Mickey Mantle announces his retirement from the Yankees
Plagued by leg and knee pain for the majority of his career, the 37-year-old Yankee icon wasn’t getting any younger in the spring of 1969. But the option of calling it quits plagued him just as much as his injuries had, going as far to occupy his subconscious mind years after he had announced his retirement.
“I used to have that reoccurring dream, I was trying to get back into the ballpark,” Mantle told Bob Costas in a March 1994 interview. “I could hear (manager) Casey (Stengel) and the team out there playing. All the gates were locked and I had to try and sneak through a hole in the fence to get into the ballpark. And then if I did get in, I’d hit a ball that should’ve been a hit but I couldn’t run and the outfielder would throw me out.”
His decision came right under the wire, as he announced his retirement just when the Yankees’ Spring Training camp was getting underway. Mantle said that he hadn’t made up his mind yet when he’d arrived to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., but that speaking with Yankees president Mike Burke and manager Ralph Houk changed his perspective.
“I will never want to embarrass myself on the field or hurt the club in any way or give the fans anything less than they are entitled to expect from me,” Mantle said. “Anyhow, there are a lot of young fellows coming into their own. It’s a young ball club with a lot of promise and I wish I were 20 years old again and part of them.”
Breezing through the minor leagues in two years, Mantle was in pinstripes from the beginning to the end. He won three AL MVP awards – one of them during a 1962 season in which he’d missed nearly 40 games due to injury. A 16-time All-Star, he won the AL Triple Crown in 1956 and ranked third in career home runs by the time of his retirement with 536. On top of all that, he set World Series records for home runs (18), runs (42), RBI (40), total bases (125) and bases on balls (43).
But the farewell to Mickey Mantle in a Yankee uniform wasn’t simply the sad conclusion to a storied-but-complicated career. It was the end of an era.
“I see him swing sometimes and even from the outfield you can see the legs buckle and the way he winces in pain,” Carl Yastrzemski said to the New York Daily News. “I wince, too. Because it’s like seeing your kid in pain and you can feel the pain yourself. That’s the way all ballplayers feel about Mantle.”
Alex Coffey was the communications specialist at the National Baseball Hall of Fame
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