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Article: For a Young Boy in New York, Mantle's Play Was the Thing
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- August 14, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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Whatever Mickey Mantle did to shorten his lifetime -- however he
behaved or eventually abused himself through booze -- will not matter
much to a generation of baseball fans who came of age with him in New
York, especially in The Bronx. What did matter about Mantle to me, as
a teenager when he came up to the Yankees in 1951, was the
extraordinary skill and dignity, mixed with tragedy, that he brought
to the playing field.
Mickey Mantle, and before him, Joe DiMaggio, were my boyhood
sports heroes. They were not idols in today's sense. We didn't so
much want to wear their numbers or look like them or even imitate
their familiar batting stance, although there was certainly some of
that. Rather, ...