Bob Uecker Is Still On the Active Roster

Associated Press
Johnny Carson dubbed him 'Mr. Baseball.'
But it is in Milwaukee that the 76-year-old has achieved icon status.


By MARK YOST
Wall Street Journal
Maryvale, Ariz.

'Who's chuckin' today?"

That's all the pregame preparation Milwaukee Brewers radio broadcaster Bob Uecker put in before the start of a recent spring-training game between the Brewers and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. But entering his 41st season in the booth for his hometown ball club, he was more than ready.

"It's all up here," he said, tapping the side of his head.

"Up here" can be an interesting place. Mr. Uecker is in a league of his own when it comes to baseball play-by-play men. Part comic, part encyclopedia, he can recall an amazing number of pertinent facts when the game is on the line, and have a heck of a lot of fun when it isn't. His crazy side tends to win out more often than not.

Most of his humor is self-deprecating, like his oft-repeated line that during his playing career he once went "O-for-June."

"I never make fun of the players," he said. "I make fun of situations and try and find the humor in things, but it's never at the expense of the other guy."

No one's more amazed than Mr. Uecker that he's hung around baseball this long. When he speaks to Little League groups, he says to parents, "Hey, if I can make it, your kid's got a shot."

Mr. Uecker was born in Milwaukee, but in the Uecker mind simple facts take on a life of their own. By his telling, he was born on an oleo run to Illinois because the family couldn't get colored margarine in Wisconsin.

"I remember it was a nativity-type setting," he said during his 2003 acceptance speech for the Baseball Hall of Fame's Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting excellence. "An exit light shining down. There were three truck drivers there. One guy was carrying butter, one guy had frankfurters and the other guy was a retired baseball scout who told my folks that I probably had a chance to play somewhere down the line."

He grew up watching the minor-league Milwaukee Brewers. In 1956, he signed with the major-league Milwaukee Braves, which had relocated from Boston in 1953. His playing career, which spanned four teams, including the 1964 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals, was less than stellar. He's still in the top 10 for most passed balls by a catcher in a season (1967). But in his defense, he was catching for Atlanta Braves pitcher Phil Niekro, whose specialty was the knuckleball, a very difficult ball to catch. After retiring in 1967, Mr. Uecker was briefly a scout for the Brewers. But he was notorious for turning in reports that were unreadable and covered with food stains.

"I knew then that he wasn't going to make it as a scout," said former Brewers team owner Bud Selig, now the commissioner of Major League Baseball. "So we decided to try him as a broadcaster."

Mr. Uecker quickly became a fan favorite. He gained nationwide fame as one of the Miller Lite All Stars in an ad campaign during the 1970s and '80s for Milwaukee-based Miller Brewing Co.; as Harry Doyle, the play-by-play man in all three "Major League" films; as George Owens on the 1985-90 sitcom "Mr. Belvedere"; and as a frequent guest on "The Tonight Show," where Johnny Carson dubbed him "Mr. Baseball."

But that national recognition pales next to the icon status Mr. Uecker has achieved in Milwaukee, which he dismisses with an "aw shucks" wave of the hand.

"He's such a big part of summer in Wisconsin," said Brewers infielder Craig Counsell, who grew up in Whitefish Bay. "It's really almost like he's a friend or a member of your family."

His "family" was shaken last year when Mr. Uecker announced the first of two heart surgeries on April 27. In classic Ueckerian fashion, he started the press conference by saying, "I have been added to the active roster."

He was out for three months and underwent a second heart operation in October, but is now "doing better than I was a few months ago." And by all measures, for a guy who just turned 76, he is.

Walking into the radio booth at the Brewers' spring-training facility about a half hour before game time, Mr. Uecker was well tanned and wearing white slacks, a polo shirt, ball cap and sunglasses. It wasn't until about 10 seconds before airtime that he turned to his on-air partner and straight man, 32-year-old Cory Provus, and asked who was pitching.

A foul tip to catcher Wil Nieves started a half-inning dialogue about how catching—and the game—has changed. In Mr. Uecker's day, he told Mr. Provus and the listening audience, catchers caught with two hands, and the mitts were rounder but didn't provide much padding.

"I used to soak my mitts in a bucket of water for about two days. Then I'd put a couple of baseballs in the pocket and wrap it up with a rubber band," Mr. Uecker said before updating the pitch count. "Today you don't have to do that, because catchers' mitts are more like first baseman's gloves."

