​It was the year Mickey Mantle became Mickey Mantle.

Since joining the New York Yankees as a raw rookie in 1951, Mantle had been anointed as the next great Yankee, the player who would carry on the tradition of greatness set by Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio.

Mantle had shown flashes of brilliance, with tape measure home runs and the speed to beat out drag bunts or flag down long fly balls at Yankee Stadium. He had helped New York win four pennants in his five seasons, but there had been this nagging feeling that Mantle had not tapped into his vast potential.

That changed in 1956, when Mantle won baseball’s Triple Crown and led New York to a comeback World Series victory against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Mantle looked the part of a hero — blond, crew cut, heavily muscled, the prototype of the All-American Hero. But he was a flawed hero, and the media did a good job of hiding it in 1956.

Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith take a fresh look at Mantle in the context of the 1950s in their latest book, A Season in the Sun: The Rise of Mickey Mantle (Basic Books; hardback; $28; 277 pages). It was true that the times dictated that sportswriters only covered what took place between the foul lines, and that was a blessing for Mantle, who was not shy about taking a drink or enjoying the company of women.

“With the help of the very best sportswriters in New York,” Mantle emerged “as an American icon,” the authors write.

Mantle had that alliterative name that “evoked power and poetry, arousing the kind of admiration reserved for baseball immortals.”

And 1956 showed Mantle at his powerful best. He hit 52 home runs and drove in 130 runs while scoring 132. He batted .353 and had a .705 slugging percentage with 188 hits and 376 total bases. All were career highs except for home runs (he’d hit 54 in 1961).

Roberts and Smith take a different approach with Mantle. There have been plenty of books written about the Yankees slugger, and many of them point to his excesses, particularly his drinking habits, which led to his death in 1995 after he had cirrhosis of the liver and needed a transplant to stay alive. Cancer and hepatitis C also sapped his strength and vitality.

The authors concede the vices and diseases that led to Mantle’s death, but that approach “ignores much of the joy of his life.”

“To fully understand the man, his impact on baseball, and what he meant to America, it is necessary to look at his life as he lived it,” Roberts and Smith write, “not as a study in retrospection.”

That’s why they decided to visit Mantle as he was in 1956, when he was at the peak of his career. Mantle was beginning to blossom in 1955, leading the American League in homers (37), triples (11), walks (113) and slugging percentage (.611). Excellent numbers, but Mantle was injured toward the end of the season and had little impact in the World Series, playing in only three games and going 2-for-10 as the Yankees lost to the Dodgers in seven games.

Roberts and Smith wanted to answer three questions about Mantle: How did he become a hero? Why did it happen in 1956? And what did he mean to America?
Men sang his praises, and Mantle managed an aw-shucks duet with singer Teresa Brewer in her 1956 song, "I Love Mickey."

Both Roberts and Smith have the credentials to answer those questions.

Roberts is a distinguished professor of history at Purdue University and has been at the Indiana campus since 2006. He graduated magna cum laude in 1972 from Mansfield College and earned his master’s degree the following year from the University of Nebraska. He was awarded his doctorate in 1976 from LSU. Roberts has written 16 books, covering such subjects as boxers Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis; the relationship between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X; actor John Wayne; Pearl Harbor; Ronald Reagan; Bear Bryant and Joe Namath; and the Alamo. He specializes in the meshing of popular and political culture.

Smith earned his bachelor’s degree at Michigan State University in 2004 and earned his master’s two years later from Western Michigan. He received his doctorate in 2011 from Purdue. He and Roberts collaborated on the 2016 book, Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X.

The authors’ bibliography is extensive, tapping into such diverse sources as Leonard Shecter, Glenn Stout, Dick Schaap, David Falkner, Peter Golenbock, David Halberstam, Jane Leavy, Ben Bradlee Jr., Richard Ben Cramer, Roger Kahn, Bill James and Jules Tygiel. That’s just a sampling. The footnotes are extensive and rich in detail, which is what would expect from a pair of college professors.

Their research was deep, too, as they combed newspaper records in the National Archives to get a fuller, richer picture of Mantle. They tell a wonderful anecdote by comedian Billy Crystal, who was at Yankee Stadium the day Mantle cracked a home run that nearly became the first fair ball hit out of the park. Only the façade in the right field upper deck prevented the ball from bouncing on the streets.

Roberts and Smith answer their three questions by noting that Mantle “dramatized the daily struggle” for individual goals. He was a symbol of what was good about America — young, strong, vigorous, clear-eyed. That it happened in 1956 was due to a few changes Mantle made in his batting stance, particularly standing deeper in the batter’s box. Mantle’s chase of Babe Ruth’s home run record — for much of the season he was far ahead of the pace the Bambino had when he 60 in 1927 — also fired the imagination of baseball fans.

Mantle was unable to sustain that pace, particularly in September, but he still became the first Yankees hitter since Ruth to hit 50 homers in a season.

