Mickey Mantle collector Steven Lane ready to share rare Mantle treasures with hobby
There was no question that Steven Lane was going to be a Yankee fan.
He was born in Brooklyn in 1955 and attended his first baseball game at Yankee Stadium in 1961.
The Yankees were the only team in town back then, the Dodgers having moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and the Giants from New York to San Francisco. The Mets were still a year away.
“It was the first time in 80 or 90 years that there was only one team in New York,” Lane said. “So I became a Yankee fan, just by luck or coincidence. Number one, they were the world champs, and number two, [Mickey] Mantle and [Roger] Maris were having their home run contest that year. That’s when I started collecting baseball cards.”
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Lane was quickly hooked—on baseball and collecting—and it's been a lifelong passion. At age 70, he still rubs a pack of baseball cards seven times (for Mantle’s jersey number) before opening it.
He learned that from his grandfather, who used to bring him boxes of baseball cards when he came over for dinner on Sundays. He would bring Steven a box of Topps cards—24 packs at 5 cents a pack, or $1.25 for a box.
Lane would open each pack and make three stacks of cards—one for Yankees, one for bubble gum, and one for everybody else.
“Mays, Clemente, Koufax, I didn’t care about them,” he said.
On Monday, Lane would go to school and tell his friends that at 4 p.m., after school, he was going to throw his baseball cards out the window of his family’s sixth-floor apartment. Lane figures that he threw out five or six boxes of 1960s Topps cards over the span of four or five years. He figures those cards would be worth millions now.
“One box of ’62 or ’63 Topps that is sealed, the last one went for about $375,000,” he said. “A ’69 box went a couple of days ago for $275,000.
“But I can’t live in the past. I’ve got my Mantle stuff and I am more than happy with my collection.”
And what a collection it is.
Lane owns one of the largest collections of Mickey Mantle memorabilia in the hobby, with hundreds of autographed, game-worn and game-used artifacts.
Lane has 15 rare Mantle items up for bid in the Aug. 23-24 Summer Platinum Night Sports Auction at Heritage Auctions.
Among the highlights are:
• Mantle’s 1953 Look Magazine wristwatch from the 1953 MLB All-Star Game.
• Mantle’s 1949 high school yearbook with a rare original autograph from 1949, including the original paper wrapping.
• A 1953 game-used Mantle bat, with the original nicks and dinks and cleat marks.
• Mantle’s 1953 personal contract from the Yankees.
A retired attorney in New Orleans, Lane acquired many of his Mantle collectibles in auctions, but he also got some from a former client who was a friend and attorney for former Yankees manager Billy Martin. Lane’s law firm also represented a client whose company handled the demolition of the inside of old Yankee Stadium in 1973 and invited Lane to the Yankees warehouse and told him he could take whatever he wanted.
“This was at a time when people weren’t collecting, so I didn’t take everything,” Lane said. “If this was now, I would take a lot more stuff than I took 20 years ago. I have the original architecture of Yankee Stadium, I’ve got posters, I’ve got yearbooks that were just sitting at the stadium that they just left there.”
He also picks up items from dealers and collectors who know he is a Mantle collector. Like a 1963 game-used Mantle glove that came directly from Mantle’s family.
Lane also has the very first baseball Mantle ever signed. The 1949 ball came from Mantle’s roommate, Bob Mallon, who played minor league ball with Mantle with the Independence Yankees in the Class D Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri League. After Mallon won his first game as a minor league pitcher, their manager, Harry Craft, gave Mallon the ball. Mantle signed the ball and then gave it to Mallon to sign, telling him “someday I am going to be famous.”
“Mallon kept that ball until right before he passed away. I got it at auction,” Lane said.
Lane’s other prized possession is Mantle’s earliest known autograph—on the back of his fourth-grade class photo. Lane got the photo from Mantle’s sister, Barbara.
“He wrote the names of all of his classmates [and] he put a heart next to his teacher and his girlfriend, who was Donna Ray,” Lane said. “He’s 8 years old. … On the left side, the fourth or fifth name up, is ‘Mickey Mantle.’ There is no autograph of Mantle that is earlier than that.”
Lane still has hundreds of Mantle collectibles, many of them featured in his book, “Mickey Mantle: A Life in Memorabilia.” Several of them were on display at the Heritage Auctions booth at the National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago. Chuck Raborn, a collector and owner of Chuck’s Sports Cards of Albany, La., stopped by to take a look.
“Steve’s collection is phenomenal,” Raborn said. “He is by far the biggest Mantle collector that I personally know, and he has got some beautiful items.”
At 70, Lane plans to gradually sell much of his collection over the next few years. But he’s still adding to it. He bought Derek Jeter’s travel bag at The National, as well as a poster that Mantle signed to friend and teammate Phil Rizzuto. He also bought a 1961 Mantle-Roger Maris cap and had a bid in on Mantle’s passport.
“So I’m still buying, but I want to share,” said Lane, who plans to donate part of the proceeds of the most recent auction to charity in honor of the 30-year anniversary of Mantle’s passing on Aug. 13, 1995.
Lane’s passion for collecting and Mantle memorabilia shine through as he explains his fascination with Mantle, who captured the attention of the nation as the Bronx Bombers dominated the 1950s and ’60s.
“It was all a confluence of events,” Lane said. “You had this blond, handsome, country boy coming with a straw suitcase from Oklahoma who never played a game in front of more than a few hundred people, and now you stick him in Yankee Stadium in front of 60,000 people, in New York, which at the time was the mecca of entertainment and television and radio and everything, and it’s the most successful franchise in sports history, and they kept winning every year.”
Lane believes passionately that Mantle was one of the top players of all time, despite a knee injury that hampered his career.
“At the time, he was not only the most powerful hitter in baseball, he was the fastest runner in baseball. There is no one who matched him,” Lane argues. “[Hank] Aaron hit more homers, and there may have been someone who matched his speed, like Rickey Henderson, but no one could match the power and speed. You put those together and there is nothing like it, and everyone has some kind of Mantle story from his career.”
Following in the footsteps of Yankee greats Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio, Mantle was a three-time AL MVP, made 20 All-Star Games, and was considered the “All-American boy” by much of the nation. He captivated the sports world and was one of the most famous athletes in the country, appearing on television shows and promoting nearly every kind of product sold, from candy and clothing to cigarettes.
“He was in everything, his clothing, cigarettes, don’t smoke cigarettes,” Lane said. “They had an ad that said Mickey Mantle smoked this, and then another ad that said, ‘kids don’t smoke.’ He was everywhere.
“If he were playing today with all that, I don’t know that there is any sports figure today that you could compare to what Mantle was like in the ’50s and ’60s in terms of public perception.”
That’s why Lane is now looking to share his treasures with other collectors and baseball historians.
“I can’t take them with me. I wish I could, but I can’t,” he said. “I’m just a temporary custodian of these historic items.
“In some ways, some of this stuff really should be in a museum. But I wanted it and now I want to share it with others. Some, I am only the second owner. … It was owned by Mantle or his family. I have enjoyed it, now I want somebody else to enjoy it.”
Jeff Owens is the editor of SCD.