And that's how each broadcast goes. A bevy of classic Uecker stories, interspersed with facts and figures—batting averages, RBIs, home runs—that he doesn't need to look up.

"The game hasn't changed," Mr. Uecker said in a pregame interview, "but the circumstances around it have."

He doesn't like the playoff system, thinks fans expect their team to win "more than is humanly possible," and thinks St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Albert Pujols's request for a $300 million, 10-year contract is no more ridiculous than some of the pay CEOs receive.

"Do the CEOs deserve all the money they make? If Albert can get it, good for him. But I wouldn't want to be paying him $30 million when he's 41."

Forget 10 years. What does he want fans to think about Bob Uecker in 100 years?

"That I'm still workin'."

Asked what it's like to work alongside Mr. Uecker, Mr. Provus said, "He's the best remedy for a bad day."

I suspect that's how a lot of the listeners back in Milwaukee feel.

A screwball chain of events led the Dodgers to Fernando Valenzuela

CROWE'S NEST

A 1976 semipro game in East L.A. in which Bobby Castillo, left, struck out
Mike Brito ultimately led to Brito's discovering Fernando Valenzuela.
(Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times)

The Dodgers might never have discovered the pitcher who inspired Fernandomania and helped them to World Series glory 30 years ago, if not for an unlikely string of occurrences that began in 1976 during a semipro game at an East L.A. rec center.

Jerry Crowe, Los Angeles Times

March 27, 2011

One of the most pivotal at-bats in Dodgers history also ranks among the least known.

Had it never happened, Fernando Valenzuela might never have pitched for the Dodgers and Fernandomania might never have gripped the Southland as it did 30 years ago this spring.

"It's like a movie script," Mike Brito says.

Brito played a starring role in a 1976 drama that unfolded not in Dodger Stadium or any other major league park, but rather on a dusty diamond in East Los Angeles.

The batter was Brito, the pitcher Bobby "Babo" Castillo.

Castillo would later pitch for the Dodgers and Brito, he of the ubiquitous cigar and Panama hat, would gain fame as perhaps the most recognizable scout in baseball.

But at the time, Castillo was a recently released ex-minor leaguer. He'd been told by the Kansas City Royals that, as a third-base prospect, he was no longer wanted and that, despite his success at Lincoln High and L.A. Valley College, he was too short at 5 feet 10 to pitch in the major leagues.

Brito, a Mexican League scout, was a former Washington Senators farmhand and Mexican League veteran.

They were playing in a semipro game at Evergreen Recreation Center in Boyle Heights when Brito, 21 years older than the pitcher, stepped to the plate in the ninth inning.

What happened next, they say, not only altered their lives but would eventually affect Valenzuela too. It triggered a series of events that landed both Castillo and Valenzuela in the majors, provided a plum assignment for Brito and led to Valenzuela's learning his signature pitch from Castillo.

After Brito laced a long drive into left field that landed only inches foul, Castillo struck him out with a screwball that fooled Brito so badly, Castillo says, "He almost hurt his back."

So impressed was Brito that he cornered Castillo afterward to inquire about the pitch that had made him look foolish.

"Next thing I know," Castillo says, "I get a phone call from him asking if I want to go to Mexico as a pitcher."

When Castillo thrived in Mexico, Brito says, it didn't sit well with then-Dodgers general manager Al Campanis, who wondered how a local kid who'd grown up practically in the shadow of Dodger Stadium could escape from under the Dodgers' noses.

Campanis called Brito and offered him a job as a scout — provided Brito could deliver Castillo to the Dodgers.

Castillo made his Dodgers debut in 1977. A year later, in Mexico, Brito caught his first glimpse of Valenzuela, leading to the Dodgers' buying the pitcher out of his contract in 1979 and assigning him to Lodi of the Class-A California League.

Brito, however, says that Campanis was angered anew when Brito told the executive he was worried about Valenzuela's velocity and suggested that he needed to develop an off-speed pitch.

"Campanis got [ticked] off," Brito says, laughing. "He said, 'How come you didn't tell me that before when you made a good report on him and you were in love with him so much?'"

Brito calmed his boss by suggesting that a possible option for Valenzuela would be to learn a screwball from Castillo.

