout. Trout will start his fourth full Major League season, but his early career has already been compared with those of Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Frank Robinson.In his first three seasons, Trout compiled a .311 batting average, hit 93 home runs, and led the league three years running in runs scored. Trout is backed up in the Angels’ lineup by Albert Pujols, a three-time MVP winner himself.Getting to a game is easy enough for annual meeting attendees, since the Blue Jays’ home field is the retractable-roofed Rogers Centre, just next to the Toronto Convention Centre. ■Schedule and ticket information for the Blue Jays games can be accessed here. ISSUES NewArchived

S19 * LIVER TRANSPLANTATION IN PATIENTS WITH ALCOHOLIC LIVER DISEASE

S19 * LIVER TRANSPLANTATION IN PATIENTS WITH ALCOHOLIC LIVER DISEASE

Last king of the sports page: the life and career of Jim Murray

Part crusader, part comedian, Jim Murray was a once-in-a-generation literary talent who just happened to ply his trade on newsprint, right near the box scores and race results. During his lifetime, Murray rose through the ranks of journalism, from hard-bitten 1940s crime reporter, to national Hollywood correspondent, to the top sports columnist in the United States. In Last King of the Page: The Life and Career of Jim Murray, Ted Geltner chronicles Jim Murray s experiences with twentieth-century American sports, culture, and journalism.At the peak of his influence, Murray was published in more than 200 newspapers. From 1961 to 1998, Murray penned more than 10,000 columns from his home base at the Los Angeles Times. His offbeat humor and unique insight made his column a must-read for millions of sports fans. He was named Sportswriter of the Year an astounding fourteen times, and his legacy was cemented when he became one of only four writers to receive the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for coverage of sports. Geltner now gives readers a first look at Murray s personal archives and dozens of fresh interviews with sports and journalism personalities, including Arnold Palmer, Mario Andretti, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Yogi Berra, Frank Deford, Rick Reilly, Dan Jenkins, Roy Firestone, and many more.Throughout his life, Murray chronicled seminal events and figures in American culture and history, and this biography details his encounters with major figures such as William Randolph Hearst, Henry Luce, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, John Wayne, Mickey Mantle, Muhammad Ali, and Tiger Woods. Charming and affecting moments in Murray s career illustrate the sportswriter s knack for being in on the big story. Richard Nixon, running for vice president on the Eisenhower ticket in 1952, revealed to Murray the contents of the Checkers speech so it could make the Time magazine press deadline. Media mogul Henry Luce handpicked Murray to lead a team that would develop Sports Illustrated for Time/Life in 1953, and when terrorists stormed the Olympic village at the 1972 Munich games, Murray was one of the first journalists to report from the scene. The words of sports journalist Roy Firestone emphasize the influence and importance of Jim Murray on journalism today: I ll say without question, I think Jim Murray was every bit as important of a sports writer forget sport writer every bit as important a writer to newspapers, as Mark Twain was to literature. Readers will be entertained and awed by the stories, interviews, and papers of Jim Murray in Last King of the Page.

There We Go Again!

It's not often that one gets the opportunity to mix quotes from former President Ronald Reagan, Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra, and philosopher and cultural critic George Santayana all in the same paragraph. However, the words of these men resonated with me in the weeks preceding this late-June writing. Reagan's quip, used as the title for this column (I've replaced you with we), was made during a seemingly exasperating moment in his 1980 debate with President Jimmy Carter; Berra's famous line vu all over again (also used by Alan Cohen in his contribution to this issue) was allegedly made after New York Yankee teammates Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle hit consecutive home runs; and Santayana's caution that who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat has been invoked repeatedly as a warning to those who ignore historical lessons. All of these words seem to apply appropriately to recent newsworthy events: the latest debacle in our financial sector, courtesy of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.; the threat to repeat the 11th-hour drama and attendant uncertainty that characterized last year's debt ceiling standoff and budget debate; and the reemergence of efforts by congressional Republicans and those on the right to sacrifice our social safety net for tax breaks for our more affluent citizens. Although the attention directed to these events has been largely in terms of their implications for our financial and fiscal health, they can have important implications for population health and for health care delivery, more generally. Finally, as Inquiry was going to press, the Supreme Court issued its anxiously awaited ruling on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's (ACA) individual mandate. In rather dramatic fashion, the court voted 5-4 to uphold the individual mandate and the entire ACA. However, the court's decision has set the stage for subsequent deja vu moments as proponents and opponents of national health reform continue their defense and criticism of the ACA. I briefly discuss some of the implications of the court's ruling and leave a more complete discussion for a subsequent column. The Financial Sector Once Again Amid reports of a new round of trading in high-risk financial instruments by Wall Street investment houses, and the ongoing contentious debate over whether our financial institutions remain too big to fail and warrant greater oversight and more transparent transactions, the news of May 10 was especially jarring. J.P Morgan Chase & Co., the financial behemoth acclaimed for its enlightened management in the calamitous months preceding the Great Recession, had incurred a profound trading loss of $2 billion from highly speculative and risky transactions. The news grew worse over the next several days as it became clear that the initial loss would increase by at least 50% to approximately $3 billion, or perhaps as much as $9 billion, according to recent estimates. It is also noteworthy that this recent incident occurred on the heels of the collapse of Jon Corzine's MF Global, Inc., yet another victim of speculative trading. Several facts are particularly unsettling about the J.P. Morgan incident. First, despite the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis and efforts to fully implement the Dodd-Frank legislation regulating financial institutions, analysts who have repeatedly warned that the elements are in place for a future financial catastrophe appear to be prescient. In particular, with no firewall separating banks' commercial and investment activities and no vigorous oversight in the trading of highly speculative derivative securities (the Volcker Rule), Morgan's London office drew upon proprietary funds--government-backed savings deposits rather than its own resources--to finance what was essentially a cumulatively large hedge fund bet. As a result, Morgan placed its depositors and, ultimately, taxpayers at risk. …

