Baseball by day, alcohol any other time

Mickey Mantle was one of the best baseball players of all time, the sad thing is he could have been better. Mantle was the Yankees hero of the 50’s and today is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. During his career, Mantle was a leader in home runs for multiple years, on base percentage in multiple years, had the highest batting average for a year, and was voted to play in the All Star Game many times.

Injuries mixed in with alcohol problems shortened Mantle’s baseball career and turned what could have been a great sports role model into a flawed hero. “Everybody tries to make the excuse that injuries shortened my career,” said Mantle in an interview with Sports Illustrated. “Truth is, after I'd had a knee operation, the doctors would give me rehab work to do, but I wouldn't do it. I'd be out drinking.”

Many athletes had alcohol problems for different reasons. Mantle used it to overcome his shyness and make him feel as he said, “more comfortable before all those personal appearances.” Drinking alcohol negatively impacts a players ability to perform, which makes it very surprising that an athlete who trains so hard to get to the top level would drink so much alcohol. Mantle, who retired at the age of 37, was told by doctors that his alcohol problem was becoming life threatening during his time with the Yankees.

Mantle always drank. He drank in the morning, the afternoon, and evening, often until he couldn’t drink anymore. “If I had to drink to start the day, I'd go through three or four bottles of wine in the course of the afternoon. White wine. Red wine. It didn’t matter, and I didn’t care about the quality, either. In fact, I thought if I was drinking wine, it wasn’t really drinking. To me, wine wasn’t liquor,” Mantle said. Even with these alcohol problems, Mantle was an unbelievable player who blasted over 500 home runs; however, he wasn’t a truly great American role model.
Mantle died in 1995 of liver cancer due to his alcohol problems.