The narrative for A Season in the Sun is smooth and builds tension through several subplots. There was the resurgence of Ted Williams, who threatened to spoil Mantle’s Triple Crown year by challenging for the American League batting title. A youthful Al Kaline challenged Mantle in the RBI race. Today’s baseball fan is aware of performance-enhancing drugs, but few in 1956 realized the extent of the usage of Dexedrine, or “greenies,” to keep players alert and “up.”

Then there was the World Series, where Mantle only hit .250 with six hits, but three of those hits were homers. One homer was the first hit in Game 5, which gave the Yankees a 1-0 lead. Mantle did excel on defense, making a lunging, back-handed catch of a Gil Hodges line drive in left-center field at Yankee Stadium that preserved Don Larsen’s perfect game.

When the season was over, Mantle could look back at a stunning year of achievement. He would play for a dozen more seasons, but never approach the year when his hitting, power, speed and defense were hitting on all cylinders.

The book's title, A Season in the Sun, is reminiscent of two memories from the 1970s. It is the title of a 1977 book about a college baseball team by noted author Roger Kahn, and a variation on the 1973 song by Terry Jacks, “Seasons in the Sun.” Kahn’s book was sunny, while Jacks was singing a depressing collaborative song, with lyrics written by poet Rod McKuen and a tune composed by Belgian songwriter Jacques Brel that was originally titled “Le Moribond.”
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In 1956, Mantle had joy and had fun, and a great season in the sun. Through excellent research and a conversational narrative, Roberts and Smith show that joy Mantle experienced.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily previewing the 2017-2018 Dominion basketball set, which has a mid-May release date.

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/panini-adds-dominion-to-basketball-lineup/​

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about some LeBron James memorabilia from this year's NBA All-Star Game:
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www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/83081-2/
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​Relievers in baseball face high-pressure situations when they enter a game, so when they are not sweating out bases-loaded jams, they have time to reflect.

That makes them very good storytellers. Jim Brosnan began the trend in 1960 with The Long Season, followed by Jim Bouton’s epic Ball Four a decade later. You can put Skip Lockwood into the same category. Lockwood, who played for six teams during his 12-year major-league career, may not break new literary ground in his autobiography. But he sure tells some great stories.

In Insight Pitch: My Life as a Major League Closer (Sports Publishing; hardback; $19.99; 229 pages), Lockwood is disarming and descriptive, weaving firsthand stories about an infielder-turned-pitcher who was “not good enough to be a star, not bad enough to headline a trade.”

Claude “Skip” Lockwood is now 71, and his stories about his years in the majors are fresh and funny. Lockwood began his career with the Kansas City Athletics in 1965, then played for the Seattle Pilots, Milwaukee Brewers, California Angels, New York Mets and Boston Red Sox. He spent the bulk of his career with the Brewers (1970-1973) and the Mets (1975-1980) and earned 65 of his 68 career saves while pitching in New York as the team’s closer.

Lockwood later earned a master’s degree in science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and concentrated on sports psychology. Being a reliever was the perfect foundation for his later education, because in baseball “it seemed like I stood at the brink of disaster daily.”

And it was difficult to stare down those difficulties when your glasses constantly fogged up, as Lockwood relates in several humorous episodes. He brings the reader onto the pitching mound, into the bullpen and into the clubhouse.

While he was unable to help turn a double play as a young infielder, Lockwood does manage to turn a few good phrases in Insight Pitch. Slugger Dave Kingman, for example, slid into second base “looking like a ballerina in a batting helmet.”

As a rookie, Lockwood got a baptism of fire his first day in the batting cage, as an Athletics coach named Babe hit him several times and later started a fight with the 17-year-old. While Lockwood does not give the batting practice pitcher’s last name, he is referring to Babe Dahlgren, the man who replaced Lou Gehrig at first base when the Iron Horse’s consecutive games playing streak ended in 1939. Lockwood notes that Babe “was the first major-leaguer to fail a drug test,” which is inaccurate. Dahlgren was rumored to have smoked marijuana and in 1943 became the first major-leaguer to take a drug test. He underwent a battery of tests to prove he did not have marijuana in his system, a story New York Times columnist Murray Chass repeated in 2007. Still, Lockwood accurately portrays Dahlgren as a bitter, angry former player who could never shake the rumors about his past.

At times, one gets the impression that Lockwood was a baseball version of Forrest Gump, sharing locker rooms and experiences with men like Satchel Paige, Jesse Owens, Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, Yogi Berra and Don Mossi (I can never pass up a chance to mention the bushy-browed, large-eared reliever known as “The Sphinx”).

Lockwood’s story about getting the upper hand in negotiations with Athletics owner Charlie Finley is humorous and shows the negotiating savvy he would need during the 1970s when he was the Brewers’ player representative.
Lockwood even had a brush with Bouton when both were with the Pilots. In Ball Four, Bouton quotes Lockwood asking, “hey Jim, how do you hold your doubles?” after a game where the struggling knuckleballer allowed several two-base hits.

“Hate to lose a funny guy,” Bouton wrote after Lockwood was sent to the minors in 1969.