“Please implant a defibrillator in my patient”: It's déjà vu all over again

“Please implant a defibrillator in my patient”: It's déjà vu all over again

The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood (review)

The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood (review)

SWITCH HITTING IN BASEBALL: APPARENT RULE-FOLLOWING, NOT MATCHING

Many studies, including some dealing with shot selection in basketball and play selection in football, demonstrate that the generalized matching equation provides a good description of the allocation of time and effort to alternative responses as a function of the consequences of those alternatives. We examined whether it did so with respect to left- and right-handed at bats (alternative responses) and left- and right-handed total bases earned, runs batted in, and home runs (three consequences) for the outstanding baseball switch-hitters Mickey Mantle, Eddie Murray, and Pete Rose. With all hitters, undermatching, suggesting insensitivity to the consequences of behavior (reinforcement), was evident and there was substantial bias towards left-handed at bats. These players apparently chose handedness based on the rule "bat opposite the pitcher," not on differential consequences obtained in major league games. The present findings are significant in representing a counter-instance of demonstrations of a matching relationship in sports in particular and in human behavior in general and in calling attention to the need for further study of the variables that affect choice.

The House That Cultural Capital Built: The Saga of the New Yankee Stadium

New York Yankees are the most successful franchise in American sports. They have won twenty-seven world championships, ten more than the next closest franchise, the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association (NBA), and sixteen more than the next closest baseball franchise, the St. Louis Cardinals. A list of famous Yankees players reads like a miniature Hall of Fame, featuring icons like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, Don Mattingly, and Derek Jeter. Being the marquee franchise in the nation's largest city and having unrivaled on-the-field success have provided the New York Yankees with a tremendous amount of cultural capital. In his essay, The Forms of Capital Pierre Bourdieu famously describes how various aspects of culture, such as education and art, are acquired and exchanged in a similar economy to that of financial capital. Bourdieu writes, the social conditions of its transmission and acquisition are more disguised than those of economic capital, it [cultural capital] is predisposed to function as symbolic capital, i.e. to be unrecognized as capital and recognized as legitimate competence. (1) Much could be written about how and why the Yankees have been able to become such a dominant force within Major League Baseball (MLB), but in the interest of brevity, this paper will simply acknowledge the cultural capital that has been amassed by the Yankees franchise in order to examine how it was spent to procure a lavish new stadium for the team. (2) New York Yankees exploited their cultural capital over the South Bronx (which has very little cultural capital), and this power dynamic allowed the Yankees to build the monumental stadium they wanted while avoiding any substantial concessions to the people of the Bronx. New York Yankees' cultural capital is directly related to their financial capital. team is the richest in baseball, with annual revenues over $300 million. With the advertising revenue of their own cable TV network, $117 million in gate receipts, and $30 million in licensed merchandise, the Yankees are able to afford the highest payroll in MLB. (3) This means they can afford to outpay any other team for the best players in the game. star players and continuous championship expectations acquired with their financial capital add to the treasure chest of cultural capital the New York Yankees have been building upon for over one hundred years. Discussing the interplay between economic capital and the other forms of capital, such as cultural capital, Bourdieu observes, It has to be posited simultaneously that economic capital is at the root of all the other types of capital and that these transformed, disguised forms of economic capital, never entirely reducible to that definition, produce their most specific effects only to the extent that they conceal ... the fact that economic capital is at their root. (4) New York Yankees have an extraordinary amount of economic capital with which to do business, but their ability to attract star players and lucrative media contracts cannot be simply reduced to their cash flow. Though the Yankees' cultural capital is rooted in their economic capital, it produces its most specific effects by concealing that the mystique of star players, championship trophies, and Hollywood screenplays is rooted in economic capital. original Yankee Stadium embodies the team's cultural capital. On the surface, it is simply a building where the successful franchise has won many games, but it has developed its own cultural cache over time, concealing the enormous amounts of economic capital invested into the team and the stadium itself. Yankee Stadium was opened in 1923, during the prime of Babe Ruth's career. It has since been commonly referred to as the House That Ruth Built, because the incredible number of fans who would pay to see Ruth play provided the franchise with much of the capital needed to build the new stadium. …

