Category: Guest Authors

Mickey Mantle’s Regrets

By Joe Guzzardi

In 1994, a year before his death from alcohol-induced cirrhosis, hepatitis C and inoperable liver cancer, Mickey Mantle gave a remorseful interview to Sports Illustrated. The New York Yankees superstar center fielder and first-ballot Hall of Fame inductee recounted his life as an alcoholic with brutal candor. Mantle admitted that because of alcohol abuse, he ended up “killing himself.”

Except to other alcoholics, Mantle’s confession about how drinking kept him from living a more fulfilling life and ruptured his relationships with friends and family doesn’t square with baseball diamond fame. Mantle began some of his mornings with what he called the “breakfast of champions,” a big glass filled with a shot or more of brandy, some Kahlúa and cream. Yankees’ second baseman Billy Martin, a regular drinking partner, and Mantle would stop at Mickey’s Central Park South restaurant where the bartender blended the ingredients and served them up. As Mickey remembered, the frozen drinks “tasted real good.”

Mantle’s “breakfast of champions” was the first of many drinks he threw back each day. Inevitably, Mickey’s heavy drinking led to long blackout periods. By his own admission, Mantle would forget what day it was, what city he was in and about his commitments to appear at baseball card signing shows, although he eventually showed up. The best man at Martin’s 1988 wedding, Mantle “hardly remember(ed) being there.” One year later, Mantle served as a pallbearer at Martin’s funeral. Billy had been killed in a single vehicle automobile accident on Christmas Day. Although there is some dispute about whether Martin or his friend Bill Reedy drove, no one questions that the pair had been drinking heavily in the hours before the fatal crash.

After Mantle retired, his drinking became, in his words, “really bad.” He went through a deep depression. Teammates Billy, Whitey Ford, Hank Bauer and Moose Skowron were part of his past life, and leaving those guys “left a hole in me.” Mantle tried to fill up his baseball emptiness with nonstop alcohol intake.

The older Mantle got, the more he drank. Family and friends begged Mantle to get help. But Mantle stubbornly refused. Like too many alcoholics, Mantle foolishly convinced himself that he could stop whenever he wanted. But at a charity golf outing for the Harbor Club Children’s Christmas Fund near Atlanta, Mantle hit bottom. He drank Bloody Marys in the morning, and then downed two bottles of wine in the afternoon. At the card show that evening, Mantle embarrassed himself with his obnoxious, drunken behavior. In his alcohol-fueled stupors, Mantle often berated autograph seekers, a shock to his fans who cherished his image as a homey, blond-hair, crewcut Oklahoma kid.

Atlanta was an overdue awakening for Mantle. Finally seeking guidance, Mantle approached his son Danny who had been treated at the Betty Ford Center. Three of Mantle’s four sons and his wife Merlyn were also alcoholics. While Mantle deliberated about checking into the Betty Ford Center, his doctor gave him his MRI results: Mickey needed a liver transplant.

Once at Betty Ford, Mantle confronted his uncomfortable truth. Mantle admitted that, as he told Sports Illustrated, “he really screwed up,” was a lousy family man, and preferred running around with his baseball buddies. Envisioning his life as a sober, responsible Mantle, Mickey had big plans, but did not live long enough to realize them to the fullest. His goal was to stay sober, be strong and make amends. At his final press conference, Mantle said to an audience aghast at his wasted-away body: “This is a role model: Don’t be like me.”

Today, Mantle is remembered mostly for his brilliant baseball achievements: 20 All-Star games, three AL MVP awards including one in his 1956 Triple Crown season, seven World Series championship rings, four AL Home Run crowns, and a first ballot Hall of Fame inductee.

