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- This is One-On-One.

- I'm an equal American just like you are.

- The way we change Presidents in this country is by voting.

- A quartet is already a jawn, it’s just The New Jawn.

- January 6th was not some sort of violent, crazy outlier.

- I don't care how good you are or how good you think you are, there is always something to learn.

- I mean what other country sends comedians over to embedded military to make them feel better.

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_ It’s not all about memorizing and getting information, it’s what you do with that information.

- (slowly) Start talking right now.

- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) - Hi everyone.

Steve Adubato with the president and CEO of the WNET group.

Neal Shapiro.

It is Yankee week.

I will not put my Yankee hat on 'cause I'll have hat head for the rest of the day.

Neal, today, tonight on Yankee week night four of five on One-on-One we feature Joe DiMaggio a great book by Costa Kennedy, "56."

We'll talk about why that number matters.

And also the second half is on Mickey Mantle.

An interview I did at the Tisch WNET studio with Jane Levy about Mickey Mantle.

Joe D first number five.

Why does he matter so much still today?

- What, where have you gone Joe DiMaggio, right?

Mean immortalized in song, he stood for elegance.

He stood for reserve.

And like all our heroes, he was human.

And then the more we know about him, we recognize some of that.

But people thought, some people thought he was cold and indifferent.

What he did on the field was undeniable.

What a superb baseball player he was.

- "56" the name of the book and the magic last number in sports.

That's the subtitle of the book.

Just explain 56.

People, oh yes, so it's a sports statistic.

Is that all it is, Neal?

- No, no the idea of be getting consecutive hits is so hard.

Many people, baseball loves statistics and they've looked and said, you know, out of all the statistics, you know, be hard to break.

This one may be the hardest.

It's so hard to get a hit every single day.

In fact, it's, if you think about it now, it's even harder with more relief pitchers and kind of trying.

The fact that he did it for 56 straight games, then he missed on 57, he started another streak.

He did 18 after that.

And he was, he was an incredible baseball player.

He paid, he played through pain sometimes and he inspired his teammates.

You know, that, that they said he never had to dive for a ball because he always could get there on time.

and when he went on and appeared to be the sort of this gray-haired elegance about him that lasted well into his retirement years that he stood for sort of the elegance of the Yankees.

- Hey, Neal, I know it's not just me, and I, my wife always says to me, what's this thing with Mickey Mantle?

Why am I, why are so many of us caught up with Mickey Mantle all these years later, flaws and all, please, Neal.

- Flaws and all.

First, you know, from his talent, an incredible switch hitter.

A guy who came up, his dad played in the coal mines, had real doubts, came up and they sent him down.

At one point he said, I can't do this.

He rose back and became the, you know, maybe for the two or three years, the most dominant two or three years, any baseball ever had, any player ever had in the fifties.

And there was a joy about him, that even in later he would talk about how much he loved the game, how much he loved being a kid.

When he talks about the ways in which he and his players would tease each other, there was a thought about, you know what, a lot of baseball now are grown men playing a game that's a business, and to him, it was still a game.

I think there was still an enthusiasm about him that he still loved and that trait, that not just in his playing days, but beyond it.

And that's, I think, rarer and rarer as players talk about salaries and careers and so forth.

There's a, there was a simplicity to him.

And I don't mean that in intellectual way 'cause I think he's a smart guy.

It was simplicity about the game and what it meant to him.

And then I think therefore what it meant to the fans.

- Beyond, Neal's nailing it, but the, in addition to a Jane Leavy, and you watched that interview, Neal, on the backend, she talks about the complexity of Mickey Mantle, the alcoholism, and how at times he did not comport himself the way he should and was mean at times.

Real quick, gimme 30 seconds on DiMaggio and Mantle.

Not as graceful a transition, Neal.

Let’s be candid.

- No, no, no, no, no, and in fact, you know, as opposed to some other transitions like Gerardi to Pasada, which went well, this was not good at all.