Castillo says he first learned the pitch from his Lincoln High coaches, Carl Brio and Dave Chavez, and in Arizona after the 1979 season, he taught it to Valenzuela.

"He didn't speak English and I didn't speak Spanish that well," Castillo says, "but we did communicate. He caught on quickly. It was like it was meant for him."

Says Brito, "I'm not lying to you: Within a week, Fernando was throwing the screwball as good as Babo."

In 1980, after a trip to Texas to check on Valenzuela's progress at double-A San Antonio, Brito reported to Campanis that the left-hander's mastery of the pitch was "unbelievable."

Valenzuela, though, says it wasn't all that simple.

"The first half [in 1980], it wasn't going that well," he told Times reporter Dylan Hernandez. "I said, 'I don't want to throw it anymore. I want to go back to what I do.' They told me, 'No. We don't care about your record. We don't care how many games you win. We want you to keep practicing it.'

"By the second half, it was a lot better. By then, I had good rotation on it and good control."

Called up to the majors in September 1980, Valenzuela made 10 relief appearances down the stretch and did not give up an earned run in 172/3 innings. In 1981, as a 20-year-old rookie, he touched off a cultural phenomenon when he opened the season with a shutout and won his first eight decisions, five by shutout.

Carl Hubbell, a Hall of Famer who'd retired in the early 1940s, told reporters, "He's got the best screwball since mine."

By season's end, the Mexican icon was the National League's rookie of the year and Cy Young Award winner and the Dodgers were World Series champions.

"To have a teammate be as successful as he was, and to know I had something to do with it," Castillo says, "it was awesome."

But it might never have happened if Castillo hadn't retired Brito on a Sunday in Boyle Heights five years earlier.

"If I would have got a hit, I never would have signed Babo," says Brito, who has since signed about 90 other players, 31 of whom have reached the majors. "And if I hadn't signed Babo, I would never have worked for the Dodgers and maybe Fernando never would have been in the picture."

Back then, of course, nobody could have known that — and Castillo says his only motivation was to avoid embarrassment.

"I didn't want this old man to beat me," he says.

jerome.crowe@latimes.com

Joe DiMaggio, A Star With The Power of Silence

Hulton Archive/Getty Images - In a new biography of Joe DiMaggio, author
Jerome Charyn writes that "there was a kind of heartbreak, as we worried that he
might disappear in that enormous expanse of space ... that the leaping gazelle we
saw was some aberration, a phantom put there by our own wish to create some
creature more perfect than ourselves. No fellow human being could
possibly look that good, but DiMaggio did."

 
NPR - March 26, 2011
 
For a couple of generations, Joe DiMaggio symbolized the word class. He was called the Yankee Clipper because he seemed to glide across the baseball field: stately, graceful and powerful. He set an untouchable baseball record of hits in 56 consecutive games, and he married Marilyn Monroe, who quickly jilted him even as he remained devoted to her through sickness, health and death.
 
But DiMaggio never appeared to be anxious, troubled or unruffled; he didn't bare his soul on talk shows and refused millions to write his autobiography. As Paul Simon, who put his name into a song, once said, "Joe DiMaggio understood the power of silence."
 
Jerome Charyn tries to find the key to soft-spoken DiMaggio's inner life in a new book, Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil. In the book, Charyn uses the phrase "idiot savant" to describe DiMaggio on more than one occasion: His magic was born on the baseball field, and abandoned him once he left it.
 
"Joe really couldn't function away from baseball," Charyn says. "That was his language; that was his beauty; that was his grace."
 
When he stepped on the field, everybody fell silent; but Charyn refers to DiMaggio's inability to cope outside baseball as "the sadness of his life," as DiMaggio fell into a state of being as "a legend without a purpose."
 
He'd met Monroe as his star descended and hers was rising, and Charyn argues that DiMaggio rescued her career at a time when she was faltering and lies about her past were being uncovered. At that moment, Charyn says, Monroe's first date with DiMaggio rescued her image, and they soon became the "prince and princess" of America.
 
Their relationship was tumultuous, to say the least, and with their lives in the spotlight it's difficult to say who loved whom, or who used whom. Charyn believes that their relationship ran into troubles because she suddenly had a sparkling career ahead of her just as his was ending.
 
"He wanted her to become a housewife, and she was very much involved with films and wanted to keep her career," Charyn says. "And he never could understand that."
 
