Mantle: The Best There Ever Was

MOVE OVER BABE, THE MICK IS THE GREATEST * From Tony Castro, the New York Times bestselling author, comes the concluding book of his brilliant biographical trilogy of Mickey Mantle -- of whom even Joe DiMaggio begrudgingly told the author: "to say there was anyone better in the game, to say there was anyone better than Mantle is what we Italians would call 'un sacco di stronzate,' a load of crap." "An American literary stylistic masterpiece... Tony Castro paints Mickey Mantle with the pinstripe magic of Garcia Marquez phantasmagoria and realism..." -- Tom Wolfe In Mantle: The Best There Ever Was, former Harvard classics scholar Tony Castro delivers a bold retelling of the Greek mythological hero Achilles from The Iliad in the powerful but doomed legendary baseball slugger who came to symbolize post-World War II American might in the 20th century. "Mantle's life story has been told many times, but it's never received as loving a treatment as this one," raves Booklist in its Starred review. Castro offers illuminating new insight into Mantle's extraordinary career, including the head-turning conclusion based on the evolution of analytics that the beloved Yankee switch-hitter may ultimately win acclaim as having fulfilled the weighty expectations once placed on him: of being greater than even Babe Ruth. "I was attracted to the double tragedy of Mickey's youth and his death hanging over him and how he loses the only person who meant anything to him -- his father," writes Castro, who is also the biographer of literary giant Ernest Hemingway and who knew Mantle personally. "Mutt Mantle, the center of Mickey's universe, died tragically young in the spring of 1952, Mantle's second season as a Yankee. And, in his own way, Mickey goes mad with grief and rage. How could you not be moved by that story? "Set in the epic world of baseball in which Mantle has a grand destiny, Mickey's story is just an updating of one of the oldest classics in literature. Whether it's Achilles going mad with grief and rage after the death of his cousin and friend Patroclus. Or Hamlet going mad with grief and rage after the murder of his father. "Achilles used his rage to help conquer Troy, and Hamlet's rage drove him to destroy the kingdom that had been stolen from his father.  "Mantle? Though he, too, was doomed and without giving much thought to his own health, Mickey led a New York Yankees wrecking crew to championship after championship, becoming certainly the greatest switch-hitter in baseball and arguably -- certainly in the minds of his legion of fans -- the greatest player in the game. "Mickey's is the definitive father-son story of our time." mickeymantle.live Read more