Baseball Books

And if no one ended up ever crossing that line, maybe we'd still think of Mickey Mantle as this 100% heroic figure who used to hang around the park for hours after the game signing autographs for kids.

i just learned about what mickey said happened to him under the right field bleachers by the bullpen during the third or fourth inning. so not feelin too sorry for the all american boy - would have happened regardless of the book!

From Ball Four? Only because I can search the book on the Internet Archive, I found this:

On the other hand there were all those times when he'd push little kids aside when they wanted his autograph, and the times when he was snotty to reporters, just about making them crawl and beg for a minute of his time. I've seen him close a bus window on kids trying to get his autograph. And I hated that.

Maybe there's the one specific incident you cite, but I think it was more of a general comment about Mantle.

(As "on the other hand" suggests, he also had good things to say about Mantle.)

I think he means the story about him getting a blowjob.

That's in the book? I've either forgotten...or somehow managed to miss that altogether.

i'm sayin that mantle shouldn't have been too mad at bouton for blowing him up in the book. because mantle did enough to blow himself up! https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mantle-piece/

Ah, got it. I even tried searching "blow job"--lots of "job" results, a few "blow"s, but never together.

https://i.postimg.cc/bNL5D6bH/bouton.jpg