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08/05/02 - Date of last update to this page.

Mickey Mantle is my favorite athlete.  When I was a boy I followed his career closely.  There's quite a bit written about him in my articles and in "Sixty, count 'em, sixty".

Below is information on two of Mickey's famous home runs: 1951 rookie spring training at USC; 1963 shot off the Stadium facade.

1951 at USC

I was attempting to research the origin of a story which may not be verifiable: Mickey Mantle hitting a legendary home run batting left handed in a spring training game at USC (University of Southern California) in his rookie season of 1951.  The Yanks were playing the college team and the Mick supposedly hit a shot not only over the fence in right center but also over the adjacent practice football field behind it.  OK, it was the width, not the length, of the football field but that's still an amazing feat.  Football fields are 53 yards wide.  That would still make his homer more than 600 feet.  Just for a little extra pizzazz, the story has been embellished so much and so often over the years that I was told that Frank Gifford, the hall of fame football halfback who was starring at USC then and who later played for the New York football Giants was on that football field.  I am not clear on what Gifford's participation, if any, may have been.  If Gifford related anything about this in later years I wonder whether it is true or whether he himself got caught up in the legend of the Mick and imagined his own participation.

I schlepped to the 42nd Street library in Manhattan to look it up in the newspaper accounts of the time.  Actually, I was meeting someone for dinner and I had some time to kill.  I was lost and discouraged in the research room because I could not get the stupid microfilm to load properly in the stupid machine.  A guardian angel suddenly appeared: Evelyn Begley.  She was there to find something for another lost soul who was not even there.  She was kind enough to help load the microfilm.  My late starting research was brief and unfruitful.

I checked the New York Dailey News for the day of the event and for the next few days.  The homer was reported, one of two that the Mick had hit that day.  But there was nothing special mentioned about the homer, not even that it was especially long, much less that it cleared the width of the football field.

However, I stumbled onto something that I found really interesting.  Here's the account.

With phenom Mickey Mantle busting loose again, the Yankees had no trouble dumping the college boys, 15-1.  The sensational rookie drove in seven runs on a pair of homers, a bases-loaded triple and a single.

Casey Stengel ... sharply revising his plans ... After nearly five weeks of training, the manager has a poorer club than expected.  He realizes now that Joe DiMaggio cannot be more than a part-time player.

He figured that Mickey Mantle could be spared for a year of seasoning in the minors.  There is no other cleanup hitter on the squad and Mantle will have to take over for the clipper.  Yogi Berra might seem to be the logical man to bat fourth, but the catcher suffers under the delusion he cannot hit the ball when placed in the cleanup.  Unfortunately, he proves his point when forced to take the big role.  Naturally, Stengel would rather have a healthy, if aging, DiMaggio in center than a raw, 19-year-old who never played the outfield.

New York Dailey News March 27, 1951 - Joe Trimble, LA March 26, 1951

All four individuals named are in the baseball Hall of Fame.  Before playing a game in the majors, Mantle was already seen as the heir apparent to DiMaggio, both in the batting order and in center.  Berra, known today for his clutch hitting, is described in opposite terms even by himself, despite an MVP caliber season in 1950 when teammate and fellow Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto won the MVP award.  The cleanup spot was viewed as the premier position in the batting order, one requiring a certain type of power hitter.  Ironically, it was Berra who batted fourth through most of the 1950s with Mantle third.  The Mick did not bat fourth regularly until several weeks into the 1961 season when rookie manager Ralph Houk moved him there to protect 1960 league MVP Roger Maris who was struggling.  Maris had batted fourth in 1960, replacing Berra who himself was aging.   In early 1961 Maris batted in several spots, as low as seventh.  Now he would bat third in front of Mantle and flourish.

1963 Shot off The Stadium Facade

Wednesday, May 22, 1963 - five months before the President's assasination.  I saw this one on TV.  Contrary to the accounts of some other TV watchers, there was no way to see on TV whether the ball was rising when it hit the facade.  There was no way to see the ball.  You could barely see Mickey.  This was WPIX in 1963, black and white.

 Here are excerpts from three New York Times articles.  Here's the game account.

The Yankees brought down the Kansas City Athletics, 8-7, in a torrid 11-inning struggle at the Stadium last night as Mickey Mantle belted one of the most powerful drives of his spectacular career.