Speaking of funny, Lockwood tells about a prank pulled on him by Mets clubhouse manager Herbie Norman. When Lockwood came to the Mets, he arrived during a game and had to get to the bullpen fast. Norman was more than accommodating, whisking the new reliever to the outfield bullpens at Shea Stadium. Lockwood began shaking hands with his new teammates until the bullpen coach yelled at him for mingling with the wrong team. Norman had dumped the Mets’ new pitcher into the opposition bullpen — on purpose.

“Sorry, kid,” Norman said later. “I couldn’t resist.”

Lockwood points to the influence of Cleveland Indians trainer Nelson Decker, who helped him succeed through mental imagery. “Picturing and imagining became a discipline and a language to me,” he said. What he allowed and controlled in his thought processes would have a big impact in his pressure-cooker role as a closer.

Lockwood opens his book with an anecdote about throwing at a batter’s head when he was a Little League pitcher, and ends it with a poem, where he says that “My actions on the field turned out to be nothing more than dreams believed.”

“Baseball connects the dreamer and the dream,” he concludes. “Part hope … part real … part magic.”
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Insight Pitch helps the reader experience a player’s dreams and the magic of making it to the major leagues. Certainly, there was heartbreak along the way, but in Lockwood’s case it was a fascinating ride. And he turned those experiences into a fascinating read.

​It’s not surprising that the title of Joe Maddon’s biography should be as unorthodox as the man himself.

But there has always been a method to Maddon’s madness, and he has the results to prove it. It’s impressive enough to take the Tampa Bay Rays to a World Series berth, but it is almost legendary to snap a 108-year jinx and help bring the Chicago Cubs their first World Series title since 1908.

In Try Not to Suck: The Exceptional, Extraordinary Baseball Life of Joe Maddon (Triumph Books; hardback; $25.95; 294 pages) co-authors Bill Chastain and Jesse Rogers trace the long path Maddon traveled to become one of the top managers in major league baseball. Chastain was The Tampa Tribune’s original beat writer for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays when the team entered the American League in 1998, and he currently covers the Rays for MLB.com. Rogers, a longtime observer of the Chicago sports scene, has been a mainstay for ESPN on radio, television and the internet since 2009.

Both men have seen Maddon at various stages of his career, so it’s a nice blend to get perspectives from two different writers.

The book’s title came from a meeting Maddon had with Javier Baez when the 22-year-old player was promoted to the Cubs from the minor leagues. Maddon, wanting to put the young player at ease, stressed the importance of being a professional and not wanting to embarrass yourself. In typical Maddon fashion, his words came out as “try not to suck.”

The phrase stuck, and the Cubs’ marketing department had a field day with it. Maddon is a quotable guy, and both Chastain and Rogers provide plenty of examples: Embrace the target, do simple better, and 9=8 are some of the more memorable ones.

Maddon’s story is one of determination and grit. He paid his dues in the minor leagues as a coach and manager and served a successful apprenticeship as Mike Scioscia’s bench coach for the Angels in the early 2000s — a period that included a World Series title in 2002. After being passed over as a managerial candidate, Maddon finally landed with Tampa Bay — considered a graveyard of a franchise — when he was hired as manager in November 2005.

Maddon introduced a new culture that was felt in the clubhouse and noticed by the media and fans. Sportswriters discovered that Maddon was a quotable manager whose perspective went beyond baseball. Even during his rocky first season, Maddon kept his perspective. One radio talk show host derisively referred to him as “Merlot Joe,” citing Maddon’s fondness for good wine, but even that phrase was endearing. While Maddon could argue with the umpires when needed, he was never going to be confused with Billy Martin or Earl Weaver. But things began to change in Tampa Bay.

Behind Maddon's laid-back façade was a manager who had a burning desire to win. It resulted in an American League pennant and World Series appearance in 2008, and it looked as if Maddon would be a fixture in Tampa Bay for many years.

That changed when a loophole in his contract allowed him to jump to the Chicago Cubs in 2015. With the Cubs’ storied history and a front office that wasn’t afraid to spend some cash, Maddon got the team into the playoffs in 2015 and in the World Series for the first time in 71 years in 2016. After a frenetic seven-game triumph over the Cleveland Indians, Maddon and the Cubs were the toast of the baseball world.

It would be easy to say that a biography about Maddon “writes itself,” but that would be a disservice to the authors. Both Chastain and Rogers conducted interviews with players and managers and had three interviews with Maddon. Research included 19 publications and a website, so there was a good cross-section of information to find.

Maddon came from a hard-working family and gained a reputation as a sound baseball man who leveled with his players. That is what the reader will find most endearing in Try Not to Suck. Maddon’s gimmicks to keep a clubhouse loose are interesting and amusing, but the bottom line is that he commands respect and knows the game.
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Chastain and Rogers achieve that with an easy writing style. Chastain has always excelled at storytelling, so this project was a nice fit. As Maddon and the Cubs prepare to chase another World Series title in 2018, communication and innovation will be key elements. A blueprint on how it can be achieved can be found in the pages written by Chastain and Rogers.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Topps' Living Set baseball product:

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/topps-living-set-baseball-offers-a-never-ending-checklist/