This is a Mickey Mantle 1995 - 1959 All-Star Hamilton Collection Glass Baseball Card Nrmt. This card will be shipped in a top load Sports Card Holders and Sleeve and a bubble protective envelope. Postage is $2.50 U.S. and $3.50 International. Insurance is extra and multiple lots can combine shipping. Paypal Only Please. Make sure to look at my other auctions.

Mickey Charles Mantle (October 20, 1931 – August 13, 1995) was an American baseball player who was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974.

He played his entire 18-year major-league professional career for the New York Yankees, winning 3 American League MVP titles and playing for 16 All-Star teams. Mantle played on 12 pennant winners and 7 World Championship clubs. He still holds the records for most World Series home runs (18), RBIs (40), runs (42), walks (43), extra-base hits (26), and total bases (123).

Mantle's first semi-professional team was the Baxter Springs, Kansas Whiz Kids. In 1948, Yankees' scout Tom Greenwade came to Baxter Springs to watch Mantle 's teammate, third baseman Billy Johnson, in a Whiz Kids game. During the game Mantle hit two homers, one righty and one lefty, into a river well past the ballpark's fences. Greenwade wanted to sign Mickey on the spot but, finding out that he was only 16 and still in high school, told him he would come back to sign him with the Yankees on his graduation day in 1949, which he did. Greenwade signed Mantle to a minor-league contract with the Yankees Class D team in Independence, Kansas. Mantle signed for $400 to play the remainder of the season with a $1,100 signing bonus. Tom Greenwade was quoted in the press release announcing Mantle 's signing as saying that Mantle was the best prospect he'd ever seen. Because of his blinding speed, he was dubbed "The Commerce Comet." Mantle also played for the Yankee's farm club, the "Joplin Miners" in Joplin, Missouri. He would later invest in a Holiday Inn motel in that city, with his name attached to it.

He was called up to the Yankees on April 7, 1951, starting in right field (though he played a few games in the infield from 1952 to 1955). Speaking of his prized rookie, Yankees manager Casey Stengel told SPORT magazine (June 1951) that, "He's got more natural power from both sides than anybody I ever saw." Joe DiMaggio, in his final season, called Mantle, "the greatest prospect I can remember." In his first game with the Yankees, Mantle wore uniform #6.

After a brief slump, Mantle was sent down to the Yankees' top farm team, the Kansas City Blues. However, he wasn't able to find the power he'd had in the lower minors. Out of frustration, he called his father one day and told him, "I don't think I can play baseball anymore." Mutt was in Kansas City the next day, and immediately began packing Mickey's things so he could go back to Oklahoma to work in the mines. Mickey immediately broke out of his slump, going on to hit .361 with 11 homers and 50 RBIs during his stay in Kansas City. After 40 games, he was called back to New York for good.

In his first World Series Game, October 4, 1951, the Yankees were pitted against the Giants for what was Willie Mays's first World Series Game as well.

Mantle moved to center field in 1952, replacing Joe DiMaggio, who retired at the end of the 1951 season after one year playing alongside Mantle in the Yankees outfield. Mantle played center field full-time until 1965, when he was moved to left field. His final two seasons were spent at first base. Among Mantle's many accomplishments are all-time World Series records for home runs (18), runs scored (42), and runs batted in (40).

Mantle also hit some of the longest home runs in Major League history. On September 10, 1960, he hit a ball left-handed that cleared the right-field roof at Tiger Stadium in Detroit and, based on where it was found, was estimated years later by historian Mark Gallagher to have traveled 643 feet (196 m). Another Mantle homer, this one hit right-handed off Chuck Stobbs at Griffith Stadium in Washington on April 17, 1953, was measured by Yankees traveling secretary Red Patterson (hence the term "tape-measure home run") to have traveled 565 feet (172 m). Though it is apparent that they are actually the distances where the balls ended up after bouncing several times, there is no doubt that they both landed more than 500 feet (152 m) from home plate. Mantle twice hit balls off the third-deck facade at Yankee Stadium, nearly becoming the only player (other than Negro Leagues star Josh Gibson) to hit a fair ball out of the stadium during a game. On May 22, 1963, against Kansas City's Bill Fischer, Mantle hit a ball that fellow players and fans claimed was still rising when it hit the 110-foot (34 m) high facade, then caromed back onto the playing field. It was later estimated by some that the ball could have traveled 620 feet (190 m) had it not been blocked by the ornate and distinctive facade. While physicists might question those estimates, on August 12, 1964, he hit one whose distance was undoubted: a center field drive that cleared the 22-foot (6.7 m) batter's eye screen, beyond the 461-foot (141 m) marker at the Stadium.

Although he was a feared power hitter from either side of the plate, Mantle considered himself a better right-handed hitter even though he had more home runs from the left side of the plate: 372 left-handed, 164 right-handed. That was due to Mantle having batted left-handed much more often, as the large majority of pitchers are right-handed. In addition, many of his left-handed home runs were hit in Yankee Stadium, a park much friendlier to left-handed hitters than to right-handed hitters. When Mantle played for the Yankees, the distance to the right-field foul pole stood at a mere 296 feet (90 m), with markers in the power alleys of 344 and 407, while the left-field power alley ranged from 402 to 457 feet (139 m) from the plate.

In 1956, Mantle won the Hickok Belt as top professional athlete of the year. This was his "favorite summer," a year that saw him win the Triple Crown, leading the majors with a .353 batting average, 52 HR, and 130 RBI, and his first of three MVP awards. Mantle remains the last man to win the Major League Triple Crown.

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