Micky Mantel Documentary on HBO

[S n o w b a l l]

Has anyone seen it? It's probably old, but I watched it this morning and I can't stop :cry:. I knew how he died, but never realized the extent of the sadness and tragedy of his life. It really got me thinking about life and how we live it. I can so relate to one of his last statements..."if I had known I would live this long, I would've taken better care of myself".

Ironically, I posted this song in Blue-Jay's country music thread last night. How fitting to his life & and those I've loved who've passed on.

Yesterday by Roy Clark :cry:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NEY4LxORCeo&feature=related

[hellbound-liberal]

1. Thanks for posting that Engi. I was a big Mickey Mantle fan when I was growing up

It is sad how we don't take appreciate how blessed we are until it's too late. This song has lessons for us all:



Yesterday when I was young

The taste of life was sweet as rain upon my tongue

I teased at life as if it were a foolish game

The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame

The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned

I always built, alas, on weak and shifting sand

I lived by night and shunned the naked light of day

And only now I see how the years ran away

Yesterday when I was young

So many drinking songs were waiting to be sung

So many wayward pleasures lay in store for me

And so much pain my dazzled eyes refused to see

I ran so fast that time and youth at last ran out

I never stopped to think what life was all about

And every conversation I can now recall

Concerned itself with me, and nothing else at all

Yesterday the moon was blue

And every crazy day brought something new to do

I used my magic age as if it were a wand

And never saw the waste and emptiness beyond

The game of love I played with arrogance and pride

And every flame I lit too quickly, quickly died

The friends I made all seemed somehow to drift away

And only I am left on stage to end the play

There are so many songs in me that won't be sung

I feel the bitter taste of tears upon my tongue

The time has come for me to pay for yesterday when I was young

[S n o w b a l l]

3. Thank you for posting the lyrics....

and understanding the message.

:hug:

[hellbound-liberal]

4. I'm getting to that age where I hope that I don't have too many "songs left unsung"

I did waste far too many years thinking only of having fun. I hope I can keep others from making some of the same mistakes. I plan to share this song widely. Thanks for posting it. :pals:

[fighterdem5]

2. Mantle should have retired earlier

He was an all-time great, but I believe his average ended in .299, because he clung to baseball when his abilities were no longer there.

[S n o w b a l l]

5. I didn't realize how many injuries he had...

but, it seems part of the reason he kept playing was his desire to please his Dad even though he was dead and the mental instability that came from his death. Then his own vulnerability & fear of death himself from the disease that ran in his family. Easy to say he should have stopped playing, but if that's all you know and all you've ever done, I can only imagine it's like a death sentence to make that kind of decision.

[Oeditpus Rex]

7. There was hardly a time when he wasn't playing hurt

It started in high school, when he was kicked in the leg during a football game. He woke up the next morning with the leg badly swollen and discolored; that was when his osteomyelitis was discovered.

In the 1951 World Series, he tore the cartilage in his right knee while chasing a fly ball hit by Willie Mays. As his dad, Mutt, was helping him out of a cab at the hospital, Mutt collapsed from his Hodgkin's disease. He died the following spring at 39, and Mantle spent the rest of his life afraid that cancer would also claim him at a young age, as it had his grandfather as well.

Mantle had surgery on the same knee in 1952, injured the other knee in 1956 (the year he won the Triple Crown) and 1962, pulled the muscles in his right thigh in 1955 and 1962, tore his right shoulder in 1957, broke his right index finger in 1959, pulled rib-cage muscles and broke his left foot in 1963, had shoulder surgery in 1965 and got a bleeding abscess on his right hip in 1961 when he was fighting a cold and a doctor gave him a shot with an unsterile needle.

Imagine what he could've done if he'd been even reasonably healthy.

[S n o w b a l l]

9. I knew you could provide the history, Oedi

You know alot about baseball. Funny, I married into a baseball family and never had much interest in it. But, before the Mantel documentary today, I watched how the Brooklyn Dodgers ended up in LA. Very interesting. As someone who went to many Dodger games and knew the O'Malley family, I never realized the hatred and animosity towards them still to this day in Brooklyn.

It's pretty sad how different baseball is today from the fans of yesterday when Congress wasn't convening on steriod use and players were paid $1,000 to sign.

[Oeditpus Rex]

12. If I recall correctly, Mantle signed for a bonus of $1,500

Legend has it that he and his dad signed the contract while sitting in a car in the rain with famed Yankees scout Tom Greenwade after a semi-pro game in Commerce, Okla. (Outside his high school season, Mantle played for a team called the Baxter Springs Whiz Kids. He was a shortstop then, btw.)

One thing that needs to be considered about Mantle's numbers is that he averaged 450 at-bats per season over 18 years, compared to 518 for his closest contemporary, Willie Mays. (That's counting Mays' 1951 and 1952 seasons as one full season, as he was called up to the Giants in late May of 1951 and played in only 34 games in 1952 before being drafted. Mays also had a total of only 452 at-bats in his last two seasons, 1972-73, when he was 41-42 years old. So if you go only on full-time play, Mays averaged 549 at-bats, 99 more than Mantle. That's a lot more chances to hit a baseball.)

