It's kind of strange to think about it now, but for someone who is viewed as something of a golden boy for a golden age, Mickey Mantle was not universally loved by the children of the baby boom.

I'm in the middle of reading Jane Leavy's excellent book, "The Last Boy," and I'm learning more about Mantle than I ever really wanted to know.

[caption id="attachment_850" align="alignright" width="184" caption="The Last Boy"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/81018561.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-850" title="81018561" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/81018561.jpg" alt="" width="184" height="280" /></a>[/caption]

Everyone knew about his amazing talent, and most of us have learned about his country-boy ignorance and his almost casual self-centeredness. Folks who have read much of what has been written about him know of his fatalism, his belief that he wouldn't live past 40. I know one of his funnier lines from late in life was when he said if he had known he was going to live this long, he would have taken better care of himself.

In many ways, Mickey Mantle <em>was</em> America in the '50s, even though he probably wasn't even the best player in baseball. To give the Mick his due, at his peak he was probably a close second to Willie Mays, but his blond-haired, blue-eyed countenance was probably a lot closer to the way Americans saw  themselves, or at least how they wanted to see themselves.

My closest friend adored Mantle, so much so that he gave himself the nickname Mick and put the number "7" on gray sweatshirts his mother bought him. Whether it was because the rest of us didn't like Mantle or just thought our Mick was putting on airs, we held him down and changed the "7" to "171."

All that happened more than 40 years ago, and Mantle himself has been dead for more than 15 years. I don't have any particular memories of seeing him play, although I'm pretty sure I attended at least eight or 10 games, in both New York and Washington, in which he played.

I did attend the July 4th doubleheader at Yankee Stadium in 1961, the year Mantle and Roger Maris both chased Babe Ruth's home run record. I seem to recall Maris hit a home run that did.

Mantle didn't.

[caption id="attachment_851" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="1961"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Mantle-Maris.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-851" title="Mantle &amp; Maris" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Mantle-Maris-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" /></a>[/caption]

Of course history tells us that Maris broke the record that year, a record that was broken by Mark McGwire in 1998 and Barry Bonds a few years later.

I actually met Maris late in the summer of 1982 and sat with him for two hours as we watched his son Kevin play Class A ball. I no longer have the story I wrote, and I was not a very good interviewer that early in my career, but I do remember Maris' frustration with the way he was treated coming through in a couple of answers.

I remember him laughing ironically at the first question he heard at Spring Training in 1962.

<em>"Well, Roger, are you going to hit 62 home runs in 1962?"</em>

And maybe the dumbest question he had been asked.

<em>"Roger, would you rather hit .300 or hit 61 homers?"</em>

Maris had batted only .269 in 1961, and he took a lot of undeserved criticism for that.

"A lot of guys hit .300," he told me. "Not many hit 61 home runs."

Mostly what Maris did in 1961 was make New Yorkers finally love Mantle. He had been with the Yankees for 10 years and had played for some of the best teams in baseball history.

To listen to Bob Costas or Billy Crystal, you'd never know that he hadn't always been beloved.

But there are as many bad Mantle stories as there are good ones. My aunt, who grew up in New York City, actually saw Mantle try to hit on her 13-year-old friend. Then there's the one about the mother yelling to Mantle to sign the cast on her son's broken leg, and Mantle telling her he'd sign it when he broke the other one too.

Hey, he was human.

And the more I see of that, the more