#10 Mickey Mantle (Blog Post #500)

I figured a good way to celebrate the 500th post on this blog was to feature the (arguably) most popular and (definitely) most expensive card in the set, that of Mickey Mantle. I consider myself lucky to have grown up watching Mantle. Although I wasn't a Yankee fan it was easy to find yourself in awe of him and his persona. My father and I were regular Sunday visitors to Yankee Stadium and if the Yanks were playing a doubleheader (they did that a lot) then Mantle usually started one of the games. If it was a single game there was a chance he would be sitting it out. That always disappointed me (and probably everyone else in the place).

There isn't any point to summarizing his career or life here. You can Google infinite pages of Mantle info including both 'official' and 'unofficial' dedicated sites. But, as with the other mega-stars shown in this set, I'll paste in the list of achievements as listed on Mickey's Baseball Reference Bullpen page.

16-time AL All-Star (1952-1965, 1967 & 1968)

3-time AL MVP (1956, 1957 & 1962)

AL Triple Crown (1956)

AL Gold Glove Winner (1962)

AL Batting Average Leader (1956)

3-time AL On-Base Percentage Leader (1955, 1962 & 1964)

4-time AL Slugging Percentage Leader (1955, 1956, 1961 & 1962)

6-time AL OPS Leader (1952, 1955, 1956, 1960, 1962 & 1964)

5-time AL Runs Scored Leader (1954, 1956-1958 & 1960)

3-time AL Total Bases Leader (1956, 1958 & 1960)

AL Triples Leader (1955)

4-time AL Home Runs Leader (1955, 1956, 1958 & 1960)

AL RBI Leader (1956)

5-time AL Bases on Balls Leader (1955, 1957, 1958, 1961 & 1962)

20-Home Run Seasons: 14 (1952-1962, 1964, 1966 & 1967)

30-Home Run Seasons: 9 (1955-1962 & 1964)

40-Home Run Seasons: 4 (1956, 1958, 1960 & 1961)

50-Home Run Seasons: 2 (1956 & 1961)

100 RBI Seasons: 4 (1954, 1956, 1961 & 1964)

100 Runs Scored Seasons: 9 (1953-1961)

Won seven World Series with the New York Yankees (1951, 1952, 1953, 1956, 1958, 1961 & 1962)

Baseball Hall of Fame: Class of 1974 (Mantle's Hall of Fame page)

As for the card, well it's a classic and one of my favorite Mantle Topps cards. I can't say I remember pulling it from a pack as I wasn't buying packs in 1959 but in the early to mid 60s it was a big thrill to pull a Mantle from a pack no matter how you felt about the Yanks. I picked this one up for what I thought was a reasonable $100 after many losing bids on lower conditioned examples. It's more appealing in person than it appears in my scan which seems to have washed out some of the color. Mantle poses near the batting cage in Yankee Stadium with some teammates and the third base seats in the background.

I met Mantle once some years after he had retired. In the late 70s and early 80s I would spend a day every spring at the Houston Open Wednesday Pro-Am. Back then there would be actual sports and entertainment celebrity players out on the course. I'd get there very early and hang out around the clubhouse parking lot area seeing who I could see. I never approached any of the celebs with one exception. I'll never forget turning around to see Mickey Mantle alone on the passenger side of a golf cart parked in a row of other carts near the clubhouse steps. Oddly no one else was around so I went over and said hello and mumbled something about the fact that my Dad's two favorite players were him and Joe DiMaggio. I don't remember what he said but he did shake my hand and smiled. I never thought to ask for an autograph. I probably didn't have anything for him to sign anyway.

When my Dad died I stuck a Mickey Mantle pin onto his lapel just before they closed his casket. I'd bought the pin on a whim a few years earlier at a game in the old Yankee Stadium. Probably the last game I attended in the park I'd enjoyed so many Sunday afternoons at with my father. Even though it looked different due to the refurbishings it had gone though it was still Yankee Stadium and it held some great memories for me.
Here is my favorite picture of Mickey Mantle....