First up in the last of the 11th with the score deadlocked 7-all and a count of two balls and two strikes, the famed Switcher leaned into one of Carl Fischer's fast ones and sent the ball soaring.  It crashed against the upper facade of the rightfield stand, which towers 108 feet above the playing field.

A little higher and it would have become the first fair ball ever to sail out of the Stadium.  Once before, Mantle came that close.  That was on May 30, 1956, off Pedro Ramos, then with the Senators.

"It was the hardest ball I ever hit," said Mantle later, "but Though I knew it would be well up there I didn't think it would be go out of the park."

The New York Times, May 23, 1963 - John Drebinger

I do not know why Drebinger calls the pitcher Carl when he is known as Bill Fischer.  That same day, Arthur Daley had written a column prior to the game about Fischer, praising his relief work late in his career and how rookie KC manager Eddie Lopat, a former teammate of Mickey's, had helped teach him the slow curve.  I guess Fischer should have thrown that instead of his "fast one".

Missing from Drebinger's account are two things: where the ball hit the facade and any reference to its trajectory.  I recall that the ball was hit within 15 feet of the right field line but there is only an indirect reference to location in an article by Drebinger a few days later, which contradicts this indirectly.

It's supposed to be physically impossible for a ball to be rising at that height and distance.  However, that bit of misinformation can be traced to the next article a day later.  It is unclear whether this reporter was at the game.

"Mantle's Homer Viewed with Awe - Ball within 6 Feet of Being First Hit Out of Stadium" by Deane McGowen

How high is up?  A pair of Oklahomans, Maj. L. Gordon Cooper Jr. and Mickey Mantle, can supply varying answers to the question.

Cooper, America's latest astronaut hero, zoomed around the earth 22 times at heights ranging from 100 to 166 miles above the earth's surface in his capsule, Faith 7.

Mantle kept his feet firmly on the ground at the Yankee Stadium, but he rocketed a baseball off the uppermost part of the right-field facade for a game-winning home run on Wednesday night.

Yesterday the Stadium crew got busy with a measuring rule.  The conclusion was that the Yankee slugger's sub-orbital blast was 374 feet away from the batter's box and 108 feet 1 inch above the playing surface and rising.

The local launching pad was home plate, the power missile was a 33-ounce, 35-inch Louisville Slugger.

Mantle missed by six feet making baseball history.  That distance prevented the ball from sailing out of the Stadium, a feat still beyond the reach of mortal baseball players.  Even such sluggers as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx, Hank Greenberg, Ted Williams and Rudy York failed.

The Yankee center fielder hit his homer, batting left-handed, on a 2-2 pitch from Kansas City's right-hander, Bill Fischer, in the 11th inning.  Had the ball cleared the roof, it would have been the first ball hit out of the park in the Stadium's 40-year history.

The blow, however, was not the longest of Mantle's career.  In 1953 at Washington, Mantle, batting right-handed, hit a towering fly 565 feet off Chuck Stobbs, a lefty.  Three years later, at the Stadium, Mantle blasted another off the right-field facade against right-handed Pedro Ramos.  But that drive was coming down when it hit the facade.

The Yankees did not work out yesterday, but there were some awed remarks from Mantle's teammates as well as from some of the A's.

... "He ought to have a league of his own," said Norm Siebern, a former Yankee.  "He's too much for everybody else."

"He gets $100,000," said Fischer.  "He has to be making it for some reason."

The New York Times, May 24, 1963 - Deane McGowen

McGowen has the ball rising when it hit the facade.  That's a major point of controversy.  He does not indicate whether he witnessed this himself or whether he was told that by someone else.  And why the heck did he include Rudy York in his list of long ball hitters?

I recall Fischer making some remark about how he was only making $10,000 and that Mickey was making $100,000 and that there must be some reason, similar to what appears in the article.

McGowen calls the park the Yankee Stadium.  That's how I remember it's name, with the article the preceding Yankee Stadium.  And the word stadium,  when used alone, is always capitalized.

Talk about a changed image of someone; how about the reference to Gordo who really became famous in the movie "The Right Stuff" almost twenty years later.

On Sunday, two days later, Drebinger  wrote the article "Mantle Aiming at Right-Field Sky".

