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Quotes





Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Quotes on Mickey Mantle


Quotes on Mantle

  • "On two legs, Mickey Mantle would have been the greatest ball player who ever lived"
    --On Mantle's retirement, Nellie Fox

  • "Mickey Mantle is the strongest hitter in the game. He's the only one who hits the ball so hard, he knocks the spin off it. Catching a liner from him is like catching a knuckleball. It flutters all over."
    --Jim Busby, in The Sporting News, 1955

  • "The line I'll remember as long as I live about Mantle is the one some writer wrote: 'Mickey Mantle is a celebrity in his own clubhouse.' He was super in everything."
    --Clete Boyer, quoted by Clark Nelson of the Boston Post

  • "What did he lead the league in? He led the league in manhood, that's what."
    --Jackie Farrell, Yankee publicist on Mantle's 1962 MVP season when he didn't lead the league in homers, average or rbi's

  • "To Mickey, the greatest of them all. Best Always, Roger Maris"
    --signed ball owned by Mantle

  • "Mickey loves people, he always overtips, and he's big-hearted. He's got a heart as big as Yankee Stadium."
    --Billy Martin, quoted from Number 1

  • "Always within Mantle is the knowledge that any game he plays could be his last--one throw, one swing, one slide could write the end of his major league career. Yet Mick plays every game to the hilt, a tremendous tribute to his courage."
    --Tom Meany, quoted in Sport, 1957

  • "Until I saw Mantle peel down for his shower in the clubhouse at Comiskey Park one afternoon, I never knew how he developed his brutal power, but his bare back looked like a barrelful of snakes."
    --Dale Lancaster, quoted in Baseball Stars of 1963

  • "This man hit 531 homers and did everything else he did on one leg."
    --Paul Richards, former White Sox and Oriole manager

  • "The imprint of baseball greatness is upon Mickey Mantle just as surely as the portrait of Thomas Jefferson graces the current three-cent stamp, but it may still take a while before the American sporting public becomes aware of the magnitude of Mickey's talents."
    --Harold Rosenthal, quoted in the Sport

  • "It shows what you can accomplish if you stay up all night drinking whiskey all the time."
    --Toots Shor on the Hall of Fame induction of Mantle and Whitey Ford





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