7: The Mickey Mantle Novel
by Peter Golenbock

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Book Reviews of 7: The Mickey Mantle Novel

Book Review: An Inventive Memoir
Summary: 3 Stars

Summary of 7: The Mickey Mantle Novel

Bestselling sportswriter Peter Golenbock knew Mickey Mantle, Billy Martin, Jim Bouton, Joe Pepitone, and many of Mantle's friends, family, and teammates. While Mickey was a good person at heart, he had a dark side that went far beyond his well-known alcoholism and infidelities. In this fictional portrait, Mickey--now in heaven--realizes that he's carrying a huge weight on his shoulders, as he did throughout his life. He needs to unburden himself of all the horrible things he did and understand for himself why he did them. He wants to make amends to the people he hurt, especially those dear to him; the fans he ignored and alienated; and the public who made him into a hero. Mickey never felt he deserved the adulation, could never live up to it, and tried his damnedest to prove it to everyone. The fact that he was human made the public love him that much more.

This Mickey Mantle is revealed as a man who lived in fear--fear of failure, of success, of life beyond baseball, and of commitment. His was a life filled with sex, yet devoid of deeper satisfactions. From the alcohol-fueled good times and bad, to the emptiness when the party was finally over, 7 has it all.

Through the recounting of his exploits on and off the field, some of them side-splittingly hilarious, some disturbing, and others that will make your head shake in sympathy, Mickey comes clean in this novel in the way he never could in real life. 7: The Mickey Mantle Novel puts you inside the locker room and bedroom with an American Icon every bit as flawed and human as we are.

Bestselling sportswriter Peter Golenbock knew Mickey Mantle, Billy Martin, Jim Bouton, Joe Pepitone, and many of Mantle's friends, family, and teammates. While Mickey was a good person at heart, he had a dark side that went far beyond his well-known alcoholism and infidelities. In this fictional portrait, Mickey--now in heaven--realizes that he's carrying a huge weight on his shoulders, as he did throughout his life. He needs to unburden himself of all the horrible things he did and understand for himself why he did them. He wants to make amends to the people he hurt, especially those dear to him; the fans he ignored and alienated; and the public who made him into a hero. Mickey never felt he deserved the adulation, could never live up to it, and tried his damnedest to prove it to everyone. The fact that he was human made the public love him that much more.

This Mickey Mantle is revealed as a man who lived in fear--fear of failure, of success, of life beyond baseball, and of commitment. His was a life filled with sex, yet devoid of deeper satisfactions. From the alcohol-fueled good times and bad, to the emptiness when the party was finally over, 7 has it all.

Through the recounting of his exploits on and off the field, some of them side-splittingly hilarious, some disturbing, and others that will make your head shake in sympathy, Mickey comes clean in this novel in the way he never could in real life. 7: The Mickey Mantle Novel puts you inside the locker room and bedroom with an American Icon every bit as flawed and human as we are.

I met Mickey Mantle for the first time in 1974 when I was writing my first book, Dynasty. He had asked me to meet him at his home in Dallas, but when I arrived, I was informed he had flown to New York and I could meet him in the clubhouse of Yankee Stadium the next day. Back on the plane I went.

During an hour-long interview which I conducted in the Yankee clubhouse, Mickey talked about his career, his love of the game, and the nightmares that woke him up almost every night. During the middle of the interview New York Times reporter John Drebinger entered the clubhouse, and Mickey then told me that Drebby had a hearing aid and that Mickey would move his mouth, pretending to talk so Drebby would turn the hearing aid up, and when he got it up all the way, he'd scream at the top of his lungs. Mickey, myself, and everyone standing around listening roared with laughter.

That was Mickey, irreverent, complex, funny and sad.

Continue reading the essay

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7 Second Interview: At Bat with Peter Golenbock

Q: You've been writing bestsellers for years, you saw the response to your friend Jim Bouton's Ball Four, and you even wrote a book (with Graig Nettles) called Balls. And you've already been through this once, with a controversial book being dropped by a major publisher and picked up by a smaller press, with Personal Fouls, your book on Jim Valvano. Were you surprised at what's happened so far with 7?

A: When I saw the outrage over the O.J. Simpson book, my immediate reaction was, Uh oh. Judith Regan became the focal point of the controversy, and since she was also my publisher, I was fully aware of what seemed sure to follow. I was hoping against hope, but unfortunately my instincts were correct.

Q: Mickey Mantle was your childhood hero. In the opening to the book, you recount the last conversation you had with him, when you try to explain to him what he meant to you. Do you still think of him as a hero?

A: He is more of a hero to me that ever. What most people refuse to accept is that alcoholism is a disease, and too often a deadly one. Mickey suffered with all the ills--both physical and social--of alcoholism for most of his life. In the end, he faced up to his problem. For a macho guy like Mickey, that took a lot of guts. To us, he was a hero. To himself he was a failure. How he must have suffered. That's what this book is all about.

Q: You've written books with and about Billy Martin, and he's a big figure in this book too. What was Mantle's relationship with him like?

A: They were best friends, drinking buddies, soul mates. They loved each other like brothers. They were also enablers. Both were alcoholics, but neither would admit it.

Q: You've talked to hundreds of old ballplayers for your books over the years. Was Mantle typical in the way he handled the time after he was done as a player, or the exception?

A: Mantle was an extreme example of an athlete who died inside the day he retired. Some athletes can smoothly make the transformation into the real world, but not most. In the days before the mega-salaries (when the athlete had to find a job after baseball) plenty of the players I interviewed felt lost and abandoned. Selling insurance or cars just didn't excite them. But they had to do if they wanted to feed their families. Mickey was one of the few athletes who could sell his autograph and make his living that way. And he felt bad about having to do that.

Q: Mickey has a line in the book: "I'm only sorry camcorders didn't exist way back then. We'd-a made a fortune." Do you think things were different "way back then," or was the difference just that everybody didn't have camcorders?

A: Things were different back then. There wasn't the constant scrutiny of the athletes' actions like there is now. There was no SportsCenter or talk radio, no Internet blogging or YouTube. The sportswriters rarely wrote about what happened off the field. The players had a lot more privacy.

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