DiMaggio's own career, in its time, reached impressive heights — he was the first baseball player to earn over $100,000. It wasn't the monstrous heights of salary reached by professional athletes nowadays, and so he still had to earn some extra income after retiring. Instead of shilling for a local bank, DiMaggio turned to selling his memorabilia, a choice that some found undignified.
 
"The sad thing about it," Charyn explains, "is that he could earn more in one day signing baseballs and bats than he did in his entire career as a Yankee."
 
DiMaggio earned that income during the memorabilia craze of the 1980s, and Charyn points to it as a sign of baseball's transformation from sport to big business.
 
Sports fans can put unrealistic expectations on their idols — "he was a hero, and we expect our heroes to remain heroic," Charyn says. At one point, DiMaggio had a television show and needed a cue card in front of him even to say, "Hello, this is Joe DiMaggio"; he was a communicator on the field, not in front of a camera. He had no language outside his form as a ballplayer, Charyn says:
 
"And that's why he was so spectacular," he continues. "Because you suddenly see a very silent man begin to dance on the field. And there's nothing more beautiful than that."
 
[Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

Baseball comes together to take care of its own

Dodgers scout John Green helped the baseball fraternity rally to support minor league advisor P.J. Carey and his wife, who were diagnosed with cancer last year. On Friday, the Dodgers and Diamondbacks played a charity game to raise funds for Tucson shooting victims, one of whom was Green's daughter Christina.

Dodgers manager Don Mattingly, center, talks to Dodgers scout John Green, right,
and his son Dallas Green (left) prior to a charity exhibition game against the
Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday. (Chris Morrison / U.S. Presswire / March 25, 2011)

BILL SHAIKIN / ON BASEBALL
Los Angeles Times
March 26, 2011

Reporting from Tucson — The season is long, and the road is lonely. The fraternity of baseball lifers bonds in creaky old ballparks and chain restaurants, scouts and coaches leaning on one another when the comforts of home are far away.

P.J. Carey gave his adult life to baseball, more than three decades of working with young players from Casper, Wyo., to Spartanburg, S.C. Carey was working in the Dodgers' front office last year, as an advisor in the minor league department, when he and his wife each were diagnosed with cancer.

The baseball fraternity rallied behind Carey, led by a Dodgers scout and longtime friend. The scout collected autographed jerseys, bats and baseballs from his contacts across the major leagues, for an auction last fall that would help the Careys cover medical expenses.

This is how baseball lifers treat one another, and not for a spotlight that seldom shines on them anyway. Little did the scout know that the baseball world, and a larger world, would rally behind him just two months later.

The scout's name is John Green. His 9-year-old daughter, Christina, was among six people killed in a shooting rampage in Tucson on Jan. 8.

The Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks played a charity game before a sellout crowd here Friday, generating $100,000 to benefit the families of those affected by the tragedy. It was a blessed reminder of how baseball can be a force for good.

"It is pretty amazing what this game does in bringing people together for causes that are much bigger than the game," said Trey Hillman, the Dodgers' bench coach.

Hillman walked through the Dodgers clubhouse a couple weeks ago, soliciting volunteers for this game. No one relished a two-hour bus trip two days before the team breaks camp, but no one told Hillman no.

The Dodgers split their team between two games Friday, so all the veterans could not come. Andre Ethier came here, and so did James Loney and Tony Gwynn Jr. and Jay Gibbons and Jamey Carroll.

It's the least we can do," Carroll said.

Justin Sellers, the Dodgers' third baseman for the game, rushed over to a man handing out the memorial wristbands, white ones for all the victims and purple ones just for Christina. Sellers took one of each.

"They'll be on me in the game, I promise," he said.

John Green, a onetime pitcher in the New York Yankees' minor league system, embraced Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly and introduced his 12-year-old son, Dallas.

His wife, Roxanna, pulled out a baseball and a Sharpie for her son.

"Ask him to sign it for you," she said.

There was a moment of silence to honor the six people killed, each of whom had a banner with his or her name draped on the outfield wall. There was a fly-by, not by a military plane but by the helicopter that shuttled victims from the shooting site to the hospital.

Dallas Green threw out the ceremonial first pitch, with Mattingly catching. The real pitches soon followed, and with them a three-hour semblance of normalcy.