- Ellie, Yogi and Ellie Howard, I'm sorry.

- Yeah, I think, I think Joe D felt threatened and the one of the first significant injuries to Mantle's in the World Series when, because Joe doesn't want to be seen to have to dive he doesn't call off Mantle until the very last minute.

Mickey pulls up short steps into a ditch, screws up his knee that haunts him for the rest of his career.

- Yeah, I, again, this book by Jane Leavy is extraordinary.

And Costa Kennedy's book "56" on Joe DiMaggio.

Again, you don't have to be a Yankee fan, Neal, myself and others to appreciate these two guys and why they're not just important.

I'll get off my soapbox in a second.

They're not just important to the Yankees in baseball, they're important to American culture and our American, just our way of life.

Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and Neal and I'll be on the back end teeing up.

The last night of One-on-One Yankee week.

Here we go.

Joe D and Mickey.

(upbeat music) - You don't have to be a baseball fan; you don't have to be a sports fan to appreciate the story we're about to talk about written by a terrific author.

He's Kostya Kennedy, author of "56: Joe DiMaggio, "and the Last Magic Number in Sports," and a senior editor at "Sports Illustrated."

Good to see you.

- Good to be here.

- This is one of the few programs that we do with segments where I read the book, and I said to our producers, "Find that guy!"

56; the last magic number in sports.

Go!

- It really is for a baseball fan.

It's a magic number because 56 refers to his hitting streak, hitting in 56 consecutive games.

From a baseball standpoint, it's something that's never been even approached in the time since then.

It's a phenomenal achievement.

- [Steve] Tell everyone the year.

- 1941, of course.

- [Steve] Why does the year matter?

- Well, the year matters because we're on the cusp of war, and we're coming out of the Depression.

We're technically out of the Depression, but it still feels like it clings, and it's an awful time right there.

And this event, which though you think it's 56 days in a row, that means it's not like somebody has a great day, and everybody rallies around it.

It goes day after day after day for quite some time.

And it occurred in this environment at a time when people, you know, people would call 1941, that summer, the last free summer or the last innocent summer.

And they called it that even while they were living through it because you were hearing, although we weren't officially in the war yet, that wouldn't happen till Pearl Harbor, many, many, hundreds of thousands, millions of young men had been drafted.

FDR's coming on the radio saying this is what's happening with the Nazis moving across Europe.

We have to be careful.

And the same time you get a bulletin, which says, you know, the Nazis are 250 miles south of Moscow, and this just in; Joe DiMaggio has hit in his 42nd straight game.

- There were people following it every day, Kostya.

- Well, once it got to...

In the beginning, it's not really a streak, 10, 15 games.

- When?

Was it 20, 25?

- Right around 25.

- [Steve] And what was the streak before that?

- Well, the all time Major League streak was either 41 or 44; 41 was the modern record.

And when he passed that by George Sisler, a lot of people thought he had the record.

But in fact, Wee Willie Keeler had, in 1897, hit in 44 straight.

So, in effect, this crescendo built.

It was building, building, building, and it built twice around two different records at that time.

But the Yankee record was 29.

And so, as he started approaching that, there started getting to be a little buzz, and then Honus Wagner had a streak.

Rogers Hornsby had a streak in the thirties.

- But Kostya, let me ask you this.

We live in obviously this modern age of communication, media information, and most of the records in sports are goofy.

You can't take them too seriously.

- [Kostya] Right.

I agree with that.

- You know, but how was information being communicated back in 1941?

- In a much, of course, much different way.

I mean, not only was there no Twitter or nobody blogging.

- Was there newspaper and radio?

- Newspaper and radio.

- [Steve] That's it.

- There was no TV.

I mean TV had been invented, - It was 1948, - but there were no Yankee games on TV.

- really when people, later on- - It was '41.

'48, right.

- Right, where people really began to...

So, radio and newspaper.

And talking about it.