As I understand the Dodgers' move, O'Malley wanted to buy land in Brooklyn for a new stadium (Ebbets Field was built in 1913 and seated only 32,000, and the Dodgers averaged just over 1 million attendance throughout the '50s, despite being a pennant contender each year), but the city offered only a stadium in Queens, near where Shea Stadium is now, which the city would own and lease to the Dodgers. O'Malley, a real estate mogul, wouldn't go for that, and when Los Angeles offered him Chavez Ravine, he took it — but he'd also sold Dodgers fans a bill of goods, saying he had every intention of staying if the city would just cooperate. Since no one ever loved a ball club more than Brooklynites loved their Bums, many of them indeed felt they'd been stabbed in the back.

As further evidence of my übergeekdom, while looking in my atlas to see where Baxter Springs is, I found nearby Quapaw, Okla., which should be familiar to fans of "MASH."

:silly:

[S n o w b a l l]

13. Is there anything you don't know about baseball?

:) Yeah, it was Ebbet Field and their 700 parking spaces, people moving to Long Island, lack of transit to the stadium and the deterioration of Brooklyn that made the deal for O'Malley to move to LA. One of the first west coast teams...and the rest is history.

I'm in awe of your knowledge Oedi...

[Oeditpus Rex]

14. I don't know much about 'modern' players

About a third of my book collection is on baseball, and many of those are biographies — but none of players beyond the '70s. I haven't had that kind of intimate interest in years, probably because once we get to a certain age, we don't really have heroes — at least, not in sports. I still re-read the books I have, though, because it's like re-living my youth.

Mantle was one of my heroes — supposedly, more kids idolized him than any other ballplayer except Babe Ruth — and I remember the day he announced his retirement — I think it was in March, 1969, and I was in the car with my mom, about half a block from our house. I felt like a little part of me died, because when you're 12, heroes go on forever.

(Funny thing, though — I have no recollection of the day Sandy Koufax, my idol of idols, announced his premature retirement after the Dodgers were swept by Baltimore in the '66 Series. Supposedly, at least one reporter at the press conference cried.)

[LeftyFingerPop]

6. It is surreal...

When we are young, we feel that nothing will ever hurt us. We sometimes live life with wild abandon, because...we can.

And each birthday that ticks off, each Christmas that comes and goes, means that we are one year closer to the end of our life.

So we continue to live...to do the best we can, and to do what makes us happy. Mortality is an impossible thing to face, so we continue to live and hopefully, we can balance out out health needs with our wants and desires.

When out friends and family pass on, there is one thing that will never leave us...and that is the memory of them. We can see them, feel them, and hear them...even though they are not here.

As I rapidly approach the age of my father's early death...I consciously work towards making others happy, making others feel good. At our age, it is not about us anymore, it is not about our needs as much as it is about how we want to be remembered. I can't keep myself alive forever, but i sure as hell can be remembered for years.

Engi, your pain today is a good thing. It means that the MEMORIES of those close to you that have passed remain alive and strong.

These are just smilies, but you know they represent something real...:loveya: :hug: :hug:

[S n o w b a l l]

8. Thanks sweetheart...

Because you know me, you know why this documentary would affect me so intensely. I would normally cry at such a sad story, but to cry all day & affect me like it has, you know it's much deeper. It's almost my Dad's birthday, who died at 66 and I swear he could've written that song. And it was one of his favorites many yrs ago. Little did he know then how appropriate it would be.

Just like Mickey, at the end of his life, he realized the mistakes he made, but it was too late then. So many songs he left unsung. The tragic life of Mickey Mantel & my Dad are too typical of so many others who learn too late. So this is what I've been ruminating on today...on an overcast, gray and dreary day, it seems kind of appropriate. Crying is sometimes necessary.

:hug: :loveya:

[wain]

10. I loved the Mick, but he took the liver someone else deserved more

It's an old ethical issue on who is more deserving.

Mickey should have taken better care of himself earlier on. I should have taken better care of myself earlier on by not smoking. I was so lucky to survive 13 years ago with a bypass, but I am responsible for my own stupid decisions.

That said, there was no player that I admired so much. And I hate the Yankees. They don't make them like the Mick anymore and baseball is diminished without him.

[S n o w b a l l]

11. It was in the documentary...

from someone from the hospital, that no, he was the first on the list after the screening process and NOT given special treatment. I guess you can believe it or not, but from the documentary and the witness at the hospital, I do believe it.

Of course he should've taken better care of himself. We all should, but we don't...which is the whole point of this thread.

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

15. I remember my brother Tom, who was a huge Yankees

fam in the 1960's telling me that my birthday was the same day as Mickey Mantle's. It's actually the first thing I remember in my life.

I was born on October 20, 1953 and Mickey was an icon even than. My brother, God rest him,
always told me I was born on a very special day.

One other thing, my brother had a baseball that was signed by the entire team of the 1961 Yankees. I don't remember exactly how he got it, but all I know is that baseball now belongs to his son and he wouldn't part with for the all money in the world.

It's his legacy, handed down by father to son or mother to daughter, and that is what baseball is all about.