MICKEY MANTLE

In New York, three centerfielders towered over the game. In Brooklyn, there was Duke Snider. In Upper Manhattan, Willie Mays chased down fly balls at the Polo Grounds. And in the Bronx, there was perhaps the greatest hero of them all - Mickey Mantle. His father Mutt named him Mickey after the great catcher, Mickey Cochrane, and raised him to become a great ballplayer himself. The Mick did indeed become a great ballplayer. But it took Mickey Mantle a long time to accept being a hero to so many. “Heroes are people who are all good with no bad in them,” he used to say. It wasn’t until the last years of his life that he came to understand just how much he meant to people. “God knows no one is perfect,” Bob Costas said at Mantle’s memorial. “And God knows there’s something special about heroes.”

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Images courtesy of Dick Perez