The great Mickey Mantle passed away on this date in 1995. I can still remember the Yankees game from that day very well, with Scooter and Murcer sharing their Mantle stories on the TV broadcast. Here is a photo I took of Mickey Mantle at The Woodlands in Wilkes-Barre in 1982. He was speaking at a banquet, and he was very entertaining. Thought some of you might enjoy seeing a picture of "The Mick" right here in NEPA, and this funny story from that night that I've posted in the comments ...
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Mickey told this story at the banquet, in his great Oklahoma accent. It's pretty hilarious, and really made everybody laugh. I'm paraphrasing a bit, because it was 27 years ago, but it went like this:
"Billy Martin and I used to like to do some hunting together, so one day I called up an old friend of mine in Texas and asked if we could hunt on his land. He had a huge property, with thousands of acres, and he had allowed me to hunt there before. I gave him a call, and he said we were more than welcome, so Billy and I drove out ...
Now this guy's land was pretty far out in the sticks, so it took us a few hours to get there. When we pulled up to the house, I told Billy to wait for a minute in the truck, and that I just wanted to let my friend know that we had arrived. He gave me a warm welcome at the door, said it was good to see me, and said that we were welcome to hunt as much as we liked. 'Hey Mick,' he said. 'Do me a favor before you guys head out. I've got an old mule out back that's really not well, and he really needs to be put down. I've had him for years, and I just can't bring myself to do it. Can you do it for me?'
Now, that's a tough thing to do for the owner of an animal, so I agreed to do it for my friend. But ... on the way back to the truck, I decided to have some fun with Billy. 'Damn,' I said, when I saw him. 'Can you believe he's not going to let us hunt? He said it was OK, and we drove all the way out here, and now he won't let us. Son of a bitch ... I'll show him.'
I then ran around the back of the barn, with Billy following me, and pointed my rifle at the mule. Billy, who was upset about thinking we were unable to hunt, still seemed pretty shocked at what I was doing, and ran off. I shot the mule, as my friend had asked, and then ...
I heard two more gunshots coming from the other side of the building!
I ran around to see what was happening, and found Billy with his rifle in hand.
He said, 'I just got two of his cows.' "
August 13, 2009 12:47 PM
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