And I grew up in Newark, New Jersey, born after, you know, obviously well after, but my parents, my grandparents, would talk about DiMaggio, you know, and DiMaggio actually came to our neighborhood to some of the restaurants in our area that I was talking to you about.

It was like a God was coming.

Am I overestimating it?

- No, that's one of the things that really came through.

One of the great pleasures of this book, Steve, was being able to sort of be transported back to 1941 by people who lived there, by accounts of it and all that, and that really came true.

When he would get his haircut at Vincent's, - [Steve] At Vincent's in Newark.

- In Newark.

He'd come in.

He'd have his driver would take him in, this guy named Peanuts who lived by day in Newark.

And people would start to suddenly show up at Vincent's when Joe was there.

You know, it'd be kind of empty when he came, and then, after a little while, there'd be 10, 20, 30 people.

If he was around, people wanted to be near him.

And that was certainly true at the Vittorio Castle that we talked about where he would come, and it was an event.

- That was a restaurant.

- Yeah.

- Owned by some mob guys.

- [Kostya] Right.

Absolutely.

- Did it bother him at all being around mob guys?

- I don't think so.

- [Steve] Different time?

- Certainly not at this point in his career.

So this takes place; he's 26 years old.

One important thing, Steve, about this book is that Joe is an unquestionably a baseball star and a hero to the Italian American community in New York and San Francisco, but this is really the event that turns him from being that kind of a star to becoming an icon.

- Beyond the Italian American community.

So when Paul Simon writes, "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

"Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you," what did that really mean?

- Well, he's not...

It's interesting because he's talked about that, and he said that the word, the phrase, kind of came to him unbidden.

He didn't know where it came from.

It just made sense to him in a way.

But he's referring to a symbolic thing, of course, and, literally, in 1941, a nation did turn its eyes to DiMaggio.

- [Steve] For what?

- Well, he was a respite.

- [Steve] A diversion.

- Right, I mean, of course, it doesn't matter if a 26-year-old kid gets a hit or not.

Who cares?

You know.

- Especially if your kid is off in war.

- Exactly.

You've got your draft number coming up.

All this is happening.

But yet, you know, it did seem to matter because it was clean.

It was a simple act.

And that's why, at seven o'clock in the afternoon, when the evening newspapers would get thrown in front of the candy store, everybody was down there trying to open it up, look for pictures of Joe, look for information about the streak.

It wasn't just baseball fans in that time.

This was when your grandmother is saying, "Did he get one?

Did Joe get a hit?"

- "Did he get one?

Did Joe get a hit?"

How did he handle it?

- He handled it as the way DiMaggio tended to handle things: internally, almost stoic.

Not almost stoic.

He didn't show emotion on the field.

Played the same way all the time.

But it really churned at him.

He began smoking more.

- He wanted the streak.

Oh, he wanted one.

- Where does Marilyn Monroe come into this?

- She's still more than a decade away.

He's married to Dorothy Arnold who had herself been a movie actress and quite well known who is pregnant with his only son, what would be his only son, during the streak, and she's an important character in the book.

- His son named Joe.

- Son named Joe, Joe Jr. - Did they not have a good relationship?

- Very difficult.

For reasons, Joe could of course be difficult.

- [Steve] Yeah.

How difficult could he be?

- He could be indifferent, I think, - Surly?

- At the most.

Surly, I guess, is fair.

I think cold is really the operative thing.

- I was pretty Mickey Mantle fanatic.

That was when I was a kid.

He was crappy to Mickey Mantle.

- Yeah.

He wasn't great about that.

- Mickey Mantle came up.

He was supposed to be the next Joe DiMaggio, as if there could be another one, without going into the whole thing.

We're going to have your colleague Jane Leavy, who wrote about Mickey Mantle.

- Great book.

Yeah.

- "The Last Boy," great book.

He was crap- He was crappy to a lot of people, but didn't stop a lot of people from idolizing him.

- No, he, you know, again, I think it came to just a sort of...

