1.
During my 18 years I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1,700 times and walked maybe 1,800 times. You figure a ballplayer will average about 500 at-bats a season. That means I played 7 years without ever hitting the ball.
Mickey Mantle
2.
It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing all your life.
Mickey Mantle
3.
A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.
Mickey Mantle
4.
Somebody once asked me if I ever went up to the plate trying to hit a home run. I said, 'Sure, every time.'
Mickey Mantle
5.
I leaned on him for support when I got out of the cab, and he just crumpled to the ground. That's how we found out.
Mickey Mantle
6.
After I hit a home run I had a habit of running the bases with my head down. I figured the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases.
Mickey Mantle
7.
If I had played my career hitting singles like Pete (Rose), I'd wear a dress.
Mickey Mantle
8.
I thought I raised a ballplayer. You're nothing but a coward and a quitter.
Mickey Mantle
9.
You never have to wait long, or look far, to be reminded of how thin the line is between being a hero or a goat.
Mickey Mantle
10.
Well, baseball was my whole life. Nothing's ever been as fun as baseball.
Mickey Mantle
11.
Bravery is a complicated thing to describe. You can't say it's three feet long and two feet wide and that it weighs four hundred pounds or that it's colored bright blue or that it sounds like a piano or that it smells like roses. It's a quality, not a thing.
Mickey Mantle
12.
I've often wondered how a man who knew he was going to die could stand here and say he was the luckiest man on the face of the earth, but now I guess I know how he felt.
Mickey Mantle
13.
Stay away from drugs and alcohol. Listen to your moms and dads. In this great country of ours you do whatever you set your mind to. Make us proud of you.
Mickey Mantle
14.
He who has the fastest golf cart never has a bad lie.
Mickey Mantle
15.
All the ballparks and the big crowds have a certain mystique. You feel attached, permanently wedded to the sounds that ring out, to the fans chanting your name, even when there are only four or five thousand in the stands on a Wednesday afternoon.
Mickey Mantle
16.
If I hadn't met those two guys (Billy Martin and Whitey Ford) at the start of my career, I would have lasted another five years.
Mickey Mantle
17.
No man in the history of baseball had as much power as . No man.
Mickey Mantle
18.
My dad taught me to switch-hit. He and my grandfather, who was left-handed, pitched to me every day after school in the back yard. I batted lefty against my dad and righty against my granddad.
Mickey Mantle
19.
Don't do as I did. I'm living proof of how not to live.
Mickey Mantle
20.
You don't realize how easy this game is until you get up in that broadcasting booth.
Mickey Mantle
21.
I hated to bat against Drysdale. After he hit you he'd come around, look at the bruise on your arm and say, 'Do you want me to sign it?'
Mickey Mantle
22.
Thank God for baseball.
Mickey Mantle
23.
The strain on Roger (Maris) was unbelievable. After I dropped out the reporters only had one guy to go to. They surrounded him everywhere he went. He had big clumps of hair falling out. That he went ahead and did it was unbelievable.
Mickey Mantle
24.
When I'm hitting, I'd play for nothing. When I'm not, any kind of money I receive makes me feel as if I'm stealing.
Mickey Mantle
25.
To get a better piece of chicken, you'd have to be a rooster.
Mickey Mantle
26.
Hitting the ball was easy. Running around the bases was the tough part.
Mickey Mantle
27.
I guess you could say I'm what this country is all about.
Mickey Mantle
28.
The best team I ever saw, and I really mean this, was the '61 Yankees.
Mickey Mantle
29.
I always loved the game, but when my legs weren't hurting it was a lot easier to love.
Mickey Mantle
30.
He foresaw the platooning that managers like Casey Stengel used years before it happened. He told me I had to be a switch-hitter if I was going to play.
Mickey Mantle
31.
You don't have to talk to me about pensions. I won't be around long enough to collect one.
Mickey Mantle
32.
It was all I lived for, to play baseball.
Mickey Mantle
33.
Watch the old man. Watch how the old man keeps the guys who aren't playing happy.
Mickey Mantle
34.
As far as I'm concerned, Aaron is the best ball player of my era. He is to baseball of the last fifteen years what Joe DiMaggio was before him. He's never received the credit he's due.
Mickey Mantle
35.
When I first came to Yankee Stadium I used to feel like the ghosts of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were walking around in there.
Mickey Mantle
36.
Every time I see his name (Dean Chance) on a lineup card, I feel like throwing up.
Mickey Mantle
37.
Sometimes I think if I had the same body and the same natural ability and someone else's brain, who knows how good a player I might have been.
Mickey Mantle
38.
To play 18 years in Yankee Stadium is the best thing that could ever happen to a ballplayer.
Mickey Mantle
39.
Ralph (Houk) brought out the best in everybody, and that included me. I consider myself lucky to have played for him.
Mickey Mantle
40.
If you want to know who was better, me or Willie Mays, you have to look at our career stats. And Willie's bottom line was better.
Mickey Mantle
41.
Heroes are people who are all good with no bad in them. That's the way I always saw Joe DiMaggio. He was beyond question one of the greatest players of the century.
Mickey Mantle
42.
I had it all and blew it.
Mickey Mantle
43.
All I have is natural ability.
Mickey Mantle
44.
If I were playing today I'd do what Joe DiMaggio said. I'd go knock on the door at Yankee Stadium and when George Steinbrenner answered I'd say, 'Howdy, pardner.'
Mickey Mantle
45.
The thing I really liked about Mickey was the way he treated everyone the same.
Mickey Mantle
46.
When I hit a home run I usually didn't care where it went. So long as it was a home run was all that mattered.
Mickey Mantle
47.
I'll play baseball for the Army or fight for it, whatever they want me to do.
Mickey Mantle
48.
I don't care who you are, you hear those boos.
Mickey Mantle
49.
I don't care what the situation was, how high the stakes were - the bases could be loaded and the pennant riding on every pitch, it never bothered Whitey. He pitched his game. Cool. Craft. Nerves of steel.
Mickey Mantle
50.
In 1961 somebody could've hit a home run to win the game and the next day the headline was about the M&M boys not hitting a home run. But everyone was real good about it. Instead of getting mad they joked about it.
Mickey Mantle
