MICKEY MANTLE ROOKIE CARD – THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY – FROM THE PRESS BOX
by: Amaury Pi-González
Mickey Mantle is as iconic an American sports figure as there ever was. Mantle played in 20 All-Star Games, retired in March of 1969 with 536 home runs, and won 7 World Series with his Yankee team. His #7 uniform was the most famous number 7 in history. The #7 is indeed the luckiest number for him.
During a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium in 1969 (the year he retired), the Yankees retired his famous #7 uniform. I lived in New York after being discharged from the US Army and attended that game alone. I never forgot that in the middle of that doubleheader, they drove Mantle in a golf cart around the outfield as he waved at fans in a sold-out stadium. I remember it as a sunny, very hot, and humid day in the middle of summer in the Bronx. Number 7, already retired, wearing a suit, spoke, and got a long ovation from the fans.
To me (always an American League fan), at a time when each league just played inside its league and only met against National League teams in insignificant Spring Training games or during the World Series in October, Mickey Mantle was the best player I ever saw. His power as a switch-hitter is legendary to this day. Mantle could hit a ball from the right side of the plate 450 feet and later during the same game, hit one from the left side of the plate 440 feet. For me, he was the man. I probably bought thousands of baseball cards. In those days, they all came in with a bubble gum inside; the company was Topps. I was not old enough to ever get hold of the Mickey Mantle Rookie card. I never witnessed him playing in the 50s. But I know and remember that everybody in the 1960s wanted to get their hands on that rookie card, his first season, 1952. In 2022, a mint-condition 1952 Mickey Mantle Topps card sold for $12.6 million at an Auction in Dallas, Texas. I always dreamed of getting my hands on that card, for me, that was the card the One that Got Away, but I’d collected and traded many cards when I was more focused on baseball as a fan, and in New York, I thought everybody was collecting them in the late 1960s. Even though the Mets were born in New York, people have been looking for that Mantle rookie card. Although I watched Mantle play, I was never lucky to find that famous rookie card; I kept the program from that hot, humid day at Yankee Stadium when they retired his number 7 in the middle of a doubleheader. It is not worth millions like the rookie card, but for me, it is worth a lot because I was there, and I will take that memory of that day to my grave.
2025 seems like a different world on a different planet, with the internet and people watching a game on their cell phones. It has been generations since baseball cards were “the hobby” for many kids and adults nationwide. Like My Mamá used to tell me, these adults were “the guys that never grew up.”
Mickey Mantle was an absolute superstar, idolized by men and women alike. He was the biggest playboy in New York, much bigger than Joe Namath. I had the privilege of meeting him in person, not when he was playing but years later when he and Joe DiMaggio were broadcasting Yankee games for the Yes Network, New York, and during a Yankee series against the A’s at the Oakland Coliseum to play the Oakland Athletics, sometime in the early 1980s.
Early in 1995, doctors discovered that Mantle’s liver had been severely damaged by alcohol-induced cirrhosis and hepatitis C, and he had an inoperable liver cancer.
Quote: “If I knew I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself” -Mickey Mantle.
