Talk:Mickey Mantle

Mickey Mantle was recently nominated to be promoted to good article status, and has passed! Congratulations and keep up the great editting! Highway 20:57, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

One of the greatest of all time cite

I won't dispute that he is one of the greatest baseball players of all time, but the citation for that remark (the third reference cited in the article) is from posting to the SprortingNews.com message board by a 13 year old. No offense to this poster, but surely there must be a more authoritative source. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.6.185.21 (talk) 20:21, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Agree - looks like that one slipped through. Though I don't believe a source is needed, considering he's in the Hall of Fame - by default that would make him one of the greatest players of all time. And we're not saying he's specifically "the 2nd greatest" or something along those lines (like we are for the switch hitter part of the same sentence). I think for this we can follow Wikipedia:Disputed statement and leave it as is - as this statment does not contain unlikely information nor does it contain information that would be particularly difficult to verify.--Yankees76 (talk) 16:23, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

A paragraph recently added to this article claimed that a film with the bizarre title Famous Yankees Player: A Mickey Mantle Story is due for release in 2007 from Disney. Attempting to check the title and the spellings of the people involved, I find that I can't find any WWW evidence outside of Wikipedia to say that the project even exists. This includes general Google searches, Google News searches, and searches on disney.go.com. Likewise, none of the names listed in the paragraph are established actors/directors according to imdb.com.

The linked-to Wikipedia page which is supposedly providing further details about the film is riddled with bizarre spellings and states "facts" that would most likely not be known until after the movie was made.

I think this whole thing is a fake. I've deleted the paragraph from this article; obviously if someone can confirm that the movie project exists, then they should put it back. On the other hand, if it's a fake, then the other page should also be deleted.

--Anonymous, 04:20 UTC, September 10, 2005

http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/622/MickeyMantle.html The Mick and a Miracle] to personify "The Mick"

Guyfl and sockpuppet, 68.201.28.24 , please refrain from adding spam links to this article. I would suggest you read the External links style guide for Wikipedia, particularly, Links to normally avoid. Thank you. Yankees76 21:14, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I would also toss in http://www.baseball-almanac.com/feats/art_hr.shtmlas source information for the distance of the homeruns. The information within seems to be credible.

MMHomeRunsList.htm

A complete list of Mickey Mantle home runs year-by-year can be obtained using the Wayback Machine and searching the heading above, or with the direct link: http://web.archive.org/web/19990417033756/http://www.themick.com/MMHomeRunsList.htm

Movie Credits

Mantle appeared in Safe At Home! and That Touch of Mink, and has 21 IMDb credits.

GA Re-Review and In-line citations

Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. Currently this article does not include in-line citations. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. Agne 21:34, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

GAR

Mickey Mantle is currently up for Good Article Review. Those that want it to remain a GA may want to look at suggesstions to show their case at this time. --Wizardman 16:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

GA delisted

As per the Good Article review on this article, it has been delisted with a 5 to 0 vote, primarily for weak writing and a too-short lead, and lack of references. Review archived at Wikipedia:Good articles/Disputes/Archive 12. Homestarmy 22:00, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Hey, a lot of baseball fans got tired of the overkill regarding Mantle. Just because he played for the Yankees doesn't mean he desevered all the attention he got at the end. I know a lot of baseball fans who got tired of Costas and his hero worship of Mantle. Mickey himself said he was a jerk.

None of this is encyclopedic, it's simply your original research, speculation and personal opinion. Yankees76 05:50, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Should add the following

One of the mysteries about his career is the flat spot he hit from ages 26 through 28, which are usually a player's peak career years, per Bill James' research, but which were off years for Mickey. It is very rare to see a hitter attain such peaks as he did at ages 24-25, and then to not have an excellent year again until age 29.

There is also another story within the story concerning Mantle, that he didn't win as many MVP awards as he really should have. Part of the reason is that sabermetric understanding of baseball statistics wasn't advanced enough in the 1950's to fully appreciate how dominant Mantle was in the American League, and part of it is that the sportswriting community appears to have punished him for having off years, even when those years were still better than anyone else was doing in the A.L. From a sabermetric standpoint it is difficult to understand why Mantle lost to Jackie Jensen in 1958, and to Roger Maris in both 1960 and 1961. Even Yogi Berra's 1955 MVP and Brooks Robinson's 1964 MVP awards are somewhat questionable in light of what Mantle did in those two years.

