“BOYS AND THEIR HEROES,” it is something that has come to be a noticeable theme in the culture, historically. I am who I am because of that theme (I think); of popular mythology and the cult of personality– being a full-time subscriber to sports’ and media’s lionizing of great performers and performances. Life is drama, and there is no greater venue for drama than sports. And one of the greatest personal dramas in sports lore was Mickey Mantle’s.

Mantle stood in the American imagination as a breathing embodiment of Americans’ dualistic ways of seeing themselves: Mantle was big city, but he was also shy and from a small town. He was extraordinarily gifted and perhaps extraordinarily flawed. That was “The Mick.” His life had its ups and downs and he frittered a large portion of it on random women (while married mind you) and nights out drinking, due to his alcoholism eventually developing cirrhosis of the liver and having to rectify his wrongdoings in short time. In the end he found his way, after a fall from grace or two. He then rose back to the height from which he fell, just as he was passing on from this life.

Mantle was a hero to many of my father’s generation. I remember that as a kid, I was at a baseball card shop with my father, as we had done so many times before, only this time in Seattle and not back home in California. As I normally did: I entered, was greeted and I promptly went off to my corner to check-off my mental list and pick up the insert card singles that mattered to me most when I could, in the background, hear my father asking about a Mantle rookie card. The card was a bit frayed at the ends and had the normal bullet-proof casing. I don’t know how much the quoted price was, but my father purchased it. The card now lies somewhere in a safety deposit box. Even in his ’40s my father was a boy for a moment because of Mantle. That was Mantle’s effect on grown men.

Mantle played through fifteen different bone fractures over his career. He limped around and at times couldn’t even raise his arm to field, but he played and he produced. Yes, some of those injuries were the result of him not taking care of himself as dutifully as he should, but he played through the pain and was more than effective; he was historic.

Mantle’s legacy along with DiMaggio, the Yankees, the rise of minority ballplayers in the major leagues and the post-WWII era baseball scene (as a whole) have been important to me. They have been a capsule of my father’s childhood and a looking-glass for understanding the zeitgeist that ultimately shaped Boomer men and in essence me — a child of a Boomer and an indefatigable consumer of  its sports journalism.

I am forever nine years old again when I see old video of Michael Jordan. I can’t help it. Everyone I know, kind of knows that about me. And I thought that when he retired the first, second and third times, my childhood was officially over. But in the parallel, I was also following Grant Hill and then Kobe Bryant, and my childhood was there again. As Grant faded, Kobe was rising in my backyard, the hometown. And I am as giddy to watch him play as I was Michael. And so I am beginning to see a never-ending cycle: boys grow up to be men, watching their heroes of sport, ultimately turning into boys again when they watch them or the newly anointed heroes of the era play.

Over the weekend I watched HBO’s Mantle. The documentary reminded me of childhood heroes and how important they are to boys. How Mantle was seen through the eyes of children, now middle-aged men, who were inspired and felt Mantle’s presence in their life, as a figure whom they followed for months on end every year during their youth from spring to fall, was insightful and romantic. (Though the documentary did not gloss over Mantle’s troubles and particularly delved into the psychology of them.)

In this age where media looks to expose every minutia of pro-athletes lives, I am left to wonder if Mantle would have found his peace earlier in an era like today’s or would he have been able to even be a John Daly type figure in a fishbowl like New York? I wonder if he would have been able to be as beloved by the children also? Mantle’s transgressions were undoubtedly large, but I do not think that he was a bad person — and his performances were epic. Surely there is some greater redemption in his ability to grandly inspire. What happened to loving the players and giving kids someone to root for?

HBO’s Mantle [Here]