But for the millions of Americans suffering from alcoholism, Mantle’s ability to overcome – although too late to save his life – is a bigger triumph than any of his baseball feats. For more information, go to the National Alcohol Awareness Month website here.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association member. You can also read his content here. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

Mickey Mantle’s Regrets Mickey Mantle’s Regrets

China Perpetrating Greatest Transfer of Wealth in History

By Joe Guzzardi

Customs and Border Protection agents have identified individuals from more than 150 nations attempting, mostly successfully, to enter the United States. Among those aliens, the Chinese are arriving in increasingly large numbers.

The journey for these Chinese is thousands of miles long, costly and dangerous — one that few would willingly embark upon since their futures, once in the U.S., would be uncertain. The Chinese migrants speak little English and have limited work skills. Nevertheless, one Chinese migrant, Zhang Kiayu, began his journey north in Ecuador, then traveled through Colombia, passed through the treacherous Darien Gap where smugglers then coordinated his travel on to Panama before reaching the Mexico/Texas border. Speculation is on the rise that the migrants may be Chinese Communist Party agents. A CCP affiliation would explain who funded the $35,000 Kiayu paid traffickers.

Texas Department of Public Safety Lt. Chris Olivarez said that the spike in Chinese migrants is unusual and “very alarming.” Olivarez blamed the cartels who are, he said, running a “very lucrative business.” During February 2023, there were 1,368 encounters of Chinese migrants versus 55 during February 2022. Since October, just five months into the current fiscal year, the total has grown to 4,366.

Chinese immigration to the U.S. has a long and often turbulent history. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and restrictions that the Chinese government imposed after World War II and the Chinese Communist Revolution limited migration. But after the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 removed the barriers for non-European immigrants, and after China relaxed it emigration restrictions, the number of Chinese immigrants residing in the U.S. nearly doubled from 370,000 in 1980 to 677,000 in 1990. The number doubled again by 2000 to more than 1.8 million before reaching 2.4 million in 2021. The Chinese population has continued to grow. Chinese Americans are the largest Asian origin group in the U.S., and represent the third largest origin group after Mexican and Indian migrants.

There’s an important distinction between then and now, however. The Chinese surging the border are illegal aliens as opposed to earlier waves that, for the most part, arrived in the U.S. through a legal port of entry and held a valid visa. Kiayu and the others released at the Southwest border were given notices to appear for an immigration hearing. Even if their intention is to show up, and fewer than half do, appointments are often backlogged for up to seven years. During the waiting period, the whereabouts and the intentions of the unvetted migrants, Chinese and otherwise, will remain unknown. Evaluating the arriving Chinese, some wonder if given the CCP’s quest for world domination, their government might be motivated to take advantage of the Biden administration’s open borders to smuggle agents into the U.S.

The Biden administration may play down or even dismiss the national security threat that China represents, but FBI Director Christopher Wray has a different perspective. Wray points to what the FBI calls China’s “Talent Plans” that allow its nationals with existing jobs in the U.S. “to participate in such plans part-time so they can maintain their access to intellectual property, trade secrets, pre-publication data and methods, and U.S. funding for their research.” These plans, maintains the FBI, represent a risk to universities, laboratories and U.S. businesses. Wray told a Hudson Institute audience that the FBI opens a new case related to China every 10 hours and that 50 percent of the roughly 5,000 active FBI counterintelligence cases are China-related.

China’s foreign minister Qin Gang warned of pending “conflict and confrontation” with the U.S. In turn, the Department of State cautioned against U.S. citizens traveling to China because of “arbitrary enforcement of local laws” and the risk of wrongful detention.

FBI alerts about Chinese interference in U.S. affairs are more than hypothetical. In 2018, the U.S. Trade Representative estimated that Chinese theft of American IP costs U.S. firms between $225 billion and $600 billion every year. In 2014, China stole the files of more than 22 million Americans, including the security-clearance files of everyone in the intelligence establishment. General Keith Alexander, a former National Security Agency director, has called China’s technology theft “the greatest transfer of wealth in human history.”

With red flags flying, and with the stakes at American universities, laboratories and businesses high, Biden’s indifference to the Chinese entering illegally, and virtually at will, proves his callous disregard for the nation he’s sworn to defend and the citizens who trusted him.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Sign up here for free to receive immigration columns in your inbox.