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#328 Lou Skizas

As soon as you get to Lou Skizas' Baseball Reference page and you see that he was known as "The Nervous Greek" you know that there is an interesting story here. And when you check out the first paragraph of his SABR bio, you know that there most certainly is:

“I was a character in baseball. I saw it as an interim type of career,” Lou Skizas told Bill Gleason. Skizas, known as “The Nervous Greek” during his four-season major-league playing career, was perhaps best known for an unusual ritual that he followed before coming to bat. Before reaching the plate, the right-handed-batting Skizas dropped his bat, covering it with dirt. Then, wiping the bat off by rubbing it between his pants legs, he kissed the end of the bat before reaching into his back pocket at least three times to touch an object that was said to be a good-luck piece. Placing all of his weight on his right leg, Skizas kept his left foot off of the ground until just before the pitch reached the plate. This was the unorthodox style that belonged to the man Casey Stengel once called “the greatest natural-looking hitter I've ever seen.”

Skizas was born in Chicago and raised in a home where only Greek was spoken. He claims to have been labeled as 'retarded' (his words) when he first entered school because he didn't know what his teacher was saying. As a ballplayer in high school he caught the eye of Yankee scouts and was signed in 1949 and while playing in their farm system he developed a close friendship with Mickey Mantle that remained in place all their lives. Skizas spent two seasons in the military along with his five years in the minors before he got a token shot with the Yankees in 1956. He was dealt (as all marginal Yankee players were then) to the Kansas City Athletics in May of '56.

He hit .316 in about 300 at bats that year and held down a regular outfield spot for the club in '57. That winter he was part of a huge 12 player deal that sent him to the Tigers with whom he split the '1958 season between the majors and minors. The White Sox drafted him prior to 1959 but traded him to the Reds early in the season. He was therefore technically a part of the Sox' AL champion club but he was long gone by the fall. He played for three season in the Reds' chain and one more in Detroit's, never again making a major league appearance. He also played in Cuba during the winter of 1959.

He finished with a .270 lifetime average and had 30 homers. After retiring Skizas finished a bachelor's degree he'd been working on for over a decade and then went further by adding a masters and doctorate in biology. He was a college professor in Illinois at Illinois State and the University of Illinois-Champaign along with coaching the schools' baseball teams.

As late as the 1990s he continued to be part of the game as a part-time scout for the Cubs in the Chicago area.

#233 Paul Foytack

Righty pitcher Paul Foytack had a respectable career as he won in double digits six times in the 50s for the Tigers. (The fact that he also lost in double digits six times is irreverent to this discussion.) He signed with the Tigers in 1949 but wildness kept him out of the majors until he found his control and nabbed a spot on the 1956  Detroit staff.

He teamed with Frank Lary, Billy Hoeft, Jum Bunning and, at times Don Mossi,  to give the Tigers a better than average starting rotation. But the thing about Foytack is that his most memorable moments came not through his successes, but his propensity to give up homers. Consider:

• He allowed the first of Roger Maris' 61 homers in his record breaking 1961 season. 
• He was the first pitcher in history to give up four consecutive homers. It occurred on July 13, 1963 against the Senators when Foytack was winding down his career as a member of the Angels. Notable is that one of the guys who hit a homer in that streak was pitcher Pedro Ramos. 
• He gave up a homer to Mickey Mantle that was 'measured' at 634 feet and is considered the longest homer ever measured to the actual landing point. Mickey Mantle's webpage tells the story:

Detroit, 9/10/60 - Mantle unloaded an incredible home run over the right-field roof  [of Tiger Stadium]. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it's the longest home run ever measure after the fact.through a light tower (which it may have grazed) and out of the park. The pitcher was Paul Foytack. Years later researcher Paul Susman, Ph.D. found eyewitnesses who confirmed exactly where the ball landed on the fly. Dr. Susman then measured the distance, which turned out to be an astonishing 643 feet! This was almost certainly the longest home run Mickey hit in a regular season game that could actually be measured to the spot it landed, and probably the longest homer anyone ever hit in a regular season game that could be measured to the actual landing point. This 643-foot home run is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest homer ever "measured trigonometrically."

And I also found this on Mantle's site.

