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MY FRIEND MICKEY MANTLE: Bobby Richardson relives friendship with Yankees teammate, baseball legend’s final days
When my son, a Yankees fan, sent Bobby Richardson a silver-bordered 1988 Pacific Legends card to sign through the mail in January of 2021, it soon came back with a neat signature from the legendary second baseman.
Richardson included a couple of extra items as well and personalized both of them. One was a custom card (similar to Richardson’s 1966 Topps card), which lists his career highlights on the back.
The other was a pamphlet, or tract, with a photo of a kneeling Mickey Mantle on the front and titled “Mickey Mantle: His Final Inning,” on which Richardson penned, “Mantle was my teammate my whole career 55-66” and signed it “Bobby.”
“We were friends,” Richardson said of Mantle in a recent phone interview from his home in Sumter, S.C. the week of his 87th birthday.
“During the season, I didn’t go out to eat with [Mantle] at night. [Tony] Kubek and I would go out. We had another group, Steve Hamilton and Bob Turley, these were non-drinkers on the ball club, and we would kind of go our way and they’d go their way. But we always, on the bus, on the train, on the planes, we were just always involved in the laughter and everything, and there was a closeness there. And after baseball, even more so.”
Richardson saw Mantle as an encourager and a quiet leader who preferred to give credit to his teammates. He also appreciated his friend’s generosity.
“Mickey never saved anything,” Richardson said. “He had none of his cards. He was a giver. He would give everything away. He would pick up the tab everywhere he went. He visited me down here on six different occasions in Sumter.”
Richardson played for the Yankees from 1955-66, earning five straight Gold Gloves and making the AL All-Star team eight times. The 1960 World Series MVP, he coached college baseball for several years after his pro career, leading South Carolina to its first College World Series in 1975.
“He came to the University [of South Carolina] when I was coaching over there,” Richardson said of one of Mantle’s visits. “He gave an instructional television series really, all young 8-year-old boys, giving instructions on their hitting and so forth. We found one of those boys 40 years later, 48 years old, and asked, what do you remember about Mantle giving you that instruction about baseball? And he said, ‘I remember one thing. We asked Mr. Mantle if he could take one swing. And he took one swing ... He hit the ball out of the park, over the football field into the parking lot.’”
Then the 48-year-old recalled to Richardson, “You jumped up and said, ‘We can’t do that! Stop, we can’t do that! My car is parked over there!’”
Richardson, a successful coach at USC from 1970-1976, is still beloved by Yankees fans. His mailbox is regularly filled with cards and memorabilia to sign. Like Mantle, Richardson has a beautiful signature.
“I’m an average player on a good ball club, and even right now, today, I’m averaging 10 things of mail,” said Richardson, whose rookie card is a 1957 Topps. “It could be a ball, it could be a cap, it could be a bat occasionally, but mostly cards and 8-by-10 pictures. I had 23 come in just the other day, in one day. And here that’s 60 years later.
“I can’t imagine what Mantle was getting. In fact, he couldn’t take care of it. He just threw everything in a room. I can see that because you get 10 and if you miss five days you’ve got 50, and the next thing you know it’s 100, and 200, 300, and what do you do now? And he was doing different things, travel and all. He just didn’t have time. He ended up not signing a lot of things that came his way.”
Richardson added that Mantle felt bad about not returning all his mail.
“He would fly across the country to give a benefit for a teammate who had cancer,” Richardson said. “He’d do things like that. You don’t see many players doing what he has done.”
Although Richardson humbly referred to himself as an “average player,” here are some of the career highlights listed on the back of that previously mentioned custom card: Eight-time All-Star; five consecutive Gold Gloves (1961-65); 1962 AL hits leader (209); runner-up to Mantle for the 1962 AL MVP (of which Mantle said, “Bobby should have won it”); 30 consecutive World Series games (1960-64); 1960 World Series MVP; record for most RBI in a World Series (12 in 1960); and record for most hits in a World Series (13 in 1964 – since tied). The slick-fielding second baseman batted .266 lifetime and hit .305 in seven World Series before retiring at the age of 31 after 12 seasons with the Yankees.
Also on that custom card is a Bible verse: John 1:12.
Also See: All Things Mickey Mantle
Throughout his playing career and after, Richardson has been given a number of opportunities to share his Christian faith, from his involvement in team chapel services to speaking at five Billy Graham Crusades, including one in Japan. It was not unusual for Mantle, even after a late night out on the town, to accept Richardson’s invitation to an early Sunday morning church service before batting practice.
And these days, Richardson continues to send out the “Mickey Mantle: His Final Inning” tracts to those who write to him for an autograph.
A summary of the tract found on the website of the publisher, Crossway, reads: “Shortly before his death, Mickey Mantle trusted Christ as Savior, thanks to the faithful witness of his old friend, Bobby Richardson. This is a story of God’s unlimited grace.”
“[Richardson’s friend Ed Cheek] wrote that tract with the help of Mickey’s wife,” Richardson said. “He got permission from her. She actually went to Cleveland and threw out the first pitch, and they gave out 40,000 of those tracts when it first came out.
“They’ve quit making the tract now. We must have been the only ones buying it because they’ve chosen not to redo it. [Cheek] has written to them and asked them to, but they’ve turned it down so far. I’m sure there are other ways we can get it done, so there’s no problem. I buy 5,000 at a time. I’ve got about a 1,000 left right now. I put one in every envelope and give them away.”
On June 8, 1995, a very ill Mantle received a liver transplant at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas. Shortly after the transplant, Mantle spoke to the press at Baylor. He was wearing a 1995 All-Star game cap given to him by Richardson, who was in town around the time of the All-Star game in Arlington.
“God gave me the ability to play baseball. God gave me everything,” Mantle told the audience. “For the kids out there ... don’t be like me.”
It was hoped that the transplant would give Mantle another chapter in life, but just weeks later Richardson received a phone call from Mickey’s wife, Merlyn. Mantle’s time had come. Bobby and his wife, Betsy, immediately packed their bags.
“He wanted us to come back and be there during those final days,” Richardson said. The two friends and former Yankees teammates talked in the hospital before Mantle departed in peace early on a Sunday morning, Aug. 13, 1995, at the age of 63.
In 1991 Bob Costas asked Mantle to explain his surge in popularity in recent years, and Mantle’s best guess was that it was because of “the bubble gum card craze.” Today, Mantle’s popularity is still sky-high. How does Richardson explain it?
“I would say it’s a combination, I think,” Richardson said. “Just like his funeral. You looked at it on the Internet.” (I watched part of Mantle’s funeral on YouTube, which Richardson officiated at Mantle’s longstanding request).
“And people who love baseball go back to the Internet and they pick up certain games during the course of the year,” Richardson continued. “I think a lot of folks are seeing how good he really was on the Internet, the younger generation that were not alive when he was playing. And I think a lot of that is that the younger generation are reading about the icons of the time. You know, Mickey Mantle.”