China Perpetrating Greatest Transfer of Wealth in History

From Coal Mines To Cooperstown, A Baseball Story For Saint Patrick’s Day

By Joe Guzzardi

In 1869, Hughie Jennings became the ninth of 12 children born into a Pittston, Pa., coal mining family. At age 12, Jennings dropped out of school to work as a breaker boy in the mines near Scranton where he picked slate from coal for 90 cents a day. Amid clouds of coal dust and the machinery’s rushing roar, breaker boys worked bent over backless wooden benches to perform their 10-hour-a-day tasks. A 1900 Bureau of Mines report found that colliery accidents killed 411, injured 1,057, and made 230 widows and 524 orphans.

But from those hardscrabble days, Jennings eventually entered the Hall of Fame based on his sterling career as a ball player and manager. The Irish-American also became an admired trial lawyer. In his book “EE-YAH,” Society for American Baseball Research historian Jack Smiles tracked Jennings’ career all the way back to when he was a 90-pound catcher for hometown ball clubs like the Moosic Anthracites. In 1889 Hughie signed for $5 a game with a Lehighton, Pa., semi-pro team, and left the mines behind for good. Jennings always said that what most motivated him throughout his career was to play so skillfully that he’d never return to the pits.

Jennings’ first contract called for $50 monthly, a fortune compared to his miner wages. By 1894, Jennings landed with the old National League Baltimore Orioles where he teamed up with Irish-American players still revered today. Under manager Ned Hanlon’s guidance, John J. McGraw, Wee Willie Keeler, Joe Kelley, Dan Brouthers, Wilbert Robinson and Jennings – Hall of Famers all – the Orioles won three straight pennants. Jennings emerged as baseball’s top shortstop, both offensively and defensively.

During the Orioles’ championship years, Jennings had some of the best-ever seasons by a major league shortstop. In 1895, he hit .386, scored 159 runs, collected 204 hits, knocked in 125 runs, and stole 53 bases. In 1896, his performance was even better, as he hit .401, behind Cleveland’s Jesse Burkett’s .405, with 209 hits, 121 RBI and 70 stolen bases. To get on base, the fearless Jennings would do anything. His 1896 hit-by-pitch total, 51, is a still-standing major league record. The Orioles’ winning formula was old-fashioned, inside baseball – the bunt, the hit-and-run, the stolen base and the Baltimore chop. The Orioles cheated, too, like tripping opposing players as they rounded third and headed for home.

After a chaotic period where various teams bid for his services, during autumn 1899, Jennings attended the Cornell Law School in the off-season. Obtaining a law school diploma was a high enough priority that Jennings refused to report to the Brooklyn Superbas until June so that he could complete his spring term. In exchange for his tuition, Jennings coached the Cornell baseball team. Jennings fell two semesters short of graduating from Cornell, but he passed enough classes to take the bar exam, and was admitted to practice in Maryland and in Pennsylvania.

After a four-year stint piloting the Orioles, in 1907, Jennings took over the Detroit Tigers and young Ty Cobb. The Tigers won three straight pennants, but won only one World Series. The firebrand Cobb, however, blossomed. He won 12 batting titles in 13 years and set stolen base records. Jennings stayed with Detroit until 1920, and then took over the New York Giants for parts of 1924 and 1925 seasons.

Sportswriters called the firebrand Jennings “Ee-yah” for his third base coaching box antics, “Hustling Hughie” for his aggressive infield play and “Big Daddy,” not for his 5’8” stature, but because he served as a role model for the 100 other men who followed him from the Northeastern coal mines to the major leagues. In the final three winters of his life, 1925-27, Jennings contracted tuberculosis and meningitis before, at age 58, passing away in 1928 at his Scranton home.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association Member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

From Coal Mines To Cooperstown, A Baseball Story For Saint Patrick’s Day