The Last Boy

Starred review from July 26, 2010
Bob Costas eulogized the Yankee great as "a fragile hero to whom we had an emotional attachment so strong and lasting that it defied logic." The "we" in Costas's remarks—with author Leavy (Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy) as stand-in—is as much the subject of this fascinating biography as the ballplayer himself. Mantle, who succumbed to cancer in 1995 at age 63, was justly famous for his baseball exploits, but what Costas described as Mantle's "paradoxical grip" on a certain generation of baseball fans is exactly what Leavy tackles in this book. She should know. She spent much time in her childhood in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, a tomboyish "Mickey guy" listening to the roar of the crowd from across the Grand Concourse. While a sportswriter for the Washington Post, she won a 1983 assignment to interview Mantle for his upcoming golf tournament in Atlantic City. What happened that day and night between the fading, embittered Mantle and the former fan girl trying to do her job is the drama that structures Leavy's narrative—she has never reported the truth till now, and she does so without judgment. Instead, she proceeds with steely determination to understand what brought this onetime golden boy from the zinc mines of Oklahoma to center stage at Yankee Stadium and made him into America's quintessential tragic hero, a freakily gifted athlete haunted by a deadly genetic inheritance, including alcoholism. With storytelling bravado and fresh research, Leavy weaves around her own story the milestone dates in "the Mick's" career, which as often burnishes the legend as tarnishes it. Leavy concludes that Mantle cavorted in a more innocent time, when people believed in sports heroes and would not hear otherwise. That's hardly a new idea, but no matter: by the end of this book, readers will know what made Mantle rise, fall, and survive into recovery for his last 18 months. In Leavy's hands, the life of Mantle no longer defies logic: it seems inevitable. She's hit a long home run. 8 pages of color and 8 pages of b&w photos.

Starred review from September 1, 2010
Another Mantle biography? Yes, but Leavy, author of the celebrated Sandy Koufax (2002), about another baseball icon, takes a new tack, approaching the New York Yankee center fielder from the mixed perspectives of fan, journalist, and personal acquaintance, striving, as she says, to portray the man she loved as a child but whose actions were unlovable. She conducted more than 500 interviews with family, friends, teammates, managers, and medical professionals. The latter group is, sadly, surprisingly large. In his rookie year, Mantle ruined his knee on an uncovered drain in Yankee Stadium. He essentially played hurt the remaining 17 years of his career, a condition that helped fuel his ultimately fatal alcoholism, which, in turn, led to the attendant flaws that propelled him into a satyrs life of infidelity, despite a devoted wife and four sons. Mantle, Leavy shows, could be a wonderful, witty, and gregarious friend. He also was capable of horrible cruelty and verbal abuse. He ignored his sons when they were young; when they were older, they became his drinking buddies and sank into their own addictions. This is unlike any biography on the sports shelf. Leavy, in exploring her own ambivalent feelings toward Mantle, permits readers to experience the same confusing emotions that many of those around him felt: proud to bask in his reflected glory but too intimidated to confront him. They loved him and hated him, too, leaving the Mick adrift to wrestle with his own demons, a battle he wasnt equipped to win. Expect both acclaim and tremendous demand. A masterpiece of sports biography.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)

Starred review from August 1, 2010

Another biography of the late Yankee slugger—but this candid, compassionate portrait is worth a dugout full of the others.

Sports journalist Leavy (Sandy Koufax, 2002) produces an enduring, though certainly not endearing, portrait of The Mick. Eschewing traditional chronology, the author begins with a 1983 interview she conducted with the boozy, boorish, lecherous Mantle (he'd been retired for 15 years), an experience she spreads throughout the narrative, using portions of it to introduce each major section. She focuses on 20 significant days in Mantle's life (five of them after his playing days), beginning with his career-threatening injury in 1951 in Yankee Stadium, and ending with his death to cancer in 1995. In between are glimpses of Mantle as son, brother, husband, adulterer (he was a serial offender), father (not a good one), player, teammate and fading and feckless celebrity. Leavy is generally careful not to celebrate his athletic accomplishments excessively, though it's hard not to. His home runs were prodigious; his speed was gazelline; his capacity to endure pain was humbling. He won the Triple Crown in 1956 and entered the Hall of Fame as soon as he was eligible. The Mick, however, harbored many demons, and the author justly emphasizes them when appropriate. Often ignorant, capricious and extremely self-centered, he drank heavily, cheated on his wife and could be crude and obnoxious to fans (some of the things he wrote on souvenirs for young hero-worshippers—e.g., "You're lucky. Your mom has nice tits"—are legendary). But as Leavy points out, it was in no one's pecuniary interest to portray Mantle as anything other than the All-American Ballplayer.

The best of the Mantle biographies.

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