OCR Text |
Show 6y 4UtXH "JRadtele The major league baseball season began Monday with victories by A Chicago Cubs over the Cincinnati Reds and the Baltimore Orioles over dt Kansas City Royals. , Modem day players such as Pete Ue, Mike Schmidt, Reggie Jackson, jteve Garvey, Nolan Ryan, Ron 3uidry, Rich Gossage, George Brett, md other baseballers are heroes to jday's Little League baseball players, jit in the mid 1960s the baseball heroes or Little League sluggers were such fgends as Micky Mantle and Whitey ysrd of the New York Yankees, Willie iays of the San Francisco Giants, Al ialine of the Detroit Tigers, Sandy Joufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers, jrank Robinson and Brooks Robinson i the Baltimore Orioles, Carl fastrezemski of the Boston Red Sox as id as other baseballers. I01S repui lci a iiciu was micKey Iantle of the New York Yankees. Iantle was in the last years of his great areer and was encountering physical roblems such as a bad leg.' but even bocghsuch players as Frank Robinson edPete Rose were emerging as great tars, Mantle was still number one to his fan. Mantle's batting style was copied bv lis reporter, Aldon Rachele. Mantle as a switch hitter who could hit from oth sides of the plate and the switch itSng style was also copied. This epxter started out as a lefthanded itter then switched to a right handed iter. Mantle, who played for the 'ackees from 1951 to 1968, finished with career batting average of .298. He legged 536 homers, which is second on e Yankee club to Babe Ruth's "14. Iantle also slugged 344 doubles, 72 iples, 2415 hits and scored 1677 runs, tantle had power and this reporter had lie as he walked, singled or struck 1 The greatest year in Mantle's career id to be in 1956. He batted .353, drove 130 runs, hit 52 homers, 22 doubles idEve triples. He also scored 132 runs 'A had 188 hits. This Little League slugger wanted to just like Mantle. He was an outsider out-sider like Mantle and adopted antle's swing from the right side of " ( plate. The baseball fan even pur-;fised pur-;fised a bat that was too heavy for id. but that was alright because it had antle's name on it. The baseballer bought baseball cards by the ton and was always hoping that there would be a Mantle card in one of the packages. However, the Mantle cards seemed to be on vacation as they never appeared in the packages purchased by this reporter. Finally, after five years of baseball card collecting, a Mantle card w as discovered in one of the packages by the fan named Al. This reporter kept the cards of Mantle and other Yankee players such as Maris, Ford. Tommy Tresh, Jake Gibbs, Horace Clarke, Steve Whitaker, Steve Hamilton, Al Downing, Fritz Peterson, Fred Talbot, Dooley Womaek, Joe Pepitone and other baseballers in his back pocket and took them to Roosevelt Junior High with him. Well, one day tragedy struck as the pants and the baseball cards received a bath in the washing iiiuiuii. nit iki n iau was iKTdi l- broken. After years of begging and hoping for Yankee baseball cards, he finally gained a good collection and they became all washed up. However, the sad fan rescued the cards and they still exist in their faded condition. Maybe the cards deserved to visit the washing machine because the Yankee team was all washed up as they finished in last place in 1966 for the first time in their existence. The Yankees had a 17-11 mark in pre-season games, but jumped out to a 4-16 mark in the early part of the regular season. It was almost a crime to root for the Yankees in the mid 1960's. All the Yankee Haters were having a fun time laughing at the Yankees. However, the Yankees had the last laugh as they won American League pennants in 1976, 1977, 1978 and 1981. New York also won World Series crowns in 1977 and 1978 and this fan was happy to be able to root for a winner instead of a loser. This fan named Aldon Rachele had a goal during his Little League years and that was to travel to New York City and meet his idol, Mickey Mantle. This reporter achieved his goal as he visited Mantle, but instead of the reporter traveling to New York City, Mantle motored to Vernal. Rachele's first assignment as a reporter for the Vernal Express in June of 1975 was to interview in-terview Mantle. This reporter found out Mantle wasn't the baseball God. He was just some guy who liked to blast the baseball over the fence many, many times. |