The most terrific twosome ever

Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball's Golden Age

By Allen Barra

Crown Archetype. 498 pp. $27

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Reviewed by Bill Lyon

Once upon a time, though not so very long ago, there was delivered unto us from Mount Olympus two players of baseball. They ran like cheetahs and sent batted balls into the stratosphere and their throws trailed blue flame and very soon it became evident that the case could be made that these two were not just players of baseball but the two very best.

Ever.

Mickey and Willie.

Mays and Mantle.

This is, of course, not news. What is is the approach taken in this book, a unique dual narrative, an examination of the parallel lives of the two luminaries, each seen in mirror image of the other. The author is the prolific and relentless researcher Allen Barra, a happily self-confessed and unabashed idolater who makes no apology about his worshipful approach.

(In 1963, he obtained a Mantle-Mays Zipee, which consisted of a plastic bat, Wiffle ball, and a device for setting up. Fifty years later, it remains, lovingly preserved, in the original wrapping.)

But while Barra hangs halos, he also unearths warts. Mickey and Willie were no Boy Scouts, flawed pretty much like the rest of us, and they were fortunate to have played in the 1950s and '60s, when the media were largely protective. Had they been born a generation later, the tweeters and bloggers would have gone after them like feeding time on the Serengeti.

Barra hammers his points - buttressed by anecdotes, interviews, and a numbing array of statistics - and with each page the evidence mounts for this thesis. (The opinion here remains unchanged - Babe Ruth is the best ever, make Mays and Mantle 2 and 2A.)

Barra swoops in like an avenging angel, and with meticulous detail rights wrongs, corrects errors, debunks myths, answers questions, and questions answers.

The irony is that Mays and Mantle, though no one could ever recall seeing either lift a weight, had bodies you could strike a match on and yet were almost fragile, tormented by various infirmities - Mays by debilitating stomach miseries and fainting spells, Mantle by raging alcoholism that would shorten his life and injury-riddled legs that had to be wrapped like a mummy.

Both were inherently shy - there they were, very possibly the two best players of all time and yet they were insecure - and when at last they were coaxed out of their shells, they proved to be about as cuddly as cactuses. The root of that, Barra argues convincingly, was the crushing weight of expectations. Whatever they did, no matter how monumental, it never seemed quite enough.

(For those of us who were coming of age during the Golden Age of Baseball, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were proof that giants still roamed the land . . . but, yes, I confess to wanting even more, wondering what might Mickey have done had he played on two good legs, and would Willie, missing all those games to military service, have finished with more home runs than the Babe? Now, from a distance, with their sins paraded in front of us, I realize it's probably better I didn't know then what I know now.)

So then, the obvious question after all this is Willie or Mickey, Mickey or Willie, which one? Mantle casts an unflinching vote for Willie, thus: "Willie is better. I don't mind being second. If I'm second, I'm pretty good."

The common theme is that Willie could do more. And the numbers reflect that. But Willie played longer and Mickey played on a dynasty.

The revered baseball writer Roger Kahn sums it up neatly on the book's inside jacket: "In some ways I believe they knew each other better than anyone else knew them. They were the only two men in America who understood the experience they had both been through."

And after 425 pages, Barra writes, poignantly: "But now at a point when I look back and measure what I am against the person I wanted to be, I must forgive Mickey and Willie for not always being the heroes I wished them to be. No men - not even our heroes - should be expected to carry the burden of our dreams."