Merlyn Mantle, married to Yankee great

Mickey and Merlyn Mantle in a family photograph from 1989.









August 12, 2009
Merlyn Mantle, Who Was Married to Yankees Great for 43 Years, Dies at 77
by Dennis Hevesi

Merlyn Mantle, who for 43 years lived through the glory and the tumult of being married to the New York Yankees great Mickey Mantle, died Monday in Plano, Tex., a suburb of Dallas. She was 77.

The cause was complications from Alzheimer’s disease, said Marty Appel, a family spokesman.

Merlyn and Mickey Mantle met in 1949 when he was a star player at Commerce (Okla.) High School and she was a cheerleader at archrival Picher High School.

“I developed an instant crush on Mickey Mantle, and by our second or third date, I was in love with him and always would be,” Mrs. Mantle wrote in a 1996 memoir, “A Hero All His Life.”

The Mantles married in 1951, after Mickey’s rookie year with the Yankees.

For 18 seasons, Mantle symbolized athletic brilliance as perhaps the greatest switch-hitter in baseball history. With a .298 career batting average, 536 homers and 1,509 runs batted in, he led the Yankees to seven World Series championships. He was an All-Star for 16 of those 18 years and in 1974 was inducted into Hall of Fame. His injuries, and the pain he played through, only enhanced his heroic stature.

It was only after Mantle’s career ended that the world learned of his drinking and womanizing. The drinking escalated in retirement as he struggled with what to do with himself.

“It took me a long time to admit Mick was an alcoholic,” Mrs. Mantle told The New York Times in 2001. She, too, became an alcoholic.

Cancer took its toll on the family. One of the Mantles’ four sons, Billy, had Hodgkin’s lymphoma for half his life and died of a heart attack in 1994 at age 36. Another son, Mickey Jr., died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2000, at 47.

Mickey Mantle died of cancer on Aug. 13, 1995, two months after receiving a liver transplant.

Merlyn Louise Johnson was born in Cardin, Okla., on Jan. 28, 1932, one of two daughters of Giles and Reba Johnson. She is survived by two sons, David of McKinney, Tex., and Danny of Plano, Tex.; her sister, Pat LaFalier of Miami, Okla.; and four grandchildren.

Merlyn and Mickey Mantle were separated for the last six years of their marriage. Mrs. Mantle lived in a condominium in Dallas that remained something of a shrine to her husband. Its walls were lined with photographs of him and magazine covers. A display case held three most valuable player trophies; the silver bat for his 1956 Triple Crown; and the balls he hit for, among others, his 512th and 535th home runs and for his record-breaking 16th World Series homer.

Asked why she never divorced him, Mrs. Mantle said: “I adored Mick. I thought I couldn’t live without him. In many ways, he was very good to me, very generous. I never wanted a divorce, and he never asked for one.”