My local rag has a nationally distributed hit job on the "Mick". The article headline: Baseball & Beer: A sobering link. A HUGE picture of Mantle is above the article (actually a great picture I wish I had a copy--I'll check if I can find it on line).
The premise is standard post-modern media ******** 101. Mantle, Ruth, and other white stars from the olde tyme era were legendary boozers and thus really pieces of scum. The link to modern times is the death of Josh Hancock who was pretty well boozed up when he killed himself in an accident.
So a couple of popular modern deconstructionist themes are intertwined such as: old white heroes were really all flawed like modern guys i.e. Mantle=Bonds, Ruth=Pac-man Jones, that sort of thing. Create the impression that the behavior of modern black athletes is not something "new" but was going on back in the (white) day.
Add the bizzare modern puritanism where all drinking is bad (but things like sodomy, illegitimate birth rates, and the unrestrained drugging of children is not), and then combine it with victimhood and non-responsibility for ones own actions. How can you fault Josh Hamilton? He played for a team owned by Anheuser-Busch and they serve beer, BEER! in the clubhouse.
The article then goes on to refute it's main premise through most of the article, a mis-direction which is calculated because the desire of the media is to get you to believe an idea which the facts and your own eyes DO NOT confirm. In this case Mantle was a big drunkard even though the evidence doesn't support that conclusion.
The atricle features Jerry Coleman, a player with Mantle who says he was "assigned" to Mantle in the fifties to keep him from drinking too much.
This seems ridiculous because a) Mantle is supposed to have partied like an animal so Coleman didn't do much to help him, b) Coleman says he never saw Mantle drunk in the clubhouse, not once in twently years and c) Mantle entered rehab for his drinking in 1994 almost 30 years after his playing career was over---if it takes that long to develop a problem chances are it was not much of a problem initially.
The article has some refreshing quotes from David Wells who was "half-drunk" when he pitched a perfect game for the Yankees (which reminds me of the Abraham Lincoln quote given when he was told that General Grant was drunk during one of his victories "Find out what he was drinking and send a case to each of my generals!")
Wells says: "I'm a grown man. If I want to go out and get tanked, that's my problem." Wells drinking is referred to as "alcohol abuse". Tony LaRussa, the Cards manager in the now "dry" Cardinal clubhouse (LaRussa was ticketed in spring training for drunk driving) states that it doesn't matter anyway if the club serves booze, the players do their drinking at the bars after the game anyway.
Thus the point of lecturing baseball has nothing to do with baseball at all. It's all about personal responsibility in the end. But hey, it was a good opportunity to take a shot at Mickey Mantle so why pass that up?
The premise is standard post-modern media ******** 101. Mantle, Ruth, and other white stars from the olde tyme era were legendary boozers and thus really pieces of scum. The link to modern times is the death of Josh Hancock who was pretty well boozed up when he killed himself in an accident.
So a couple of popular modern deconstructionist themes are intertwined such as: old white heroes were really all flawed like modern guys i.e. Mantle=Bonds, Ruth=Pac-man Jones, that sort of thing. Create the impression that the behavior of modern black athletes is not something "new" but was going on back in the (white) day.
Add the bizzare modern puritanism where all drinking is bad (but things like sodomy, illegitimate birth rates, and the unrestrained drugging of children is not), and then combine it with victimhood and non-responsibility for ones own actions. How can you fault Josh Hamilton? He played for a team owned by Anheuser-Busch and they serve beer, BEER! in the clubhouse.
The article then goes on to refute it's main premise through most of the article, a mis-direction which is calculated because the desire of the media is to get you to believe an idea which the facts and your own eyes DO NOT confirm. In this case Mantle was a big drunkard even though the evidence doesn't support that conclusion.
The atricle features Jerry Coleman, a player with Mantle who says he was "assigned" to Mantle in the fifties to keep him from drinking too much.
This seems ridiculous because a) Mantle is supposed to have partied like an animal so Coleman didn't do much to help him, b) Coleman says he never saw Mantle drunk in the clubhouse, not once in twently years and c) Mantle entered rehab for his drinking in 1994 almost 30 years after his playing career was over---if it takes that long to develop a problem chances are it was not much of a problem initially.
The article has some refreshing quotes from David Wells who was "half-drunk" when he pitched a perfect game for the Yankees (which reminds me of the Abraham Lincoln quote given when he was told that General Grant was drunk during one of his victories "Find out what he was drinking and send a case to each of my generals!")
Wells says: "I'm a grown man. If I want to go out and get tanked, that's my problem." Wells drinking is referred to as "alcohol abuse". Tony LaRussa, the Cards manager in the now "dry" Cardinal clubhouse (LaRussa was ticketed in spring training for drunk driving) states that it doesn't matter anyway if the club serves booze, the players do their drinking at the bars after the game anyway.
Thus the point of lecturing baseball has nothing to do with baseball at all. It's all about personal responsibility in the end. But hey, it was a good opportunity to take a shot at Mickey Mantle so why pass that up?
E-PROGRAM YOURSELVES FROM YOUR RACIAL STOCKHOLM SYNDROME!!!!