John Green has gone back to work, back on the road scouting for the Dodgers. If he would like some time off, or if he would like his wife and son to join him on the road, all he has to do is ask.

"It's on us," General Manager Ned Colletti said. "They can do whatever they need to do."

Said Dodgers owner Frank McCourt: "The way they have conducted themselves — the grace, the dignity, the composure, the strength — has given those of us around them strength."

The baseball family helped the Greens, just as the Greens had encouraged the baseball family to help the Careys.

"They had cancer, and our community came together to help them," John Green said. "As we needed our help, people stepped up right away.

"That really provides a level of comfort when things happen to you that are that tragic. Initially, you don't know how you are going to handle it."

P.J. Carey and his wife, Katherine, don't get around easily these days. But the Careys showed up at the ballpark to support the Greens.

"They extended themselves to us, and now they have extended themselves to the rest of the country," P.J. Carey said. "I couldn't be prouder of them."

On Nov. 11, the Greens tossed all that autographed memorabilia — from Matt Kemp and Fernando Valenzuela, from Derek Jeter and Roy Halladay and many more — into their car. They drove two hours, to the Arizona Fall League game where the memorabilia was displayed for auction.

Christina Green came along too. She sat behind the display table, munching on cookies and smiling as she told a volunteer how special it was to skip school for a day.

That was a lovely Friday, and so was this one.

bill.shaikin@latimes.com

The home run that launched the myth of Mickey Mantle



Diagram of the two historic Mickey Mantle home runs he switch-hit on March 26, 1951 at Bovard Field, USC. 
His left-handed homer traveled 656 feet, crossing a football field adjacent to the ballpark. 
The right-handed home run went out of the park, crossed a street behind left field,
flew over two houses and then hit a second-floor porch on the third house.
From:  http://www.themick.com/10homers.html#HomeRun#2

Sixty years ago in an exhibition game against USC, a young Mickey Mantle hit a home run that became baseball legend and spawned a mystery: Just how far did it go?

By Baxter Holmes, L.A. Times
March 25, 2011

It was the first inning, one runner aboard, the count at two balls and two strikes, and Tom Lovrich stared down the 19-year-old rookie batter.

USC's junior ace didn't know much about him, except that he more than filled out his gray New York Yankees uniform.

"He was a strong, country kid from Oklahoma," Lovrich said, recalling the legendary at-bat that took place 60 years ago Saturday. "Very strong."

Lovrich figured the rookie would chase something low and away for strike three, so the 6-foot-5 right-hander known as "Tall Tom" began his sidearm windup and fired.

His head sank as soon he heard the devastating crack of the wooden bat.

"My God," said USC second baseman Stan Charnofsky, watching the ball scream over the wire fence in right-center field. "Look at that."

USC's football practice field ran adjacent to Bovard Field. The ball bounced at midfield and rolled into a huddle.

"Who the hell hit that?" one player asked.

And as they walked off the field, their spring practice complete, another football player learned the answer to that question and told the others.

"Some kid named Mickey Mantle."

Introducing himself

The black-and-white clip is grainy, but the narrator's voice is sharp and upbeat:

"It's big league baseball on Bovard Field as the Trojans become the first college team ever to host a world champion," he begins. "The guests of the day: the New York Yankees."

The myth of Mantle and the legend of "The Mick" began at USC that day.

The Yankees visited as a favor to USC Coach Rod Dedeaux, who played for Yankees Manager Casey Stengel when Stengel managed the Brooklyn Dodgers. Dedeaux also had three former players who were Yankees rookies.

The afternoon game was the finale in the Yankees' rare, 13-game spring-training swing in California. They drew huge crowds at every stop — about 140,000 fans in all, according to The Times' account — and extra seating had been erected at Bovard to increase capacity to 3,000.

The 1-minute 13-second newsreel clip from the 1951 Trojan Review shows at least that many.

They sat shoulder-to-shoulder, men in collared shirts and women in full skirts. Many wide-eyed students leaned over railings.

Some came to see the big names, catcher Yogi Berra, shortstop Phil Rizzuto and center fielder Joe DiMaggio. The trio of stars were on the cover of the game scorecard, just below a large illustration of Stengel's face.

But there was also plenty of curiosity about the player being groomed to fill DiMaggio's shoes, a 5-foot-11, 185-pounder who made the uncommon leap to the Yankees from Class C baseball in Joplin, Mo.

