SUPERMAN IN PINSTRIPES

Leonardo da Vinci stood on one end of the stage, Mickey Mantle on the other. The Mick seemed a little out of place in the company of Da Vinci, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Mahatma Gandhi, but this was my son's third-grade class biography project, titled Who Am I?, and an understanding teacher had allowed him to portray his favorite baseball player, a preference passed down like DNA from both his mother and his father. "I was born in Spavinaw, Oklahoma, in 1931," said this child born in New York City in 1986, "and my father named me after his favorite player, Mickey Cochrane. I grew up in Commerce, Oklahoma, and later became known as the Commerce Comet...Who am I? Hi, I'm Mickey Charles Mantle."

Who was Mickey Mantle? According to the facts provided by my son, the switch-hitting centerfielder played in 2,401 games for the New York Yankees from 1951 until 1968, won the Most Valuable Player award three times, hit a record 18 homers in 12 World Series and entered the Hall of Fame in 1974. Although he was known as No. 7--my son turned his back to the audience to show off the number on the back of the uniform his mother had made for him--he wore No. 6 when he first came up to the Yankees as a 19-year-old rookie. In 1953 he slugged the longest home runs ever measured, 565 ft., off Chuck Stobbs of the Washington Senators, and in 1956 he won the rare Triple Crown (.353 batting average, 52 homers, 130 runs batted in). He accomplished all this even though he played in pain all the time.

Left out of the third-grade presentation were Mantle's depression over the death of his father, at only 39, from Hodgkin's disease; his constant and fatalistic drinking; his bumpkinish trust in swindlers; and the indifferent treatment he gave his wife and four sons, one of whom, Billy, died last year at the age of 36, having suffered from Hodgkin's disease. In his later years, Mantle tried to atone for his sins, entering the Betty Ford Center, freely admitting his alcoholism and making peace with his sons. Mickey Jr., David and Danny were by his side when Mantle died of a rapidly spreading hepatoma at Baylor University Medical Center early Sunday morning.

Who was Mickey Mantle, or more precisely, what was it about him that inspired the fierce devotion of four generations of fans? He was handsome, of course, in the way high school heroes were thought to be. There was music in that name; even he said it sounded "made up." He was a country boy in the big city. He came along at a time when the TV set became the centerpiece of the living room. He was Superman in pinstripes. The eternal debate as to who was the best centerfielder in New York City, Mantle, Willie Mays of the Giants or Duke Snider of the Dodgers, was really no contest, even though Mantle personally deferred to Mays. According to Roger Angell, the peerless baseball writer for The New Yorker, "You watched Willie play, and you laughed all the time because he made it look fun. With Mantle, you didn't laugh. You gasped."