Mantle: The Best There Ever Was, Paperback

Mantle's life story has been told many times, but it's never received as loving a treatment as this one. Booklist, Starred Review Mickey Mantle is one of baseball's all-time greats. Playing for the New York Yankees for his entire professional career, Mantle was named to the All-Star team for 11 consecutive seasons, won three MVP awards, and was a seven-time World Series champion. He quickly became an icon who achieved hero status even while playing through injuries for most of his career. In Mantle: The Best There Ever Was, Tony Castro makes the impassioned argument that Mickey Mantle truly was the greatest ballplayer of all time. Acclaimed by the New York Times as the definitive biographer of baseball's fabled number 7, Castro shares many of his personal conversations with Mantle, demystifying the legend and revealing intimate, never-before-published details from Mantle's personal life. In addition, Castro offers illuminating new insights into Mantle's extraordinary career, including the head-turning conclusion based on the evolution of analytics that the beloved Yankee switch-hitting slugger may ultimately win acclaim as having fulfilled the weighty expectation once placed on him: being even greater than Babe Ruth. Drawing from hundreds of interviews with ex-teammates, friends, and family, Castro masterfully blends Mantle's public and private selves to present a fully rounded portrait of this complex, misunderstood national hero.

Tony Castro, an American historian and Nieman Fellow at Harvard, is the author of eight books, including a critically acclaimed civil rights history and five baseball biographies. ESPN broadcaster Jeremy Schaap has called Castro "one of the best baseball biographers in America" for his Mickey Mantle trilogy. The New York Times hailed his biography Mickey Mantle: America's Prodigal Son the definitive book about the Yankees Hall of Fame slugger. As a journalist, Castro has reported on politics, race relations, wealth and power, pop culture, Latin America, and sports for numerous news organizations, among them the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Texas Observer, and Sports Illustrated. Castro lives in Los Angeles.

• Dimensions: 228 x 152
• Author: Tony Castro
• Cover type: Paperback
• Publishing Year: 2022
• Publishing Month: 2
• Pages: 280
• Language: English
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Weight: 431 g