league cities, Merlyn was back in Oklahoma, wearing his engagement ring and receiving love letters penned on Yankee letterhead. In one letter, written early on a sleepless road-trip morning, he pleaded with her to write to him the way the other wives did. Another letter, written in the clubhouse, began:
Honey I sure will be glad to see you—I’m going to make up for all the loving I have missed from you when I get home—The only thing is I will just want to stay there and hate it all the more when I have to leave you again. We haven’t been together very much since we have been engaged have we? When we get married we’ll make up for it.
It was signed, “All of my love, Mickey M—”
“He wrote like he loved me,” Merlyn told me six decades later.
Mantle’s dalliance with Brooke set a precedent for a double life that persisted long after the relationship ended and would continue throughout his married life. Nor was Brooke that summer’s only leggy temptation. Among them was a Copa girl named Peaches, a close personal friend of the mob boss Joe Bonanno. Mantle was too eager and too innocent to understand his dangerous indiscretion.
“He was gonna have Mickey rubbed out,” said Mike Klepfer, a friend in later life whose longshoreman father heard the waterfront scuttlebutt about a contract on the amorous ballplayer. Decades after the fact, Klepfer’s father told Mantle, “I remember when they were going to kill you.” “Mickey looked like he’d seen a ghost,” Mike said.On October 3, Yogi Berra was making his way home from the Polo Grounds, trying to beat the traffic on the clogged streets of upper Manhattan, when “whatchamacallit” came to the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning of the deciding play-off game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. With the Giants trailing 4–1, Berra thought the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Like everyone else in New York, Berra was sure the Yankees would face the Dodgers in game 1 of the World Series the next day.
Bobby Brown also missed Bobby Thomson’s historic at-bat, which was seen across the country on the first coast-to-coast baseball telecast. Brown was waiting for his father behind the wheel of his new Chevrolet outside the press gate at the Polo Grounds. He had given his dad his ticket to the game. They learned the outcome at a red light on Amsterdam Avenue from the driver of a car in the next lane—Brown couldn’t afford a radio in his new sedan.
Mickey and Mutt were still in the ballpark when Thomson stepped to the plate. Like most everyone else in the Polo Grounds, the Yankees were rooting for the Giants. “Bigger ballpark, bigger World Series money,” Gil McDougald said.
They saw Ralph Branca lumber to the mound, summoned by Dodger manager Charlie Dressen to relieve the exhausted Don Newcombe. Probably they didn’t notice, as Dodger center fielder Duke Snider did, the ominous change in Dressen’s demeanor. “Usually Dressen liked to bring the relief pitcher up to date, give him all sorts of instruction,” Snider said. This time, Dressen was mum. “I said, ‘Charlie’s worried,’” Snider recalled. “So I became worried.”
They saw Willie Mays, New York’s other rookie center fielder, kneeling in the on-deck circle. “Willie, he was scared to death,” Snider said.
Mays was still kneeling in the on-deck circle when Thomson rounded the bases at 3:58 P.M. Snider had a better view than anyone else of the ball that broke Brooklyn’s heart, a line drive that sent Andy Pafko to the left field wall. “I ran over,” Snider said. “It was a low line drive. I was there to receive the carom. I thought I was going to hold him to a double.”
Thomson’s home run would soon be known as the Shot Heard Round the World and the Miracle at Coogan’s Bluff. When Snider saw it dipover the fence, he said, “I took a right turn and went into the clubhouse in center field and didn’t break stride.”
Snider left the Polo
Honey I sure will be glad to see you—I’m going to make up for all the loving I have missed from you when I get home—The only thing is I will just want to stay there and hate it all the more when I have to leave you again. We haven’t been together very much since we have been engaged have we? When we get married we’ll make up for it.
It was signed, “All of my love, Mickey M—”
“He wrote like he loved me,” Merlyn told me six decades later.
Mantle’s dalliance with Brooke set a precedent for a double life that persisted long after the relationship ended and would continue throughout his married life. Nor was Brooke that summer’s only leggy temptation. Among them was a Copa girl named Peaches, a close personal friend of the mob boss Joe Bonanno. Mantle was too eager and too innocent to understand his dangerous indiscretion.
“He was gonna have Mickey rubbed out,” said Mike Klepfer, a friend in later life whose longshoreman father heard the waterfront scuttlebutt about a contract on the amorous ballplayer. Decades after the fact, Klepfer’s father told Mantle, “I remember when they were going to kill you.” “Mickey looked like he’d seen a ghost,” Mike said.On October 3, Yogi Berra was making his way home from the Polo Grounds, trying to beat the traffic on the clogged streets of upper Manhattan, when “whatchamacallit” came to the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning of the deciding play-off game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. With the Giants trailing 4–1, Berra thought the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Like everyone else in New York, Berra was sure the Yankees would face the Dodgers in game 1 of the World Series the next day.
Bobby Brown also missed Bobby Thomson’s historic at-bat, which was seen across the country on the first coast-to-coast baseball telecast. Brown was waiting for his father behind the wheel of his new Chevrolet outside the press gate at the Polo Grounds. He had given his dad his ticket to the game. They learned the outcome at a red light on Amsterdam Avenue from the driver of a car in the next lane—Brown couldn’t afford a radio in his new sedan.
Mickey and Mutt were still in the ballpark when Thomson stepped to the plate. Like most everyone else in the Polo Grounds, the Yankees were rooting for the Giants. “Bigger ballpark, bigger World Series money,” Gil McDougald said.
They saw Ralph Branca lumber to the mound, summoned by Dodger manager Charlie Dressen to relieve the exhausted Don Newcombe. Probably they didn’t notice, as Dodger center fielder Duke Snider did, the ominous change in Dressen’s demeanor. “Usually Dressen liked to bring the relief pitcher up to date, give him all sorts of instruction,” Snider said. This time, Dressen was mum. “I said, ‘Charlie’s worried,’” Snider recalled. “So I became worried.”
They saw Willie Mays, New York’s other rookie center fielder, kneeling in the on-deck circle. “Willie, he was scared to death,” Snider said.
Mays was still kneeling in the on-deck circle when Thomson rounded the bases at 3:58 P.M. Snider had a better view than anyone else of the ball that broke Brooklyn’s heart, a line drive that sent Andy Pafko to the left field wall. “I ran over,” Snider said. “It was a low line drive. I was there to receive the carom. I thought I was going to hold him to a double.”
Thomson’s home run would soon be known as the Shot Heard Round the World and the Miracle at Coogan’s Bluff. When Snider saw it dipover the fence, he said, “I took a right turn and went into the clubhouse in center field and didn’t break stride.”
Snider left the Polo
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