Detroit, 6/18/56 - The Mick walloped a tremendous homer over the right-field roof between the light standard and the end of the upper deck. The ball went completely out of the park and landed on the adjacent Trumbull Avenue. It was all the more impressive because it was hit into a stiff wind. Again, the pitcher was Paul Foytack. (This was the first out-of-the-park homer Mantle hit off Foytack.) This home run brought about Tigers' manager Bucky Harris' famous remark, "That would bring tears to the eyes of a rocking chair." Just two days later Mickey would hit two homers into the upper deck bleachers in centerfield at Briggs Stadium - something no player had ever done even once. Both of those home runs landed high above the 400 foot sign in the left-centerfield bleachers. 

In a 2007 story in the New York Times Foytack remarked on his career, allowing dingers, a memorable autograph he signed and his thoughts on Barry Bonds.

#100 Bob Cerv

God willing on the morning this entry is posted my family will be in Lincoln, Nebraska watching my son graduate from the University of Nebraska. This will be the third time I've had the pleasure of watching one of my children walk and I feel like I've done what I vowed to do when we started a family, get my kids a good education and out into the world.

Nebraska native and UNL alum Bob Cerv was signed in 1950 by the Yankees after a standout career in baseball and basketball for the Cornhuskers. He debuted in 1951 and split that season as well as the next two shuttling back and forth between New York and the Yanks top farm club in Kansas City. From 1954 through 1956 Cerv put up solid numbers in a limited role as he was unable to crack the solid Bombers starting lineup. He did get to play in both the '55 and '56 World Series and homered as a pinch hitter in Game Five of the '55 Classic. He was traded to Kansas City (now a big league franchise, the A's) after the '56 season and for the first time in the bigs he held down a starting job.

Cerv’s most productive year in the majors was in 1958. He belted 38 homers, a mark that still stands as the record by a professional player in Kansas City. He was the first Husker to participate in an All-Star Game. He started the 1958 All-Star Game in left field for the American League. His accomplishments that year are made more memorable by the fact that he played for six weeks with his jaw wired shut and on a liquid diet following a collision at home plate in a May game against the Tigers. The Athletics traded Cerv back to the Yanks early in 1960 and he went 5 for 14 in the Series against the Pirates that year.

He was drafted by the Angels in the 1960 expansion draft but after a month in LA he was traded back to the Yankees (again!!) in May of 1961. Again a role player he generally spelled his two roommates, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. He didn't appear in the 1961 Series.

Cerv finished out his career with a one month whirl in Houston after the Yanks sold him to the Colt 45s in June of 1962. After his big league career he coached college baseball at Southeast Missouri State College and John F. Kennedy College in Wahoo, Nebraska where he also coached the men's basketball team.

Cerv occupies the well worn spot in front of the visitors dugout at Yankee Stadium to pose for this shot. He looks like a guy who is happily remembering his World Series days in this park and in knowing he's going to play here again one day..

#78 Pedro Ramos

My Dad called him 'Pistol Pete' for no reason I can discern. Pedro Ramos was a Cuban born righthander who broke in with the Washington Senators in 1955. As a starter he led or tied for the AL lead in losses four straight years before the end of the decade pitching for some brutal Nats teams.

The Nats became the Twins and in 1962 they traded Ramos to the Indians with whom he began transitioning to the bullpen. Late in 1964 the Yanks dealt for Ramos and he had a terrific month down the stretch with 8 saves in 12 games as the Yanks won the pennant.

After a couple more good seasons in New York he began a whirlwind tour of the bigs pitching for the Reds, Phils, Pirates and finally found himself back in Washington with the Senators in his last big league stop in 1970. He pitched a bit in the minors before hanging up his glove.

The return to D.C. made him one of the few players to pitch for both the original and expansion Senators. In 15 seasons he went 115 and 160 with 55 saves and was an All Star in 1959. He missed his chance for the post season in 1964 because he was traded for by the Yanks after the deadline.

There are some 'interesting' stories floating around (one told in a book by David Halberstam) about Ramos and  Ted Williams and the signing of a baseball that Ramos used to whiff The Splinter. These don't seem to have any validity. But one story that can't be disputed is the fact that Mickey Mantle blasted a Ramos pitch off the Yankee Stadium facade in May of 1956. One of The Mick's more prodigious blasts for sure. (See the picture/diagram below.) The quote below comes from themick.com which is a page associated with the video bio of Mantle called The American Dream Comes To Life. 

