The Ghost Arises

Over the last 16 years, Mickey Mantle has come a long way from Commerce, Okla. This season it looked as though he had all but stopped. The once grand .365 of 1957 has withered to .281, and Mantle, his aching legs taped from ankle to thigh, has seemed merely a $100,000 ghost of a great, while the once fearsome New York Yankees flounder in eighth place, 19 1/2 games behind the leading Baltimore Orioles.

Nothing can save the Yanks this year. But Mantle, 34, keeps trying. In Boston one night two weeks ago, he came to ihe plate in the first inning and slammed a fastball into the rightfield bleachers. In the eighth he sailed another into the leftfield screen, and Boston's home crowd of 14,922 gave him a standing ovation. Next night the old outpatient blasted two more, then traveled south to Washington, where he poled four more homers in three games against the Senators to make it eight in six days. Last week, with the Yanks locked in a 2-2 tie against the Red Sox, Mantle came to bat with two men on, two out, in the bottom of the ninth. Boom! He cracked a game-winning homer 380 ft. into the rightfield seats. Next night, once more against Washington, he walloped two others in a doubleheader. That gave him 18 for the season and 491 for his career.

"I'm feeling better all the time," said Mickey. That was just before he tried too hard, pulled a leg muscle, and had to go back to the dugout for a week.

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