The Last Boy

Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood

By: Jane Leavy

Narrated by: Jane Leavy, John Bedford Lloyd

Length: 17 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

Jane Leavy, the acclaimed author of the New York Times best seller Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, returns with a biography of an American original: number 7, Mickey Mantle. Drawing on more than 500 interviews with friends and family, teammates, and opponents, she delivers the definitive account of Mantle's life, mining the mythology of The Mick for the true story of a luminous and illustrious talent with an achingly damaged soul.

Meticulously reported and elegantly written, The Last Boy is a baseball tapestry that weaves together episodes from the author's weekend with The Mick in Atlantic City, where she interviewed her hero in 1983, after he was banned from baseball, with reminiscences from friends and family of the boy from Commerce, Oklahoma, who would lead the Yankees to seven world championships, be voted the American League's Most Valuable Player three times, win the Triple Crown in 1956, and duel teammate Roger Maris for Babe Ruth's home run crown in the summer of 1961 - the same boy who would never grow up.

As she did so memorably in her biography of Sandy Koufax, Jane Leavy transcends the hyperbole of hero worship to reveal the man behind the coast-to-coast smile, who grappled with a wrenching childhood, crippling injuries, and a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. In The Last Boy she chronicles her search to find out more about the person he was and, given what she discovers, to explain his mystifying hold on a generation of baseball fans, who were seduced by that lopsided, gap-toothed grin. It is an uncommon biography, with literary overtones: not only a portrait of an icon, but an investigation of memory itself.

"I believe in memory, not memorabilia," Leavy writes in her preface. But in The Last Boy, she discovers that what we remember of our heroes - and even what they remember of themselves - is only where the story begins.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2010 Jane Leavy (P)2010 Jane Leavy and HarperCollins Publishers

Great Book-The story of the real Mick

Great honest storytelling and the performances were good as well. I personally liked how it would go from author to a different narrator for historical accounts. Highly recommend!

Reality bites

An American story well told. Hard to hear disturbing details of a childhood hero, but in some ways I appreciate the Mick even more. The book evokes sympathy, laughter, and a tear or two. I feel like I understand him better. Great combination of baseball and life. Baseball fans will enjoy it, and students of human nature and family dynamics will gain from it too.

What a life. Drop the drawl.

A fascinating, unflinching biography. Jane Leavy takes on the life story of a childhood hero (hers and millions of others) and does him the honor of telling the truth. Paradoxically, by demystifying The Mick, she succeeds in bringing us closer to him, by helping us understand his frailties and humanity. This is a great biography -- the Mick's story for grown ups.

The two voices in the Audible version -- hers for an introduction and the recounting of a weekend-long interview, his for chapters recounting Mantle's life -- works well. My only complaint is John Bedford Lloyd's choosing to speak all of the quotations attributed to Mantle in a faux country drawl. So what if Mantle spoke with a drawl. The insistence of calling attention to it persistently comes off as patronizing, almost ridiculing. Is Mantle the only person quoted in this whole book who spoke with an accent? The voice attributed to Mantle is a major distraction and, for me, a significant flaw in this Audible version.

Still, Jane Leavy's thorough research and excellent writing make this book well worth listening to, even with the drawl.

Mickey fan

long listen but worth it if you are a fan of baseball or the mick

Love Mickey Mantle and his history

Very detailed and classy read. Not blown up nothing but reality and real people e certs

Yankee Greatness is Complicated

As a 67 year old Bronx Boy who left a long time ago; 1968 (coincidentally Mick's #'s and the year he retired) this audiobook allowed me to both laugh n shed a tear or two.

While the telling of Mick's story brought me back to my childhood worship of #7. Hearing words of friends, family, and foes filled my heart simultaneously with joy and pain for those who thought they knew him and those who did.

I strongly recommend this book to those already on Mick's Team and for those who just want to know how Hero Worship and Greatness can be complicated.

So Depressing

Like many others of my generation, I remember Mickey Mantle as one of the best baseball players of my youth. I think that most of us later realized generally that Mantle (and others with the Yankees of that period) had a problem with alcohol and led a pretty hard and fast life, but this book demonstrates we did not know the half of it.

If you are looking for an uplifting story of "The Boys of Summer," this is not for you. One gets the impression that Leavy intended to write an honest, but "warts and all," story of one of her childhood heroes. As she dug into Mickey's life, however, it seems that she found many more warts than even she anticipated (and as a sports writer, she probably knew a lot more than the rest of us already).

Although the book demonstrates that Mantle was a singular talent, one can only wonder what he would have done if he had not been severely injured in his rookie season, or if he had lived only a moderately hard life. Given the way he lived, what he achieved is just a little short of miraculous.

Assuming Leavy's research is accurate (and it appears to be), Mantle is hardly a hero. He treated many people (including Leavy) very badly. He probably treated his wife and kids the worst. There are excuses that can be offered, but they ring pretty hollow.

This book is honest, but depressing. It is strangely organized around a series of vignettes from Mantle's life. This odd way of approaching the subject does not help anything.

There have been some criticisms of the narration, but I thought it was pretty decent.

Would I have spent seventeen hours listening to this if I had known about it in advance? As Mick would probably have said, "Nah ..." (or something more colorful).

If you are interested in the morbid details of a somewhat depressing life, this is for you. If not, I would skip it.

Mantle's Painful Life.

Would you consider the audio edition of The Last Boy to be better than the print version?

Yes, the narration adds special quality to the early deterioration of Mick's New Yankee baseball skills and painful retirement years due to alcoholism

What did you like best about this story?

How his father's early death and the pressures of being the greatest Yankee of his generation drove him to lifelong alcoholism and many covert years in Alcoholic Anonymous.

Which character – as performed by Jane Leavy and John Bedford Lloyd – was your favorite?

Mantle is a belived, gentle and deeply sad Peter Pan prototype with a huge national following of devoted fans. In his decline, Mantle cried after lost games in the clubhouse if he thought he failed team. Roger Maris cried with him when he confessed his addiction.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Mantle's blaming his father for his demons while in AA.

Any additional comments?

So sad how Mick died similar to Babe Ruth's self induced demise.

I didn't realize what a legend Mickey Mantle was.

For someone who didn't grow up in Mantle's baseball era I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I learned so much about how the game was played back then and about Mantle himself. thank you for writing this book. I was sad when it ended.

It's the Mick

I grew up a Mickey Mantle fan, this book didn't take any of the Mick's lore away from me and in the end probably added to it. You see the flawed human, true enough but you see what could have been without an outfield drain cover and lifetime of drinking. What he accomplished in spite of those issues makes him all the more remarkable as an athlete.