TW Hit List - Mickey Mantle

Williams admits to not expecting much from Mantle when he first saw him come up to the bigs. He took big swings and missed a lot. In fact, he says Casey Stengel benched him for parts of his rookie year to prevent him from setting a record for strikeouts. But Mantle matured and developed. And while always having a big swing and striking out often, he became one of the greatest and most popular sluggers in the history of the game.

Mantle played his whole career with the Yankees. So a shy boy from Oklahoma with a reputation for humility was given the biggest stage in baseball to display his talents. It is well known that Mantle’s career was injury-plagued. It is well known that he often played through considerable pain. And yet that he played and put up such big numbers cemented his popularity. He won three MVP awards, including in 1956 when he won the Triple Crown, and led the AL in home runs and slugging percentage four times. He finished with 536 home runs, a .298 batting average and a .979 OPS. Williams makes the point that he was much more the free swinger than the others we’ve discussed so far, except for Mays. Both Mays and Mantle swung hard and missed a lot, which Williams claims as reason for their lower respective batting averages. Williams says, “Mickey hardly knew what protecting the plate was. . . .He didn’t know you that you had to hit certain pitchers a little differently than you did certain other pitchers. . . [Mays and Mantle] continued to swing for the fences regardless of the count.” I don’t disagree with him, but to be fair to Mantle, his average was subpar for his last four seasons which were likely his most painful ones.

Still, Mantle was doubtless a great hitting talent with famous power. We had mentioned that Jimmie Foxx had that distinctive “bomb” sound when he hit one. Williams says Mantle had it too. “It was so distinctive that a blind man could pick out a Foxx or Mantle home run.” We forget that Mantle also had great natural speed and was a rare combination of speed and power for his day (BBB). In addition, Mantle was a switch-hitter and surely the greatest in the game’s history when he retired. Yet Williams is careless when he says, “Mantle was the greatest switch-hitter this game will ever see.” Either I am misunderstanding Williams or I would have done very well to glean stock tips from him before his death. Even careful baseball observers like Williams make mistakes when they presume to foretell history’s end. Greatest ever seen? That’s it? Pack it up? Is baseball closing shop? Is switch-hitting going to be prohibited? Has God decreed? But there is more. “One of the greatest records anyone will ever have and one that will never be beaten is his 18 home runs in the World Series.” His record is surely impressive and he may be the greatest World Series hitter ever (he also leads all-time in RBI’s, runs, total bases, and bases on balls), but it is taking nothing from Mantle to deny him a monopoly on the future. Given enough time, someone on some team may yet come along that challenges these records, and the future is a notoriously long time.

But such abandon does serve to declare Mantle’s justly esteemed position as one of baseball’s all-time greats. He went about to hit the ball as hard as he could every time at the plate. Who could not respect this? I don’t care what the statheads may or may not say. The game is for the fans. And Mantle was the kind of player the fans come to see. “If I had played my career hitting singles like Pete [Rose], I’d wear a dress.”

TW Hit List - Hank Greenberg

What does “TW” stand for? And what is its Hit List? I’ve come so close to forgetting myself, but just in time, I’ve posted again. Yes, blogging is back! No excuses, no explanations. We’re just going to pick up and blog on!

And so, “Hammerin’ Hank” Greenberg. Mr. Greenberg was a big man for his age (that’s Baseball Before BALCO, henceforth referred to as, “BBB”; DAWN, call your offices.) But he was more than brawn. Williams credits him with being one of the smartest ballplayers of BBB. He certainly was one of its best hitters. Greenberg hit over 300 home runs, batted in over 1,200 runs and scored over a thousand, while batting .313 over his career. He finished with a 1.017 OPS. These are certainly top-tier numbers worthy of Hall-of-Fame entry, however, what is remarkable is his unfortunate loss of four seasons to WWII (he voluntarily enlisted). He undoubtedly would have had monster numbers if not for this. He is not the household name most of our previous “Hit List” entries are, but in his day, his fellow ballplayers all knew that he was one of the premier hitters in the game.

He led the AL in home runs five times, batted over .300 nine times, led the league in RBIs four times and hit well over .300 in his four World Series appearances. He was AL MVP twice, becoming the first player to win the award at two different positions (1B and OF). I was impressed by the fact that he played as a right-hander just about his whole career as a Detroit Tiger where Briggs Stadium would be home. During the age of BBB, leftfield at Briggs Stadium was never less than 347’ and some years was 360’. Not too many cheap clouts at home.

Williams offers us his usual personal remarks of varying quality and helpfulness. About Greenberg, he mentions, “He spoke in general terms and didn’t divulge too much. I thought Greenberg was a great guy.” Great is a good English word too often loosely used. Now, Greenberg did want to be remembered as a great ballplayer, if not a “great guy.” He is also well-known for downplaying his Jewishness at first, but then coming to embrace it, even though he conceded that he was not “a particularly religious person.” He created some buzz by refusing to play on Yom Kippur in the middle of the 1934 pennant race. This was after he threatened the same concerning Rosh Hashanah, only to relent after too much grumbling, “Rosh Hashanah comes every year, but the Tigers haven’t won the pennant since 1909.” The Tigers did win the pennant, but went on to lose a classic World Series to the Cardinals in seven games.

“Class tells. It sticks out all over Mr. Greenberg.”