The following Mickey Mantle tawdry tale of a stadium sex act has been “out there” for some time. It is even mentioned on the Mickey Mantle Wikipedia page. That said, it’s somehow still very obscure, and it is not every day that a source sends you photos of the very letter in which Mantle himself engages in “locker room talk” with the organization that employed him.
The Mick was so shameless in retirement that in 1973, when the Yankees sent several of their most iconic players questionnaires, seeking their favorite moments at Yankee Stadium, he got very snarky and provided TMI.
The responses were to be shared with fans in a pamphlet honoring the iconic ballpark’s 50th anniversary, and it is very safe to say that Mantle’s response was omitted. He replied that his best House that Ruth Built memory was when a female fan performed fellatio on him under the right field stands by the Yankee bullpen.
First below is the survey the Yankees sent to Mantle and some other club legends
And now below, the response by Mickey Mantle, in which he clarifies why he was physically unable to engage in sexual intercourse at the time, and thus opted to have fellatio performed instead.
(Warning: contains NSFW language and anti-gay slur)
Making the response even more cheeky, he signs his letter “The All-American Boy,” which is an indication that he was very self-aware of who he was as an actual human being versus the hero myth was ascribed to him.
He clearly knew how far his reality was from the public mythology. There was certainly no need for the homophobic pejorative to be used there, even if it was 1973, and society then was way far behind where we are today when it comes to Gay Rights.
No one I’ve talked to, and bear in mind I’m a baseball writer, talking to other baseball writers, has ever heard this tale of debauchery before I brought it to their attention.
Mickey Mantle was from an era in which most of the press willingly looked the other way, or even sometimes helped cover up, his excessive drinking and extramarital affairs. Mantle himself wasn’t exactly discreet about either his alcoholism or his consistent adultery.
If he was in his prime today, he’d have to worry about people at bars capturing him out on a bender, and cheating on his wife with groupies. Videos and photos would end up in Instagram Stories and the dude would probably get canceled every single weekend.
When giving the Mickey Mantle eulogy in 1995, legendary sportscaster Bob Costas summated the man, his aura and the legacy he left behind as well as anyone:
“In the last year of his life, Mickey Mantle, always so hard on himself, finally came to accept and appreciate the distinction between a role model and a hero.”
It’s reminiscent of when Costas appeared in a video at the Newseum, recalling a tale told to him by a baseball writer from the sport’s golden era. A group of sports writers were on a train, and a naked Babe Ruth comes sprinting through the train coach.
A woman chases after him, brandishing a knife, to which one sports writer told the rest of the group: “well, I guess that’s another story we WON’T be covering.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank, partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune.
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