When you add in that Mantle was having another MVP-level year in 1963 when he broke his foot and lost most of the year to injury, he was statistically the best or arguably the best player in the league for nine out of the ten years that began in 1955. This is giving due weight to the fact that he had very high slugging and on-base percentages, hit into few double plays, and played a defensive position (centerfield) that normally is populated with much lighter hitting players. He gave his team a huge edge at his position that only Willie Mays in that era came close to matching.

My overall point here is that despite his fame, Mantle is ironically underappreciated as a hitter. He was more dominant, longer, than most sportswriters and fans realized.

i think we should change to the colors of the infobox to yankees colors #1c2841 and #6d7380 instead of the color it has

The above text is okay but it reads like a newspaper columnists opinion that actual verifiable facts. Can you provide sources for your assertations? I agree that the color should be blue. Yankees76 13:52, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Comments

Thgis article is pretty good, one comment I have about it is that it jumps back and forth a little too much. I personally would prefer it to be more chronological. Trevor GH5 21:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Prodigious/Abnormal Power Production

A section about his power, in that he was somewhat of a physiological anomaly, evidenced by the numerous 500+ foot home runs, his uncommon speed (before becoming injured), and his relatively small stature of 5'11 195 compared to players of the current era. All this without the help of organized strength training programs, steroids, tightly wound baseballs, smaller ballparks, nor the higher tech bats made for current players. Furthermore, pitchers of his day most likely threw at lower velocities than today's pitchers, making it even more difficult to produce the power necessary for such long home runs.

If someone else doesn't start it I may, but I don't have much free time.

This would mostly be speculation. I agree that Mantle was genetically gifted as an athlete, but comparing players from different eras in an encyclopedia would require reliable sources attributing these statements to experts/sportswriters. --Yankees76 22:29, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

I added the note about Josh Gibson having been rumored to hit a ball out of Yankee Stadium, as there is no solid support that it actually happened, except for one teammate who said it did. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.55.146.199 (talk) 01:24, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Themick website

I was looking for Mickey Mantle's official website and I do not think there is one. Is someone more familiar with him aware of an official site? The best I can find is themick, and that simply appears to be a privately run site with official merchandise. I think there should be at least a couple of really useful EL's out there, any ideas? //Tecmobowl

Tribute in Seinfeld

My English is not good enough, so could someone else fit this in in the Mantle article?

"Seven."

"Seven Costanza... You're serious?"

"Yeah. It's a beautiful name for a boy or a girl. Especially a girl... Or a boy."

"I don't think so."

"What, you don't like the name?"

"It's not a name. It's a number."

"I know. It's Mickey Mantle's number. So not only is it an all-around beautiful name, it is also a living tribute."

(George and Susan, in "The Seven")

Mickey's birthplace

I grew up in Jay, Oklahoma, and my baseball coach was an oldtimer that knew Mickey and used to go to every Yankee spring training session, where he talked with Mantle quite a bit. He said that Mickey was actually born in a tiny house in Eucha, Oklahoma, a tiny little town "down in the holler" between Jay, Oklahoma, and Spavinaw, Oklahoma. The family very soon after his birth moved to Spavinaw. I have no proof of this, but I know the oldtimers from that area back 30-40 years ago, seemed to all know this. I would be interested to know if anyone else has similar info.

Wantally (talk) 15:50, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Years in baseball

A "hidden" piped link such as "1951" to stand for "1951 in baseball is going to be clicked on by no one. Please consider not linking in this way in the main text or, indeed, the infobox, and putting the most important ones in the "See also" section, where they don't need to be piped and are explicit. Readers are far more likely to go there under those circumstances. Tony (talk) 16:50, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Opening paragraph

The opening paragraph states that Mantle spent his entire career as the center fielder for the Yankees. This, however, is not true. During his rookie year, 1951, Joe DiMaggio was still the center fielder. I think this should be changed.

Y Done He didn't end his career as a center fielder either. – Muboshgu (talk) 02:01, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Longest homer he ever hit...at age 19?)

The Los Angeles Times carried a fine story today about an exhibition game homer by Mantle before he had played in a regular season game in the majors. Perhaps some parts of this story are worth editing into the article? See: http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-0326-mickey-mantle-20110326,0,5398006.story Publius3 (talk) 18:34, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

"Mickey Manta"

On the "Flipper" TV series (original run 1964-1967), one of the sons (Bud) suggests a name for a manta ray: Mickey Manta, an obvious take-off on the player who is the subject of this Wikipedia article. Does anyone else remember that? This happened when Mantle was still playing, although the show's premiere comes not far ahead of Mantle's last World Series appearance (Yankees lost to Cardinals in 1964). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.63.16.82 (talk) 21:31, 28 October 2011 (UTC)