Mutt mantle mickey baseball

Even before he was born into this world, Mickey Mantle was being prepared for life as a future big-league baseball player. By the time Mickey was 3 years old, the country was mired in the Great Depression. Like so many other able-bodied men, Mutt Mantle found himself unemployed and nearly broke when he moved the family to Commerce, Oklahoma, in The work was exhausting, dirty, and dangerous.

Those who worked for many years at the plant were at risk for lung disease, heart ailments, and cancer. Despite this brutal and exhausting work life, the elder Mantle still found time to play baseball on the weekends and, when the time came, to teach his son the game. Among the many lessons Mutt taught Mickey was the need to develop as a switch-hitter.

Mutt believed that future managers would embrace a platoon system allowing right-handed hitters to face only lefty pitchers and vice-versa. Mickey was naturally right-handed, and had no interest in hitting from the left side. Like so many of the great players who grew up before the era of T-ball and Little League baseball, Mickey honed his skills playing sandlot baseball with his friends from the town.

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They played almost every day after school, and on the weekends they would even scrimmage one of the local semipro teams. A whole mob used to drive out, mostly mining people and their families. Mickey also loved to play football, but an injury early in his freshman year of high school prematurely ended his budding pigskin career — and almost his life.

During a football practice he was kicked in the lower leg by a teammate. Within hours his ankle had swollen to three times its normal size, and he developed a degree fever. His parents took the year-old to the local hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with osteomyelitis, a potentially fatal bone disease that had been aggravated by the injury.

Doctors there agreed that he had osteomyelitis, but they had a much less drastic treatment plan: eight shots a day of a new wonder drug called penicillin.