The Last Boy by Jane Leavy Read Free Book Online Page B

sports page asperity. “So Mantle has osteomyelitis. What’s the big deal? He doesn’t have to kick anybody in Korea.”
    Welcome to the big city, kid.
    Landing at 7:30 A.M. , Saturday, he headed straight for Ebbets Field, where the Yankees were scheduled to play the Dodgers in the secondgame of the annual interborough exhibition series. Mantle prevailed upon Stengel to put him in the starting lineup, but not before the manager showed him how to play the tough right field corner that had been his turf when he played for the Dodgers at the dawn of the twentieth century. “First time the kid ever saw concrete,” Stengel told his writers; they were always his writers.
    On Sunday, the kid went 4 for 4, with a home run over the 38-foot scoreboard in right field. General manager George Weiss put him on the major league roster. The next DiMaggio had arrived before the original departed. There was tension in that for both of them. “How’d you like to replace George Washington?” said teammate Jerry Coleman.
    Stengel didn’t make it easier. “Stengel loved Mantle, and didn’t like DiMaggio,” said future Hall of Fame manager Whitey Herzog, “So Joe held that against Mickey.”
    That was apparent when the Yankees opened the season against the Red Sox at the Stadium on April 17. DiMaggio pointed him out to columnist Jimmy Cannon: “This is the next great ballplayer.” But when an enterprising photographer posed DiMaggio and Ted Williams on either side of Mantle, Joe D. declined the opportunity to introduce them. The Splendid Splinter handled the niceties himself.
    There was a time, back in high school, when Mantle idled through fourth-period study hall with a two-page magazine spread devoted to Joltin’ Joe. He bragged to his classmate Joe Barker, “I’m going to take his place in center field at Yankee Stadium.”
    But Stan “The Man” was Mantle’s boyhood idol. He mentioned Musial the day he signed with the Yankees. Weiss immediately corrected that misconception, telling his young star the story line he was expected to follow—Joe D. was his hero. Given DiMaggio’s intimidating frostiness, it was little wonder Mantle never asked for help. Gil McDougald said, “When Joe was in the dugout, nobody would say a word. Joe would sit down. He’d like to smoke, so he’d be sittin’ down close to the runway. Everybody else would be sittin’ down toward the water faucet at the end of the dugout.”
    DiMaggio gave three years to the war effort, helping to make the world safe by playing baseball for Uncle Sam. He returned to the Yankees in 1946 with an ulcer, an unwanted divorce, and bone spurs that wouldplague him for the last six years of his career. By 1951, it was clear to everyone, including Joe’s brother, Dom, the Red Sox center fielder, that this season was likely his last. “He staggered through it,” Dom said.
    Two photographs taken in the Yankees’ locker room documented the imminent succession. Pete Sheehy had given Mantle the locker next to DiMaggio’s. In the first photo, taken five days before opening day, Sheehy is filling the empty cubicles in preparation for the new season, hanging Mantle’s crisp number 6 beside DiMaggio’s venerable number 5. A week later, Life magazine photographed them in street clothes in posed post-game chat, Mantle sitting on his stool in pants too short to cover his white socks, with DiMaggio towering above him. Joe looks immaculate, the way he always did—white shirt, braces, Countess Mara tie—the whole upwardly mobile bit. “Looked like a senator,” Billy Martin said, and Mantle agreed: “Like you needed an invitation to approach him.”
    Red Smith devoted his opening-day column in the Herald Tribune to the rookie who played his first major league game wearing “impoverished baseball spikes” and “soles flapping like a radio announcer’s jaw.” The Commerce Comet hadn’t gotten any sleep the night before. He gave the cabbie who took him to the Stadium the