Originally broadcast on HBO, Mantle etches a striking portrait of the quintessential New York Yankee, Mickey Charles Mantle, who succeeded Joe DiMaggio as both the center fielder and the centerpiece of baseball's most dominant franchise. Over his 18-season Yankee career, Mantle clubbed 536 home runs, was named Most Valuable Player three times, and played on seven World Series-winning teams. But injuries and alcohol took a devastating toll that would leave Mantle a "broken, bitter man" ("I blew it," he says in one interview). While the intrusive music score of this documentary is strictly bush league, Mantle does field an all-star roster for interviews—family, friends, former teammates such as Moose Skowron and Whitey Ford, journalists and sportscasters like Bob Costas, and such celebrity admirers as Billy Crystal. Actor Ed Harris charmingly recites a poem he wrote about Mantle when he was about 10 ("For these are arms that compare with few/On a normal man, one would make two"). At just under an hour, this can't claim to be Mantle's definitive story, and Yankee fans especially would probably prefer more diamond heroics and less of the True Hollywood Story-style psychoanalyzing and dramatics, but the film does earn points for looking beneath Mantle's mythical aura to capture the American sports legend, "up-close, blemished, and vulnerable." Recommended. [Note: Mantle is also available in the three-volume Legends in Pinstripes boxed set, priced at $29.95, which also includes Babe Ruth: The Life Behind the Legend and Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?] Aud: P. (D. Liebenson)
Mantle
(2005) 58 min. DVD: $19.98. HBO Video (avail. from most distributors). Color cover. Closed captioned. ISBN: 0-7831-4098-3. September 18, 2006
Mantle
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