Mantle had yet to take an official major league swing, but he had astonished fans all spring, hitting one tape-measure home run after another, going from unknown to boy wonder with every awesome drive.

"Even the players gathered when he took batting practices every day, and they were as awed as the people in the seats," author David Halberstam wrote in the book "October 1964."

Mantle didn't disappoint against the Trojans, going four for five with a single, a triple, two home runs and seven runs batted in.

"Mickey Mantle practically dismantled the Trojans all by himself," The Times' story began the next morning, under the headline "Yankees Dismantle Troy in 15-1 Rout."

"The greatest show in history," Dedeaux later said.

Jane Leavy, in her book about Mantle titled "The Last Boy," called it "the day Mantle announced himself to the world."

He did it with that first-inning drive that might have been the longest home run of his career.

'We'll see what happens'

In the Yankees' dugout before the game, Rizzuto, the 1950 American League MVP, called down the bench to Mantle.

"Hey, rook," Rizzuto said, "I've got someone down here about your age."

Mantle came over and plopped down next to Justin Dedeaux. Rod's 7-year-old son was USC's bat boy.

The two joked around, but Justin didn't know a thing about Mantle and was really waiting to to see his favorite player, DiMaggio.

And when DiMaggio emerged from the building where the Yankees dressed, Justin trembled. "It was like God, God himself, walked out," he recalled.

Mantle, the son of a coal miner, was far from that, looking more like one of USC's players with his blond hair and boyish smile.

But physically he was stocky, broad through the chest with thick arms and legs. He was built more like a running back than an outfielder.

"Everything about him looked powerful," said Dave Rankin, then a sophomore reliever for USC.

Rod Dedeaux didn't tell his pitchers much except that Mantle could hit for power.

"So he said what he said about every power hitter," Rankin remembered. "'Keep the ball down, and we'll see what happens.'"

Nothing worked. Both of Mantle's two-run home runs — one from each side of the plate — traveled at least 500 feet, according to legend.

The longer of the two was Mantle's first, and it came on a pitch about eight inches off the ground, Lovrich said.

Bob Hertel, who started in left field for USC that day, swore that ball became flat on one side after the barrel of Mantle's bat made contact.

"It had to be, to hit a ball that hard and that far," said Hertel, 81.

The question is, how far?

Going the distance

Like caught fish, home runs grow as tales are told. The distance of Mantle's first-inning home run has long been debated.

Satellite imagery was even used in an effort to pinpoint the ball's trajectory.

Interviews with witnesses to Mantle's display that day reveal different estimates. Some are as long as 660 feet, and most concede the blast went at least 550.

Home plate at Bovard, which closed in 1974, is now the site of a grassy gully behind USC's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

The dimensions at Bovard were 307 feet down the left-field line, 351 to left-center, 439 to center, 344 to right-center and 318 down the right-field line, Justin Dedeaux said.

Most witnesses say Mantle hit the ball to right-center, toward the corner of what is now Watt Way and West 34th Street. If it landed near there, an estimate of 600 or more feet would be reasonable.

Frank Gifford, then a USC tailback, said the ball landed near the middle of the football practice field.

"No one had ever done that before," he said.

Gifford's testimony debunks myths that it hit the street or the Methodist church beyond the street, and he laughed at one particularly gaudy 656-foot estimate.

Whatever the exact length, it is said to be the longest home run in the history of Bovard.

As soon as Mantle hit it, Justin Dedeaux's allegiance switched from DiMaggio to "Mick," and he wore No. 7 as a second baseman at USC in Mantle's honor.

"After that day, he was my man," said Justin, 67. "I followed him every day for the rest of his career."

A picture commemorating Mantle's feat hangs in USC's Baseball Hall of Fame.

Mantle returned to USC for a celebrity game in the mid-'70s, Justin remembered. Mantle had retired from baseball in 1968, finishing his 18-season career with 536 home runs.

But Mantle still looked in shape and even hit a few out of USC's new Dedeaux Field, named after Justin's father, where the Trojans began playing in 1974.

Justin remembered Mantle laughing as he recalled his first game on campus, thinking of all the coeds who adored him and joking that he should have gone to school at USC.

Mantle talked about his home runs too.

"I really got a hold of a couple," he told Justin. "Man, that was fun."

baxter.holmes@latimes.com