Mickey Mantle's Quotes

#1. I love New York. I love to come here, to play here, the tradition here. I'll never forget my first home run here was over Mickey Mantle's head.

Tony Oliva

#2. The biggest thrill I ever had was in 1969, when they held day at Yankee Stadium.

Mickey Mantle

#3. The greatest thing I ever saw was Roger Maris breaking Babe Ruth's record.

Mickey Mantle

#4. A body came flying out and landed at my feet. At first I thought it was Billy so I picked him up. But when I saw it wasn't I dropped him back down.

Mickey Mantle

#5. Yankee Stadium, and the Yankees are so famous for Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, all of those guys.

Bert Campaneris

#6. And that one is gone. A home run for Mickey Mantle! How do you like that?

Mel Allen

#7. Carl Yastrzemski was the best all-around player. He could run, throw and hit. He had the ability to play a number of different positions. He signed as a shortstop. He could play the outfield, of course, and third base and first, too. He was a tremendous athlete. Mickey Mantle was unbelievable, too.

Al Kaline

#8. As far as I'm concerned, Aaron is the best ball player of my era. He is to baseball of the last fifteen years what Joe DiMaggio was before him. He's never received the credit he's due.

Mickey Mantle

#9. I don't want to take anything away from Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle. They're both great hitters, but they're batting against guys they never would have seen in previous years.

Ted Williams

#10. I never understood how someone who was dying could say he was the luckiest man in the world, but now I understand.

Mickey Mantle

#11. Before you go, would you sign that case of balls for me?

Mickey Mantle

#12. He (Mickey Mantle) should lead the league in everything. With his combination of speed and power he should win the triple batting crown every year. In fact, he should do anything he wants to do.

Casey Stengel

#13. He who has the fastest golf cart never has a bad lie.

Mickey Mantle

#14. A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.

Mickey Mantle

#15. If I hadn't met those two guys (Billy Martin and Whitey Ford) at the start of my career, I would have lasted another five years.

Mickey Mantle

#16. I think the best all-round baseball player ever was Joe DiMaggio.

Mickey Mantle

#17. Well, I beat my man. Now it's up to you to beat yours.

Mickey Mantle

#18. Don't do as I did. I'm living proof of how not to live.

Mickey Mantle

#19. He foresaw the platooning that managers like Casey Stengel used years before it happened. He told me I had to be a switch-hitter if I was going to play.

Mickey Mantle

#20. Today's Little Leaguers, and there are millions of them each year, pick up how to hit and throw and field just by watching games on TV. By the time they're out of high school, the good ones are almost ready to play professional ball.

Mickey Mantle

#21. Ralph (Houk) brought out the best in everybody, and that included me. I consider myself lucky to have played for him.

Mickey Mantle

#22. My dad taught me to switch-hit. He and my grandfather, who was left-handed, pitched to me every day after school in the back yard. I batted lefty against my dad and righty against my granddad.

Mickey Mantle

#23. Everyone has someone they looked up to. Mine was Mickey Mantle. For Alex Rodriguez to idolize me coming up, that makes me feel very good.

Keith Hernandez

#24. Casey wanted us to stay loose. That didn't mean clowning around. He just meant we should be confident and relaxed. We shouldn't feel that one strikeout was going to end the season for us.

Mickey Mantle

#25. Hey man! Get away from me!

Mickey Mantle

#26. In 1961, when Maris broke Babe Ruth's record, he wasn't intentionally walked once. Mickey batted after Roger, and nobody was going to put a man on base with Mantle coming up to the plate.

Mel Allen

#27. Hey Mantle, you win. You're the worst.

Mickey Mantle

#28. There only have been two people on this earth that I was nervous around: Chet Atkins and Mickey Mantle. It's because of the respect I have for them.

Charley Pride

#29. It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing all your life.

Mickey Mantle

#30. The only thing I can do is play baseball. I have to play ball. It's the only thing I know.

Mickey Mantle

#31. Well, baseball was my whole life. Nothing's ever been as fun as baseball.

Mickey Mantle

#32. People say Yogi (Berra) is a strange guy, and I've heard Yogi say some funny things. But he has a beautiful wife, he's rich, and he's famous. I don't see anything strange about that.

Mickey Mantle

#33. Every time I see his name (Dean Chance) on a lineup card, I feel like throwing up.