... In baseball, driving a fair ball out of Yankee Stadium is held in almost the same awe as climbing Mount Everest.  Only with this difference: They have scaled Everest.

Thus far, no one has cleared the ramparts in the 40 year history of the famed "House that Ruth Built".  Many have tried including the Babe himself.  All have failed.  Mantle alone has come close.  He almost made it twice.

Clearing the vast expanse of the bleachers is impossible.  So is the towering left wing of the grandstand.  A few, including Jimmy Foxx, have sent homers crashing into the upper-deck seats in left field.  But no shot has ever approached the roof.

The one vulnerable spot is the right-field stand, which though also towering to a height of 108 feet, is just a little nearer to home plate than the left-field roof.  It is that stretch from foul line to the Yankee bullpen that must be cleared if ever the feat is to be achieved.

It was here that Mantle just missed by a matter of six feet last Wednesday night when his homeric blast enabled the Yankees to score an 8-7, 11 inning triumph over the Kansas City Athletics.  Just six feet higher and he would have made it.

It was the second time he had driven a ball against that facade under the roof.  The first time was on May 30, 1956, off Pedro Ramos, then with the Senators.  William Charles Fischer was the victim of the shot the other night.  As both are right-handed, the Switcher naturally belted each homer from the left side of the plate.

"There is just one more vulnerable spot," commented Mickey later, "but you've got to be mighty lucky to make it.  That spot is just a little to the left of the right-field roof.  For a moment the other night I thought the ball was heading there and if it had just missed the roof of the stand it might have cleared the park over the bullpen.

"Another spot is right close to the foul line, but you don't get quite all the power into those shots.  Well, I guess I'll just have to keep on swinging.  All I can say is that last one was the hardest ball I ever hit."

As a "tape measure job", of course, the most publicized of all Mickey's homers was his drive that cleared the left-field bleachers in the old Washington ball park in 1953.  In fact, it was that clout that gave rise to the "tape measure" expression.

As the ball, batted right-handed off left-handed Chuck Stobbs, sailed over the bleachers, a feat never achieved before, Red Patterson, then publicity director of the Yankees, immediately swung into action.  Witnesses located the spot where the ball landed outside the park.  Patterson then had it all carefully calculated and came up with the figure of 565 feet.

Three years later, on opening day in Washington, Mantle hit two more tremendous drives out of the same park.  Both cleared the 55-foot wall in dead center more than 410 feet away.  He smashed those left-handed off Camilo Pascual.  The second soared beyond the 438-foot marker and fell into a clump of trees 20 feet away.

Here are a few more of Mantle's outstanding smashes:

In 1956, he belted one right-handed off Billy Pierce that cleared the left-field roof in Comiskey Park, Chicago.  That had been achieved only once before, by the late Al Simmons.  In Sportsmans Park, St. Louis, when the Browns played there, Mickey cleared the left-field bleachers, a feat rarely seen.

In Detroit, he drove one homer 450 feet, into the center-field stands, and on three other occasions he cleared the 110-foot roof in Detroit.  One homer sailed out at this height at the 380-foot mark.

In Philadelphia, when the Athletics played in Shibe Park, he sent one rocketing over the double deck in left field.  In an exhibition in Forbes Field, Pittsburgh, he shot one over the roof of the right-field stand.

And for over-all distance at Yankee Stadium, perhaps his longest was the homer he smashed into the center-field bleachers, the ball clearing the 461-foot mark.

Ironically, one of Mantle's longest clouts was a ball actually caught.  That happened 1956 in Baltimore before they brought the center-field barrier in quite a bit.  Chuck Deering caught this one as he plunged headlong into a hedge 480 feet from home plate.

The New York Times, May 26, 1963 - John Drebinger

In the movie "City Slickers" Billy Crystal talks about his true life experience of attending his first Yankee game, which as I saw in 1958 at my first, the games were actually in color.  Billy's game was the May 30, 1956 doubleheader when Mickey first hit the facade.

Mickey's statement about possibly hitting the vulnerable spot (""a little to the left of the right-field roof") pretty much contradicts my recollection of his 1963 shot having been hit near the foul line.  Mickey said: "For a moment the other night I thought the ball was heading there"

Both McGowen and Drebinger consider six feet a near miss.  It appears that with such a great distance, feet, not inches, may count for getting close.  Mickey never got close again and neither did anyone else.