Mick has (almost) left the building

Only once in the history of Yankee Stadium did a ball come close to leaving it (literally). “Mantle’s Homer Subdues A’s” was the headline for a game played on May 22, 1963, when the New York Yankees hosted the Kansas City Athletics in a night game at Yankee Stadium before a crowd of 9,727. According to John Drebinger of The New York Times, “Mickey Mantle belted one of the most powerful home run drives of his spectacular career.” In the next paragraph, Drebinger continued, “First up in the last of the 11th with a score deadlocked at 7-all and a count of two balls and two strikes, the famed Switcher leaned into one of Mick Has (Almost) Left the Building

Everyone Went to Nick's

This was New York in the elegant eighties and these were the Giants, fashioned in elegance, playing on the Polo Grounds, then at 110th Street and Fifth Avenue. It was the New York of the brownstone house and the gaslit streets, of the top hat and the hansom cab, of oysters and champagne and perfecto cigars, of Ada Rehan and Oscar Wilde and the young John L. Sullivan. It also was the New York of the Tenderloin and the Bowery, of the slums and the sweat shops, of goats grazing among the shanties perched on the rocky terrain of Harlem.1Toots Shor ran New York City's best-known watering hole of the 1940s and '50s, where Frank Sinatra and Jackie Gleason were regulars and Joe DiMaggio ate two or three meals per week. When they were not at Shor's, Mickey Mantle and his Yankee buddies hung out at the Stork Club, the Plantation Room, Mama Leone's, or Jack Dempsey's joint, with the old champ often decorating the window by sitting at a nearby booth.2 In 1894 Michael T. Nuf Ced McGreevey, a devoted baseball fan, named his new Boston saloon Third Base because it was the last place one stopped before going home. By the turn of the century his establishment was a favorite of diehard fans known as the Royal Rooters. Its walls were covered with baseball pictures from McGreevey's own collection and memorabilia from friends like Cy Young.3 McGreevey's claim today to being America's First Sport Bar, however, ignores the real holder of that honor: Uncle Nick Engel's Home Plate, in New York City, just off Broadway near Madison Square. For a decade beginning in the mid-1880s, boxers, billiard players, racing men, actors, writers, playboys, and aristocrats staggered and swaggered through Nick's place, where one might bump into Mark Twain or Maurice Barrymore at the bar, or a member of the visiting Chicago White Stockings feasting on one of Nick's steak dinners upstairs. During the baseball season, managers and magnates made a point of visiting Nick's and many deals originated within its walls. Above all, Nick's Home Plate was the hangout of the New York Giants during the club's glittering first era of greatness. Team owner John B. Day and manager James Mutrie were regulars. Pictures of Giants players adorned the cafe's walls-Johnny Ward, Mickey Welch, Buck Ewing-as well as photos of out-of-town favorites such as Michael King Kelly (with a telegram from the great player to Nick tucked in the corner announcing victory in an important game) and Engel's pals from the New York stage. Nick's son Freddie, the team's batboy, was not only supposed to retrieve errant balls and bring good luck to the team on the diamond. He also delivered love notes from Giants players to adoring female fans.4Working His Way UpNick was a perambulating trade mark for the damp brand of joy that that fluxes in his Gotham glassware emporium, wrote the Washington Post.5 He was born on October 31, 1844, in New York City, the son of Adam Engel, a carpenter. The senior Engel apprenticed Nicholas and his elder brother Adam to a woodcarver, but at the beginning of the Civil War the brothers left the trade and began opening oysters at the Philadelphia Hotel at Battery Place and Greenwich Street in lower Manhattan. They worked there for seven years before moving on to North Moore and Greenwich Street as bartenders. Nick married the former Teresa Rieger in 1868.6In 1872 the brothers went into business for themselves, opening an oyster and chop house on Sixth Avenue between 28th and 29th Streets in the heart of the infamous Tenderloin district. Nearby on 27th were houses of vice such as the Heart of Maryland, the Tuxedo, the Cairo Dance Hall, and Buckingham Palace, a single room two stories high that had crammed into its confines a shooting gallery, a full-scale restaurant, and, behind curtained booths, a brothel.7 Soon the reputation of the Engel brothers' place grew as a place of good food and convivial atmosphere. The brothers parted ways in 1877, with Adam moving to the Clifton, at 35th Street and Fifth Avenue. …