"Pedro and I were friends. He used to challenge me to a foot race before games. In one game one of our pitchers, I don't remember who, knocked down one of the Washington players – you could tell it was a knockdown – and Ramos had to knock down one of our players to protect his guys."I was leading off the next inning and I didn't even think about the knockdown. Everybody on our bench and everybody on their bench and even some of the fans knew I was gonna get a knockdown, but I didn't even think about it."Sure enough, Pedro hit me with his first pitch. It didn't make me mad – he didn't try to hit me in the head or anything, you know, just in the butt – but after the game he came up to me and said, 'Meekie, I'm sorry I have to do that.' I said, 'That's okay. But the next time you do it I'm gonna drag a bunt toward first base and run right up your back.' He said, 'You would really do that?'"The funny thing about it was that the next time up was the time I almost hit one out of Yankee Stadium. It hit the façade. After the game he came up to me and said, 'I'd rather have you run up my back than to hit one over the roof!'"

Ramos' SABR page has a lot of great insight into the colorful Cuban including the story behind the All Cuban Triple Play. ESPN's Page Two has an article about the 'Cuban Senators'. It's a good read, stuff I had never given any thought to. Looks like Ramos is wearing the Nats' home pinstripes in this shot which makes this a rare non-Yankee Stadium shot among the '59 American League players' cards.

#26 Chuck Stobbs

Over 5 seasons, from 1947 through 1961 lefty Chuck Stobbs faced nearly 8400 major league batters. But he's known for one single pitch... the one Mickey Mantle turned into what is known as the longest recorded major league home run.

That shot, which supposedly traveled 565 feet and landed outside Griffith Stadium in D.C. on April 17th, 1953, made headlines and brought Stobbs the type of publicity that most players would rather not have.

Stobbs, a three sport high school athlete who considered football as his best sport, was a bonus signee of the Boston Red Sox in '47 and after a stint in the minors made his debut with the Sox late that year. It was 1949 before Stobbs became a regular part of the Sox staff. He had a better than .500 mark in each of his first three seasons as a full timer in Boston. He stayed in Boston until he was dealt to the White Sox in '52 and moved to the Senators in 1953.

Stobbs pitched for the Nats through 1960 although he was briefly with the Cards in 1958 as a free agent pick-up. He finished his career with the expansion Twins in 1961. In his career he won 106 games.

Stobbs' SABR bio is well worth the read. It includes stories of more about the Mantle homer, Stobbs' life in other sports and a great story of an amateur game in which Stobbs, his father and brother (the team's batboy!) were ejected in the same half inning. Yikes! A Jane Leavy story in the Washington Post published after Stobbs' death has a lot of background on the Mantle homer. Read it... it's great reading from a great writer. An excerpt:

During six years with the Senators and for the rest of his baseball life, Stobbs was asked one question. "His normal answer was, 'Thank God, it didn't come back through the box,' " said his friend Bob Kleinknecht, who met Stobbs on the basketball court in the 1940s.

It's hard to pinpoint where this shot was taken. Stobbs played only the second half of the 1958 season with the Cardinals. I at first thought it might be a '59 spring training picture but there is no way Topps could have obtained a shot for there in time to get this card into the first series. And besides, Stobbs was released by the Cards in January of that year. It doesn't appear to be an airbrushed logo on Stobbs' cap so it had to be taken late in the '58 year. It's those trees that make me wonder where.

#76 Bobby Richardson

No matter how big a Yankee Hater you are I don't think you could find a reason to hate Bobby Richardson. I saw him signing autographs at a small card show in New Jersey some years ago and he was gracious and thoughtful with a smile and a word for every kid and grown-up in the line. 

