family auctioning off Mickey Mantle's 1951 World Series bat
habs71
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Friday, Dec 10, 2004
Tulsa family auctioning off Mickey Mantle's 1951 World Series bat
TULSA, Okla. (AP) - Leo Evans held the bat, a bit too heavy for his young arms, and took a cut while staring at the mirror. He pictured himself as the next centre-fielder for the Yankees, the next Mickey Mantle.
And what made it seem realistic was the fact that The Mick once swung the same bat - and in the World Series, no less.
"It still had pine tar on it," Evans recalls. "You'd get your hands sticky like the big-leaguers did."
When neighbourhood kids came over, sometimes they'd hold the bat and other times they wouldn't. Many times, it just stayed in the closet. There was no hoopla.
"I can't remember any kids making that big a deal out of it," Evans said. "I'm sure they thought it was cool, but I don't ever remember kids going whacko."
Decades later, the bat is more than a child's toy. It's a rare artifact from one of baseball's legends - the only bat Mantle is known to have used in the 1951 World Series.
The 19-year-old rookie ordered only two bats for the series, which the Yankees won in six games against the New York Giants, and the other is missing. So was this one, until Evans made a trip to the Hall of Fame and was told how much the bat might be worth. He came home and retrieved it from his nephew, who had borrowed it years earlier.
A number of factors make the bat a valuable item, and the 52-year-old Evans put in up for auction this past week at Lelands.com.
First, of course, it belonged to Mickey Mantle. It was used in a World Series, and Mantle hit a record 18 career World Series home runs. On top of that, it's from 1951 - Mantle's rookie year, and the only season he spent in the Yankees outfield with Joe DiMaggio.
Gomer Evans, Leo's father, had a friend named Marshall Ishmael who coached high-school football. On the team was Mantle's brother. After Ishmael passed along word that Gomer's children were big baseball fans, Mantle sent them a bat.
At the time, Mantle was a young ball player off to a strong start. It would be several years - and hundreds of homers - before The Mick was a legend.
So, the bat wasn't locked away as a keepsake. Instead, it found a home in the Evans' closet.
"We didn't appreciate it really - I guess - in a way like you would think," Leo Evans said. "I don't know why that is. You would think it would just have been worshipped.
"We liked it. We loved having it. We just didn't think about it that much. It was just in the closet for years and years and years."
It wasn't like the family didn't realize Mantle's stature. Evans remembers checking the box scores in the newspaper every morning, taking time to see what Mantle did in the previous day's game.
"Being in Oklahoma, Mickey Mantle was the only celebrity we had other than Will Rogers," Evans said. "He was it. The fact that he was from Oklahoma, playing for the Yankees and a superstar, I think almost all Oklahoma kids were big Mickey Mantle fans. I know everybody in my family was.
"I can remember watching him strike out and it just killed me."
That Oklahoma connection - Mantle was born in Commerce and took the nickname The Commerce Comet - adds to the bat's attraction.
Evans and his three siblings - two older brothers and an older sister - decided it was time to put the bat up for auction and see what happened.
"I think what our hope is that it goes someplace where it can be displayed and people appreciate it," Evans said. "It is a piece of Americana I think anybody that was around in the '50s and '60s would say, 'Wow, that's really something."'
© The Canadian Press, 2004 >>
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So, if the family could pull a boner on this one, why not others?
Just throwing that out there. So in the end, the auction house did have the right ball which wound up being sold privately.
<< <i>Do you think Lelands would put it in their auctions if it was a fake?? >>
Brian
Not a fake but rather, based on the 500 HR ball incident, a mistake as to what the item truly represents in the history of the ball player. The Mick could give someone one of his regular game used bats (which I would kill to have!) and a family member could say that the bat was used to kill Jimmy Hoffa!
Just a thought
as always
your friend
Mike
Not 100% sure if you are kidding or not but presuming you're not kidding the point is certainly understandable, but my opinion is that vintage memorabilia is more often perception not reality. Come on - some story about playing with the Mantle bat as a kid, etc., etc., - these stories are similar to the "stories" seen on ebay all the time except the people telling these stories are much more clever - they could write stories for Hollywood. I haven't "investigated" this story and won't ever - maybe the story is true - but in my opinion it most certainly is not true. Again - believe whatever you want - it's up to you.