He was very self centered in a real sense.

He was aware of his own surrounding both in a micro sense and in a macro sense.

He knew what time it was for him, certainly in the streak when he was forging his reputation and in general.

And people who encroached upon that, whether physically or symbolically, as Mantle would, you know, here's the guy who's gonna now play center field and replace Joe.

Well, Joe doesn't want that.

- But Mickey was a kid though.

I don't get the whole thing.

- I'm not forgiving it.

I'm not patching it over.

- But he was like, he's on his turf.

- Right, exactly.

- And, by the way, when he broke, when he, well he didn't break anything.

He just blew it away, and no one's come close.

When he got 56, he went on another streak after that!

- Right.

He did.

So he didn't get a hit that day.

And the next day, one of the people I got to speak to was Bob Feller.

- [Steve] Oh, the great Bob Feller.

- Right, who was waiting to pitch against him in game 58.

And Bob told me, Feller who since passed away, - Played for Cleveland Indians?

- Played for the Indians.

Told me he was on the fence.

He wanted to be the one to stop him.

(Steve laughing) But, anyway, so the next day he gets a couple hits off the great Bob Feller and hits in 16 in a row.

And just a miraculous achievement.

- I gotta tell you something.

It's a terrific book, "New York Times" bestseller.

It's called "56: Joe DiMaggio - I don't get the title.

The End of America's Child- There are childhood end?

- I think so.

- [Steve] Tell me.

- Well, I mean, you know, it's funny, people misread this title all the time.

They say, they'll introduce me and they say, "The Lost Boy."

And I realized when I was writing it that that was likely to happen.

It doesn't bother me at all.

I mean, it's a little Peter Pan-ish kind of thing.

- We all looking for someone, something?

- Yeah, and from him certainly.

But the end of America's childhood means to me that Mickey was the last guy who operated under a set of rules that you could basically call, you know, boys will be boys or boys gotta do what boys gotta do.

- [Steve] Right.

- And everybody will wink and smile go, "Ugh," you know?

It's like, he is a guy.

What do you expect?

He's Mickey.

And I don't think, I think the rules began to change as he aged.

And he was dumbfounded.

He didn't understand it.

When I met him, and I'm in the backseat of a limousine and he's like cursing out this other female reporter, you know?

Well, "She didn't say I was joking."

She quoted him the way he actually spoke.

People didn't do that.

- [Steve] And that hadn't happen.

- No.

- They protected Mickey.

- Oh, forever.

But they protected everybody.

It wasn't just him.

It was everybody.

He came up in the era of, see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.

Now we've gone 180 degrees the other way now.

And I would actually argue that it's gone too far the other way.

But you can also take a look at him and say, now if Mickey Mantle existed today in the era of smartphone and quick little videos and YouTubes, would he have been able to behave like this in- - [Steve] Not even close.

- No, and in a funny way, it would've been better for him.

- Well, in terms of the drinking and the womanizing and so many other things.

Here's what I'm curious about.

Mickey's been gone since... - '95.

- And also the way he went, how he went, the transplant, the liver transplant, and the controversy about that so much.

I have a part of my house where, I know you're laughing 'cause you know what I'm gonna say.

- Yeah (laughs) I do.

- A Yankee room where I, exercise room where there are a million black and white photos framed.

And 90% of them are of Mickey Mantle.

The others are Babe Ruth.

- Why are we still talking about Mickey Mantle?

- Well, that was why I wrote the book, to answer that question.

Not only why are we still talking about him, but why does he still engender such passion and otherwise rational, like give you that, adults.

I mean, why do grown men have these shrines to him?

Why do they cry when they read this?

- [Steve] I cried when I read your book.

- And the answer to me is this, that he came to New York, 1951, just post-War America.

A time- - [Steve] Was he 18?

- He was 19.

- [Steve] 19.

- A time of perhaps the greatest optimism, you know, in the 20th century.

