Sportswriter Robert Lipsyte in the New York Times, June 11, 1995:

Mickey Mantle was 19 years old when he burst into our lives, as strong as the heart of the great golden West, a fielder of dreams in a time of infinite promise. It was 1951, the boom-time after a world war won, early summer afternoon in the American Century....

And like America in the 50's, he was burdened with a distant sense of doom. For America it was the threat of atomic attack by the Soviet Union. A generation of sports fans grew up with the Mick and with "duck and cover" air-raid drills in school. For Mantle it was Hodgkin's disease that killed most males in his family before they reached 40. His father, his biggest booster, died after Mantle's rookie season.

The threats to both America and Mantle ultimately proved empty, but they dominated the psyche of the country and the center fielder and gave them each an urgency and a poignancy that affected behavior in often destructive ways. America abused itself with the cold war. Mantle had booze.

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