Greatness in the Shadows by Douglas M. Branson

Author:Douglas M. Branson [Branson, Douglas M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO016000 Biography & Autobiography / Sports, SOC001000 Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies, SPO003030 Sports & Recreation / Baseball / History
ISBN: 978-0-8032-8594-1
Publisher: UNP - Nebraska
Published: 2016-01-27T05:00:00+00:00

Beginnings of the Legend

Any retrospective on the Mantle legend should emphasize the stellar achievements of a baseball player called “a hero all his life,” “the Natural,” “the All-American boy.”9 “It was Mantle and Mantle alone who did things in the baseball field that were not simply spectacular but crossed the line into the world of the surreal, the unfathomable.”10

Mantle made his first marks playing semipro baseball for the Whizzes in Oklahoma, where he hit two home runs out of the park into the Spring River. He was then “discovered in the middle of nowhere by the legendary Yankee scout Tom Greenwade.”11 Known throughout the Missouri-Oklahoma-Kansas territory, Greenwade was noted for his three-piece suits, felt hats, and black Cadillacs. But he did not merely discover Mantle; rather he swindled Mantle and his family and bamboozled many others as well.

Scouts for other teams such as the Indians had heard of Mantle. Greenwade conspired with Mantle’s high school principal to put other scouts off the scent. During a storm and a rain delay in a game Mantle was playing, Greenwade corralled Mantle and his father, Mutt, putting them in the backseat of his Cadillac. He told Mutt that his son “was a marginal prospect. He might make it, he might not,” remarking, “Kid is kind of small.” He persuaded Mantle and his father to sign for $1,150 when other, less promising Major League prospects in the region were signing for bonuses of $25,000 or $50,000. Moreover, $750 of that amount was contingent upon Mantle sticking with the Yankees’ Independence, Missouri, farm team beyond June 30.12 “Greenwade did not become a legend until he discovered Mickey Mantle.”13 He achieved that only by being deceitful.

In his fifty-plus-year Major League Baseball career, Branch Rickey saw every aspect of it, as a player, a field manager, and a general manager of the Cardinals, the Dodgers, and the Pirates. He developed the first true farm system at St. Louis and reprised the act at Brooklyn for the Dodgers. One salient truth he learned from his vast experience was that “there is more room for the twilight zone double cross in scouting than in any other phase of the baseball business.”14 Mickey Mantle learned that lesson early in his baseball career.

After spending the summers of 1949 and 1950 in the minor leagues, Mantle reported to Yankee spring training at Phoenix, Arizona, in 1951. Ordinarily, the Yankees trained in Florida, but at that time Del Web, an Arizona real-estate developer, and the father of Sun City, owned half of the Yankee baseball club. He wanted to showcase “his” team in his home city.

In 1950, the previous year, Mantle had hit .383, with 26 HR, 136 RBIs, and 141 runs scored, being named Most Valuable Player in the Western League.15 Soon, in his first year with the big club, Mantle merited superlatives. He had hit .402, with 9 HRs in spring training 1951. “He has more speed than any slugger and more slug than any speedster—and nobody has ever had more of both of ’em together.

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