We had beaten the Germans, we had beaten the Japs, we were rebuilding Europe, we were flexing our muscles.

We could do anything.

And here comes this raw-boned, hit kid from Commerce, Oklahoma.

- [Steve] Commerce Oklahoma.

- [Jane] And in his muscles in that ripped body of his, and they were honest muscles, right?

- [Steve] Yep, no steroids back then.

- No steroids.

He seemed to be an incarnation of all our natural resources.

And that glorious smile on the cover, which is from 1954 before he really started ruining himself.

It is an embrace, it's a coast-to-coast smile.

It embraces American optimism.

And he speaks to the mythology that if you work hard enough, and if you're talented enough, somebody is gonna happen by the side of a road in Baxter Springs, Kansas and notice and give you a chance.

- But the other part of the story, the massive part of the story, the part that so many of the parts of the book were emotional for me.

Mutt Mantle.

Mickey's dad, by the way, he's named after Mickey Cochrane.

- [Jane] Yes, he was.

- Mickey Mantle was.

his dad wanted this for him so much.

And his dad died very young.

Many in Mickey's family died young.

Mickey was convinced he was going to die young.

And so he conducted himself, at least the way he describes it, conducted himself in a way, himself in a way, assuming he would die very young.

- And hasting it, I might add.

There's the (indistinct) irony.

- [Steve] By his actions.

- Absolutely.

- [Steve] By his drinking, cirrhosis of the liver and everything else that went with that.

Did Mickey Mantle destroy his body, other than the fact that he was hurt on the field and had these horrific injuries in his legs, one of the fastest runners ever.

And then his knees were gone and he was bone on bone, et cetera, et cetera.

Beyond what happened to him on the field, did he destroy his body?

- Sure.

- [Steve] Voluntarily.

- Well, voluntarily, look, I mean, nobody understood.

- [Steve] He was an alcoholic.

- Yeah, nobody understood it.

- [Steve] So it's not voluntary.

- In 1951.

- [Steve] Right.

- When he wrecked his knee, trying not to run into Joe, bleeping, DiMaggio.

- Joe DiMaggio, because he, there was a drain there in Yankee Stadium, I can't even imagine.

And his foot, boom, knee, rips, and that's it.

- And what people didn't know, what I didn't know when I started out, was that a groundskeeper had forgotten to push the top of the drain down.

And what he caught his spike on was the open cover that was supposed to have been pushed down like a cork in a wine bottle.

- [Steve] Changed everything.

- And it was on a ball hit by Willie Mays, you know?

So you have this triangulation of baseball's future.

- [Steve] Willie, Mickey.

- And past.

- [Steve] And Joe.

- And Joe.

- And by the way, Joe was a creep to Mickey.

- Joe was a creep to pretty much everybody.

- But because Mickey Mantle was supposed to take over center field, and Joe was not gracious.

- No, he was not gracious, again, to anybody.

But yes, and Mickey certainly comported himself differently and very kindly to teammates and rookies after that.

But he didn't understand, nobody understood what damage he did to himself on the field that day.

- [Steve] Right.

- They couldn't diagnose it and they couldn't have fixed it.

I mean, you know, he had blown out his knee.

I mean, we didn't have that term of art back in the day.

So, no, did he do the rehab he should have done?

No.

- [Steve] But when's the drinking come in after that?

- Well, you know, an alcoholic is born an alcoholic.

His disadvantage, his great disadvantage was that he came of age in a time did anybody talk about Bill W. in 1951?

- [Steve] Right.

- Not very many people.

There was no baseball program as there is now for Josh Hamilton.

And no understanding that, you know, if you're an alcoholic and it even touches your skin, that it's- It puts you at risk.

You know, Texas Rangers celebrate by spraying champagne.

Not not champagne, but ginger ale.

- That's right.

- Instead of champagne.

- Out of respect to Josh Hamilton and his disease.

- It's not just, it's not even just out of respect, it's out of an understanding of knowledge that you didn't have back then.

