Baseball's Greatest Switch-Hitter: Mickey Mantle

From the 1870s through the 1940s, baseball had many good switch-hitters. But the first player to prove that a switch-hitter could become a true superstar was the 1950s-60s phenom Mickey Mantle.

Some earlier switch-hitters had belted the long ball. Ripper Collins, for example, had hit 35 home runs one season. Other two-way hitters had concentrated on their batting averages. Frankie Frisch had once hit .348. Mantle, however, shattered the records of all previous switch-hitters with his 54 homers (1961) and .365 average (1957). In 1956 he achieved the rare Triple Crown, leading the American League in home runs (52), runs batted in (130), and batting average (.353). Three times he won the league's Most Valuable Player award. And when he retired, his career home run total (536) was third only to Babe Ruth and Willie Mays. Mantle led his team, the New York Yankees, to twelve league titles and seven World Series championships.

Mantle's road to that lofty position began in his early childhood. Born in Spavinaw, Oklahoma, on October 20, 1931, he was named after the Hall of Fame catcher Gordon ("Mickey") Cochrane. At the age of four, Mickey Mantle moved with his family to Commerce, Oklahoma. His father, Elvin ("Mutt") Mantle, a lead miner who switch-hit as a semipro ballplayer himself, believed that the big leagues would one day adopt the platoon system, in which right-handed batters would face left-handed pitchers and vice versa. If Mickey could bat both left and right, he would be able to play every game, regardless of who was pitching. Mutt made the boy practice batting both ways in the yard of their Commerce home, with Mutt pitching right-handed and Mutt's own father, Charlie Mantle, a former semipro ballplayer, pitching left-handed.

Mickey was a natural right-handed batter, and at first he hated batting from the left. But he soon realized that by hitting a right-handed pitcher from the left side, he could handle curveballs better. From the right side, he thought the ball was going to hit him, and he pulled away just as the ball curved over the plate. But from the left, he could stand in and get a good cut at the same pitch.

Mickey worked summers in the lead mines, where he developed tremendous strength in his wrists, arms, and shoulders by smashing large rocks into small ones with a sledgehammer. During that period, he played high-school football and basketball as well as baseball. While playing football one day, he was accidentally kicked in his left shin. When the injury degenerated into the serious bone disease osteomyelitis, the doctors wanted to amputate. But Mickey's parents objected, and they took him to specialists who treated him with a new wonder drug, penicillin, which saved his leg. However, he suffered from the effects of the disease for the rest of his life, and it was a contributing factor in many other injuries that plagued him during his professional career.

In 1948 Mickey Mantle joined a nearby semipro team, the Baxter Springs (Kansas) Whiz Kids. Tom Greenwade, a New York Yankees scout, attended a Whiz Kids game and saw Mantle hit two home runs, one right-handed and one left-handed, into a river far outside the ballpark. Greenwade was ready to sign him on the spot; but learning that the boy was only sixteen, the scout decided to return a year later, on Mantle's high-school graduation day.

The following year, true to his word, Greenwade signed Mantle, who played the 1949 season with the Yankees' Class D team in Independence, Kansas, and the 1950 season with the Class C team in Joplin, Missouri. Because of Mantle's impressive display of speed and power at the Yankees' training camp in 1951, he became the first player ever to jump from Class C directly to the Yankees.

In 1951, Mantle's first season with the Yankees, manager Casey Stengel started to platoon--just as Mutt Mantle had predicted. During the 1950s and 1960s, while many other Yankees played only part-time, Mantle, batting both left and right, could play whether the team faced a right-handed or a left-handed pitcher.

Early in Mantle's Yankee career, some team executives urged him to bat only left-handed, mainly because of the two steps he would save in running to first base. With his great speed, he could leg out many infield singles on both full swings and drag bunts. Later in his career, people wanted him to bat exclusively right-handed because overall he was a better hitter from that side. In fact, his lifetime average from the right was nearly .350. But he always refused these suggestions. "My dad had worked too hard to make me a switch-hitter to change now," he explained.

Mantle usually swung a 36-ounce bat from the right and a 32-ouncer from the left. However, the bat size did not affect his power. He belted many towering home runs from both sides of the plate. His greater number of lifetime homers from the left (372) than from the right (164) resulted simply from the fact that he had many more left-handed at bats (because there are more right-handed than left-handed pitchers in baseball). Ten times in his career he hit homers from both sides in the same game, setting a major-league record (later broken by Eddie Murray's eleven).

Because of his injuries throughout his career, Mantle seldom played a full season. His missing so many games makes his records all the more remarkable.

He retired after the 1968 season and died of liver cancer in Dallas, Texas, on August 13, 1995.

By raising switch-hitting to new heights, Mantle inspired countless boys to become switch-hitters, including many future big leaguers. But no switch-hitter has ever matched Mantle's ability to hit for both power and average. When he died, he still held most of the important modern major-league season records for switch-hitters. Besides his 54 homers (1961) and .365 batting average (1957), they included his .705 slugging percentage (1956), 376 total bases (1956), 130 RBIs (1956), and 146 bases on balls (1957). Mickey Mantle was baseball's greatest all-around switch-hitter.

Awards and Achievements

American League leader in runs scored: 1954 (129), 1956 (132), 1957 (121), 1958 (127), 1960 (119), 1961 (132)

American League leader in triples: 1955 (11)

American League leader in home runs: 1955 (37), 1956 (52), 1958 (42), 1960 (40)

American League leader in runs batted in: 1956 (130)

American League leader in bases on balls: 1955 (113), 1957 (146), 1958 (129), 1961 (126), 1962 (122)

American League leader in batting average: 1956 (.353)

American League leader in on-base percentage: 1955 (.431), 1962 (.486), 1964 (.423)

American League leader in slugging percentage: 1955 (.611), 1956 (.705), 1961 (.687), 1962 (.605)

American League leader in total bases: 1956 (376), 1958 (307), 1960 (294)

American League leader in extra-base hits: 1952 (67), 1955 (73), 1956 (79)

Triple Crown: 1956, American League leader in home runs (52), runs batted in (130), and batting average (.353)

Most Valuable Player in the American League: 1956, 1957, 1962

World Series career records: runs scored (42), home runs (18), runs batted in (40), bases on balls (43), total bases (123), extra-base hits (26)

Hickock Belt (as the outstanding professional athlete in all sports): 1956

Hall of Fame: 1974 (his first year of eligibility)

Mickey Charles Mantle (The Mick, The Commerce Comet, The Switcher)
Height: 5'11"
Weight: 195 lbs.
Batted: both
Threw: right
Born: Spavinaw, Oklahoma, October 20, 1931
Died: Dallas, Texas, August 13, 1995