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Mickey Mantle:
The American
Dream
Comes To Life® |
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Answers to Questions 81-90 (Excerpted from the award-winning DVD, Mickey Mantle: The American Dream Comes To Life®- The Lost Stories Special Edition. Click Here to learn more about it. Click Here to see an outline of the contents of the DVD.) |
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His tenth-inning game-winning home run that it the façade in Yankee Stadium on May 22, 1963. It hit it so hard the ball bounced all the way back to the infield. A computer projection found that, had the ball not hit the façade, it would have traveled an astounding 734 feet! A mathematical projection showed that, if the ball was at it's highest point when it hit the façade (eyewitnesses are unanimous in their agreement that the ball was still rising), the minimum distance it would have traveled was 620 feet. |
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Bill Fischer of the Kansas City Athletics. |
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During a game, no. No one has. However, it is believed that he did hit a ball out during batting practice two or three times, twice to right field and, incredibly, once to left field. |
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Accurate records weren't kept of this remarkable achievement. However, it is known that Mickey hit the façade at least three times. |
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The 565-foot home run hit at Griffith Stadium in Washington on April 17, 1953. |
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Denny McLain of the Detroit Tigers on September 19, 1968 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. It was career home run number 535. |
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Mickey had already said that 1968 was probably his last season. During his last game in Detroit, in what was to be his last at-bat, with the Tigers leading 8-1, McLain who won 31 games that year, decided to give the fans a thrill. He called catcher Bill Freehan out just a few yards from the plate and told him he was going to let Mickey hit a home run. Mickey couldn't help but overhear what he said, but he was suspicious. He asked Freehan if McLain meant it, and Bill told him he thought he did. Still leery of a trick, Mickey watched McLain's first pitch split the middle of the plate. Knowing McLain was serious, he swung too hard on the next pitch and fouled it off. The next one, however, Mickey parked in the upper deck. McLain laughed as Mickey rounded the bases. |
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Joe Pepitone, the next hitter, watched the entire event unfold. When he got up to the plate he motioned with his hand where he wanted McLain to place his pitch. On his first offering McLain knocked Pepitone down with a brush-back pitch! |
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Mickey's friend pitcher Whitey Ford is called "Slick." |
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Answer Question 90:
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Casey Stengel called a team meeting to take some players to task for staying out too late and partying too much. In the meeting he said, "Some of you guys are getting 'Whiskey Slick,'" a phrase clearly directed at Mickey, Whitey and Billy. Having never heard that phrase before, the players started calling Mickey and Whitey "Slick." Eventually it became just Whitey's nickname. For some reason no one ever called Billy "Slick" as a nickname. |
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Early
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