That if it touches his skin, he could relapse because- - So we had none of that.

- He had none of that.

- So, drinking, partying, carousing with Whitey- - [Jane] Billy.

- Billy Martin.

And it's funny, Carmen Berra is, Carmen and Yogi Berra happened to be very good friends in my hometown in Montclair and I see- - [Jane] I adore them.

- And you got a lot from Carmen in the book.

Not that Yogi didn't give you that much 'cause he doesn't.

We've interviewed him many times.

He's the best, I love Yogi.

But Carmen was talking about- - [Jane] Always go to the wives, Steve, always.

- Oh, yeah, well, Carmen knew everything.

- Right.

- Read the book 'cause they really got great stuff about the Copa incident.

What year?

- '57, May '57.

- Billy had to go after that.

(Steve laughing) Billy Martin had to go after that.

- George was looking for a reason to get rid of him and he made it easier.

- But here's the thing.

Everyone loved Mickey on that team.

They revered, respected, and loved Mickey.

And he was good to a lot of the rookies, right?

- Mm-hmm, he was.

- But when he was drinking, he was horrible, especially to women.

- Awful, absolutely awful.

- [Steve] How bad was he with you?

- Well, I mean (chuckles) - [Steve] By the way, you grew up in the Bronx, just a stones throw from Yankee Stadium.

- Well, my grandmother lived a long, loud foul ball from home plate in a building called the Yankee Arms, which was built in 1927.

- [Steve] Right.

- You know, it was part of the growth of the area after the Babe hit his 60th home run.

- [Steve] Right.

- And I would go to synagogue to high holiday services with my grandmother at the Concourse Plaza where Mickey and Merlyn lived his rookie year.

- [Steve] His wife.

- And where Yogi, you know, one of the great- - [Steve] Yogi and Carmen.

- Yeah, Yogi walked in, he saw, you know, like a bed that pulls down, you know?

(both laughing) He looks it, "What are you supposed to do?

Sleep standing up?"

- Yogi would say that.

- You know, classic Yogi line.

But, yes, so to be close to my grandmother was to be close to the Yankees.

To be close to the Yankees was to be close to my grandmother, who was willing to embrace me in her oversized mink coat with my Sammy Esposito glove and a transistor radio.

And let me listen to the ball game while she prayed for my future.

Jane Leavy from the TISCH WNET studio.

Neal, what got you about that?

- I think because it talked about why baseball is more than just a game.

How it's beyond who we are, how we feel about who we're connecting with, connecting to history, connecting something bigger than ourselves, of being part of a community.

We all search for a community.

That's what baseball is.

Whether it's 50,000 fans at the moment or the fact that you and I can pick up and wherever we are and just talk about this and connect instantly.

- Yeah.

Let's tee up our last night.

Night number five on One-on-One.

Check out SteveAdubato.org, to see the shows you may have missed.

First we talk about the Ian O'Connor, the Captain, Derek Jeter and the two great captains, and the late great Thurman Munson.

30 seconds on why Jeter, the Captains Jeter and Munson of all the captains matter so much.

- I think two very different personalities, but both kind of encapsulated their team.

I think the, you know, the, the 77, 78 late Yankees that Munson was a part of were scrappy.

They fought a lot, but they were, they got things done and all that matters what you do on the field.

By the time Jeter comes to the Yankees, they're a different team and it's more about gelling, the times are different and Jeter leads through quiet example.

But everybody understands that Jeter is the captain that Jeter sets the tone.

And I think those Yankees are dominant, but in a different way.

- For Neal, myself, this is Yankee week here on One-on-One.

Tomorrow night the captains Derek Jeter Thurman Munson, check out the final night of Yankee week right here on One-on-One.

Check us out tomorrow night.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by NJM Insurance Group.

Atlantic Health System.

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And by PSE&G.

Promotional support provided by The New Jersey Business & Industry Association.

And by NJ.Com.

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