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The only player currently in the major leagues to have at least 52 home runs and 130 RBIs in a season is Chris Davis, who had 53 homers and 138 RBIs for the 2013 Orioles. This was the first ball to ever go over Griffith Stadium's left-field bleachers. Most believe the ball would have gone even further had it not hit the scoreboard. At any rate, it became one of the most famous home runs ever. It was headline news in a number of newspapers and a major story across the country.
Mickey's blast traveled 425 feet to the seat it broke 80 feet above the field. Once again, geometric calculations give us the 630 foot figure for the length of Mickey's blast if unimpeded. In 1951 the Yankees trained in Arizona instead of St. Petersburg, FL. The dry desert air and higher altitude are conducive to the longball, and Mickey made the most of it. "The first time that I really knew I could play in the big leagues was when I found that I could hit major league pitching that spring. Mickey said "the hardest ball I ever hit" came in the 11th inning on May 22, 1963 at Yankee Stadium. Leading off in the bottom of the 11th, with the score tied 7-7, A's pitcher Bill Fischer tried to blow a fastball past Mickey.
Mickey
Babe RuthBaseball icon Babe Ruth set numerous records as a pitcher and slugging outfielder. He was among the first five players inducted into the sport's Hall of Fame. Throughout his career, Mantle was plagued by injuries and leg pain caused by osteomyelitis, yet he persevered to leave one of the greatest baseball legacies of all time. Mickey Mantle played on the New York Yankees for the entirety of his 18-year long major league career. It was a wild game in which the Yankees lost a 5-0 lead, there was a bench clearing brawl with actual punches thrown, and the game was stopped due to spectators throwing bottles at the Yankees outfielders.
From this point forward all numbers become guesses, estimates of how high we think the ball might have gone. They cause our calculation to go up almost 100 feet, to the 734 foot number listed above. Those present when the ball was hit feel that it would have gone at least that much higher, and many feel that the 20 foot number is far too low.
Comiskey Park,
Mantle became a Christian when his former teammate Bobby Richardson, a Baptist, shared his faith with him. After the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995, Mantle joined with fellow Oklahoman and Yankee Bobby Murcer to raise money for the victims. Mantle made an appearance in the music video for "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" by Paul Simon in 1988. He batted left-handed hitting while Simon pitched left-handed. In 1973, at the Old-Timers Game at Yankee Stadium, Mantle, batting right handed, faced old friend Whitey Ford.
At this point, the combined total of home runs hit by Maris and Mantle, 109, eclipsed the previous record set by a pair of teammates — Ruth and Gehrig at 107 –set back in 1927. Some of the media had also fabricated a rivalry between Maris and Mantle that didn’t exist. That was obviously good for selling newspapers and gaining TV share, but it wasn’t true. Mantle and Maris, along with Bob Cerv, a Yankee friend of Maris’s, lived together in a Queens apartment for most of the 1961 season. Maris and Cerv had in effect, rescued Mantle from his more freewheeling lifestyle and Times Square hangovers, when he lived downtown at the St. Moritz hotel.
Mickey Mantle announces his retirement from the Yankees
On the plane ride back from Boston, Mantle, still feeling under the weather, spoke with Yankee announcer Mel Allen who said he knew a doctor who could fix him up — an infamous physician, it turns out, named Max Jacobson. Dr. Jacobson, popular for a time with celebrities and even President John F. Kennedy, was known by the nickname, “Dr. Feelgood” for his rejuvenating injections of amphetamines .
And when the Washington Senators came to Yankee stadium on September 5th, Mantle hit No. 51. The following day against the Senators, Maris added his 54th. Then the Cleveland Indians came to Yankee Stadium for a four-game series, September 7th-thru-September 10th, during which Mantle hit Nos. 52 and 53, and Maris, Nos. 55 and 56.
feet (9/12/53, Yankee Stadium –
In the accompanying photo the Polo Grounds, home of the NY Giants, can be seen at the top as indicated by the small red arrow. For spectators that day it was another of many tape measure homers Mantle hit during his career. For the Yankees the win - coupled with a Baltimore Orioles loss - put them back in first place in a tight pennant race.
With Merlyn sitting beside Pat near the Yankees home dugout, Maris tied the single-season record on Sept. 26, moving an also-present Claire Ruth to tears. The shot came in his 684th plate appearance of the season. Ruth’s 60th home run came in his 687th plate appearance. All he endured could easily have ended with a forgotten second-place finish. Some of baseball’s greats — most memorably, Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby — also wanted a different representative for the illustrious mark.
Maris soon went on one of the greatest power surges in history, crushing 24 home runs in 38 games. Hitting in the 3-hole, Maris — who wasn’t issued an intentional walk all season — enjoyed the protection of Mantle at cleanup, following a lineup switch manager Ralph Houk made early that season. After an 18-year career that propelled him into the same star orbit as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, it is understandable that Mantle wasn’t eager to quit. His father had him switch-hitting at age four; baseball was embedded in the fiber of his being, from day one.
The sports pages throughout the nation were full of “home run battle” reporting. Television, too, was enjoying the “home run fever,” with more viewers tuning in. Mickey Mantle, a switch-hitter, showing his power from the right side of the plate, capable of 'distant shot' home runs of 500 feet or more. The Mantle-Maris cover photo was taken by photographer Philippe Halsman, while the ghostly background photo of Ruth from earlier times had been taken by William Greene.
Patterson gave the boy a dollar and later sent him five more dollars and two autographed baseballs in return for the home run ball. The ball and Mantle’s bat eventually made its way to Cooperstown. Nolan RyanHall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan established records with his 5,714 strikeouts and seven no-hitters during his 27-year Major League Baseball career. Yogi BerraYogi Berra is best known as a Yankees player who was widely considered one of the best catchers of all-time. Later in life, he managed the team, becoming only one of six managers to lead both National and American League teams to the World Series. Roberto ClementeBaseball Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente became the first Latin American player to collect 3,000 career hits before his death in a plane crash.
In the Detroit series, September 16th and 17th, and he hit a couple of long balls that almost made it out. Life magazine, then one of the premiere news and lifestyle sources of its day, runs a featured cover story on the Mantle and Maris race to upend Ruth’s record. Mantle got off to a strong start in April, hitting seven round trippers.
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