Oct. 1, 1964 - All of a sudden, there’s a race in the American League all over again. And all of a sudden, the chances Mickey Mantle is taking on his brittle legs are justified in his mind.
Mantle pounded into the dirt sliding twice in the first game of today’s doubleheader with the Tigers. It’s plays like that that make manager Yogi Berra suck in his breath and hold it until he sees Mickey get up and take the first couple of steps. One base would hardly be worth the loss of Mantle’s bat.
But today, the Tigers swept both games, 4-2 and 5-2, and it doesn’t take an IBM computer to figure there could be a playoff between the White Sox and the Yankees.
Now, if the Indians beat the Yankees two of three games in the Bronx this weekend and the White Sox win all four from the A’s — which has been done before — there’s the playoff.
In the sixth inning of the opener, with the score 1-1, Berra sent Mantle down on a hit-and-run. Elston Howard swung and missed, and Mantle slid into second on one of those bad knees and had the stolen bag. Fine. That’s the tie-breaking run, and Howard usually gets a piece of the ball. But then, Mantle picked up and tried to steal third on his own. Again he had to slide on his left side, but this time he was out.
After the game, he was smiling, but what could have happened would be crushing. After all, he has driven in 107 runs, and nobody else on the club can make that statement.
“Aw, it didn’t hurt none,” Mantle said. “If I slide bad and jam my leg on the bag, then the next day it gets all swollen up with fluid. But that shouldn’t happen.”
“You can’t think about getting hurt like that,” Mickey continued. “You can pull something just running after a ball in the corner, but you gotta try.
“I’ll tell you, if you can’t do things like that, like trying to steal at a time like that, then you can’t play anymore.”
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