Mickey Mantle

#34. It gave me a second chance. I'd like everybody to have a second chance if they need it, so I'm trying to let people know how important it is to become an organ donor.

Mickey Mantle

#35. Hey Yog, what time is it? You mean right now?

Mickey Mantle

#36. My instinct is a winning coach, and when it said "Batter up,"I didn't argue that I wasn't ready for the game. I gripped the bat in both hands, assumed the stance, and said a prayer to Mickey Mantle.

Dean Koontz

#37. If that guy (Mickey Mantle) were healthy, he'd hit 80 home runs.

Carl Yastrzemski

#38. I don't know why, but for some reason I seem to be more popular now than when I was playing.

Mickey Mantle

#39. Hitting the ball was easy. Running around the bases was the tough part.

Mickey Mantle

#40. Somebody once asked me if I ever went up to the plate trying to hit a home run. I said "sure, every time".

Mickey Mantle

#41. I always loved the game, but when my legs weren't hurting it was a lot easier to love.

Mickey Mantle

#42. The author relates that Mickey Mantle did not expect to play one day and showed up extremely hung over. He was nevertheless called on to pitch and smashed a towering home run to an enthusiastic ovation. He related to his teammates, Those people don't know how tough that was.

Jim Bouton

#43. You might as well go in and start getting dressed. I'm going to hit his first pitch for a home run.

Mickey Mantle

#44. He who have the fastest cart never have to play a bad lie.

Mickey Mantle

#45. I had it all and blew it.

Mickey Mantle

#46. My views are just about the same as Casey's.

Mickey Mantle

#47. Ladies and gentlemen, the great number seven, Mickey Mantle.

Mel Allen

#48. It was as though the very process of maturation with him had been reversed, so that with experience he seemed to grow more, not less, childish.

David Falkner

#49. You don't realize how easy this game is until you get up in that broadcasting booth.

Mickey Mantle

#50. We know you can bunt, Mick. You're not down here to bunt. You're here to get some hits and get your swing back.

Mickey Mantle

#51. Billy (Martin) wasn't afraid of anything.

Mickey Mantle

#52. The biggest game I ever played in was probably Don Larsen's perfect game.

Mickey Mantle

#53. The best team I ever saw, and I really mean this, was the '61 Yankees.

Mickey Mantle

#54. I have to give Mays one edge, durability. Mickey isn't sound and Willie is. Otherwise, if I had a chance to trade for either player, I'd pick Mantle.

Gabe Paul

#55. What did you say, Joe?

Mickey Mantle

#56. Mickey Mantle was a very good golfer, but we weren't allowed to play golf during the season; only at spring training.

Yogi Berra

#57. It was the single greatest feat I ever saw.

Mickey Mantle

#58. You hit .350 you're a leader. You hit .250 and you're not.

Mickey Mantle

#59. The strain on Roger (Maris) was unbelievable. After I dropped out the reporters only had one guy to go to. They surrounded him everywhere he went. He had big clumps of hair falling out. That he went ahead and did it was unbelievable.

Mickey Mantle

#60. It's what you're worth.

Mickey Mantle

#61. You don't have to talk to me about pensions. I won't be around long enough to collect one.

Mickey Mantle

#62. If the World Series was on the line and I could pick one pitcher to pitch the game, I'd choose Whitey Ford every time.

Mickey Mantle

#63. My biggest regret was letting my lifetime average drop below .300. I always felt I was a .300 hitter, and if I could change one thing that would be it.

Mickey Mantle

#64. I've often wondered how a man who knew he was going to die could stand here and say he was the luckiest man on the face of the earth, but now I guess I know how he felt.

Mickey Mantle

#65. In 1961 somebody could've hit a home run to win the game and the next day the headline was about the M&M boys not hitting a home run. But everyone was real good about it. Instead of getting mad they joked about it.

Mickey Mantle

#66. Just like every other kid in my grade school, I was listening to my little radio plug in my ear when Mickey Mantle hit 18 post-season homers and won series after series for the Yankees. I listened and I learned from that. I think he was the original 'Mr. October,' but thank god it didn't stick.

Reggie Jackson

#67. In 1960 when Pittsburgh beat us in the World Series, we outscored them 55-27. It was the only time I think the better team lost. I was so disappointed I cried on the plane ride home.