Richardson signed with the Yankees out of Sumpter, N.C. in 1953 and on the 700 Club website* he tells a story of arriving in New York as a green signee for a workout at Yankee Stadium:

I signed right out of high school when I was 17 and I was given a four day trip to New York to work out with the Yankees. Took the train from Sumter to New York. Checked into the hotel in New York. Took a cab out to Yankee Stadium. I was told to put on my uniform and walk out onto the field and take some balls out at second base and to take some batting swings in the batting cage before the ball game. Well, I took the ground balls at second, but I was too embarrassed to step in front of anybody in the batting cage, and Mickey Mantle came up and put his arm around me and said, “Come on kid, step in here and take some swings.”From that moment on, a special friendship between Mickey and Bobby developed. They played together until Bobby retired in 1966 after an 11-year career. They shared three World Series championships. Mickey always admired Bobby’s faith and the two remained close, long after their playing days.

His relationship with Mickey Mantle is a theme that runs though most of what you read about this solid fielding Yankee. He gave the eulogy at Mantle's funeral in 1995. After a few outstanding minor league seasons and a couple of peeks at the bigs he came up for good in 1957 and established himself as the everyday 2nd baseman by 1959.

Richardson's career included seven All Star appearances, five Gold Gloves, three Wold Series titles with a career .305 average in the Series, and despite the heartbreaking loss to the Pirates, the 1960 World Series MVP award.

I remember distinctly the snag he made off the bat of Willie McCovey that ended the 1962 Series when the Giants had the winning runners on.

My Richardson card is definitely on my 'upgrade needed' list. It's got very soft corners and some scuffs and discoloration. Even so it's one of my favorite cards in the set.


*=I'm guessing that'll be the only link I ever have to the 700 Club website!

#564 Mickey Mantle '59 All Star Selection

Mickey Mantle played in both of the All Star Games held in 1959. In the first he pinch ran for Gus Triandos in the 8th inning and played rightfield. In the second game he started in center and went one for three. His hit was a bunt single off Don Drysdale.

In his career Mantle was a sixteen time All Star. He certainly didn't have 'Mantle type' numbers in the Mid Summer Classics. He hit .233 with 2 homers and 17 whiffs in 43 at bats.

Any Mantle card is a nice Mantle card, don't you think? I was able to find this one reasonably and it's in better shape than some of the more expensive ones I came across.

My favorite Mantle All Star card, by far, is the '58. I've bid on more than a dozen of those. One day I'll get lucky on one.

Frank Sullivan News Flash

This is just something I thought was worthy of a different sort of post.

The newest issue of Sports Illustrated, the 2012 MLB Preview issue hits newsstands tonight or tomorrow. In it is a story about Frank Sullivan, one of this blog's Saturday St. Patrick's Day entries. The story's author, Jane Leavy, relates how in her book The Last Boy, a great book about Mickey Mantle, she has 'killed off' poor old Frank. She learns of her mistake in a call from Mrs. Frank Sullivan who is seated next to her very-much-alive husband.

Ms. Leavy goes on to write about her mistake in declaring Sullivan dead. She also writes of Sullivan and Mantle and their days of playing as opponents in the 1950's. She's a great writer (in my opinion) and I recommend either of her baseball books. The SI article is worth a read as well. See the link connected to her name above.

Here's the 6'7" Frank Sullivan one more time...

And the Norman Rockwell painting referenced in the story....



#461 Baseball Thrills.... Mantle Hits 42nd...

First look at the Baseball Thrills subset of ten cards numbered 461 thru 470. These commemorate 'on the field' achievements by stars of the day, not all of them coming from the previous 1958 season as I would have expected. The Willie Mays BT features his over the shoulder catch in the '54 World Series. And a couple, Banks Wins MVP for example, honor a general award or skill. We'll look at each at some point.

The backs of these describe the action or achievement and the box in the upper right of the reverse describes them as 'Action Photos'. They appear to be colorized versions of an actual photo. The Mantle above is concerned with the 1958 regular season homer chase and his close win over Rocky Colavito. But the photo of the Mick coiled to unload shows the bunting in the background that signifies a World Series shot.

This subset commands a premium above the regular cards of the same series but they are neither very expensive nor difficult to find, especially in ungraded, unslabbed form.

UPDATE: Corbis provides us with the original photo and indeed it is from the 1958 World Series.