Mickey Mantle

#68. Bravery is a complicated thing to describe. You can't say it's three feet long and two feet wide and that it weighs four hundred pounds or that it's colored bright blue or that it sounds like a piano or that it smells like roses. It's a quality, not a thing.

Mickey Mantle

#69. Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more months might as well have been written by someone else.

Mickey W. Mantle

#70. When I first came to Yankee Stadium I used to feel like the ghosts of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were walking around in there.

Mickey Mantle

#71. Not after all the time my dad spent teaching me to switch-hit.

Mickey Mantle

#72. During my 18 years I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1,700 times and walked maybe 1,800 times. You figure a ballplayer will average about 500 at bats a season. That means I played seven years without ever hitting the ball.

Mickey Mantle

#73. In Naples, Fla., I met a self-made man, a multimillionaire, whose round penthouse apartment is home to Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Henry Moore, and Mickey Mantle. He had purchased the most coveted items auctioned by the Mantle family at Madison Square Garden in December 2003.

Jane Leavy

#74. Roger Maris was as good a man and as good a ballplayer as there ever was.

Mickey Mantle

#75. All I have is natural ability.

Mickey Mantle

#76. If you want to know who was better, me or Willie Mays, you have to look at our career stats. And Willie's bottom line was better.

Mickey Mantle

#77. If I had known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself!

Mickey Mantle

#78. I don't know why Roger (Maris) isn't in the hall of fame. To me, he was as good as there ever was.

Mickey Mantle

#79. I won't look online. The whole fan thing makes me self-conscious, which is not to say I don't appreciate it or understand it. If Mickey Mantle were around, I'm sure I'd have a ton of questions to ask him that might make him uncomfortable. I get it. That doesn't mean it's not really awkward.

David Duchovny

#80. Heroes are people who are all good with no bad in them. That's the way I always saw Joe DiMaggio. He was beyond question one of the greatest players of the century.

Mickey Mantle

#81. Billy (Martin) was a great one for jokes. He liked to play a joke more than anyone I ever knew.

Mickey Mantle

#82. After I hit a home run I had a habit of running the bases with my head down. I figured the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases.

Mickey Mantle

#83. Those people don't know how tough that really was.

Mickey Mantle

#84. I don't care what the situation was, how high the stakes were - the bases could be loaded and the pennant riding on every pitch, it never bothered Whitey. He pitched his game. Cool. Craft. Nerves of steel.

Mickey Mantle

#85. Because the players knew that if Billy asked them to jump off a roof, he'd jump off with them.

Mickey Mantle

#86. Here lies Mickey Mantle. Banned from baseball.

Peter Ueberroth

#87. He said to play louder. He can't hear you.

Mickey Mantle

#88. I leaned on him for support when I got out of the cab, and he just crumpled to the ground. That's how we found out.

Mickey Mantle

#89. The thing I really liked about Mickey was the way he treated everyone the same.

Mickey Mantle

#90. After a play in the field Casey would turn (to the players on the bench) and say 'What did he do wrong?' or 'You're better than that guy.' Either way, he'd keep them from getting stale.

Mickey Mantle

#91. To play 18 years in Yankee Stadium is the best thing that could ever happen to a ballplayer.

Mickey Mantle

#92. You never have to wait long, or look far, to be reminded of how thin the line is between being a hero or a goat.

Mickey Mantle

#93. On two legs, Mickey Mantle would have been the greatest ballplayer who ever lived.

Nellie Fox

#94. Sometimes I think if I had the same body and the same natural ability and someone else's brain, who knows how good a player I might have been.

Mickey Mantle

#95. There were things that would irritate Casey, but trying too hard or getting mad at sitting on the bench weren't among them.

Mickey Mantle

#96. Fill in any figure you want for that boy (Mickey Mantle). Whatever the figure, it's a deal.

Branch Rickey

#97. Billy copied Casey to a 'T.'

Mickey Mantle

#98. I wanted to throw my glass at the TV.

Mickey Mantle

#99. If I were playing today I'd do what Joe DiMaggio said. I'd go knock on the door at Yankee Stadium and when George Steinbrenner answered I'd say, 'Howdy, pardner.'

Mickey Mantle

#100. I never got to see the '27 Yankees. Everyone says that was the greatest team ever. But I think it would've been a great series if we'd have had the chance to play them.

Mickey Mantle