Tony Castro's America

America's go-to authority about all things Mantle

Celebrated book editor and  columnist Bob Vickrey has just sent out this kind promo to his extensive email contact list:

 

"My friend and former Baylor journalism colleague Tony Castro has just released his new book Maris & Mantle from Triumph Books this week. Tony has written extensively about Mickey Mantle in recent years, and has been able to offer unique insights into the famous Yankee slugger's life as the result of his extensive research and their long friendship. Tony has now become the country's go-to authority about all things regarding Mickey Mantle.

 

"Maris & Mantle is a compelling read that offers an inside look at their relationship both on and off the field. This is one terrific dual biography."

 

MARIS & MANTLE: Two Yankees, Immortality and the Age of Camelot is the first, epic and true story of the Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle friendship forever intertwined in baseball history thanks to the unforgettable 1961 season, when the two Yankee icons spurred each other to new heights in pursuit of Babe Ruth's home run record. History has largely overlooked the bond between the two men not as titans of their sport, but as people.

 

http://marismantle.com

 

 Bob Vickrey is a writer whose columns appear in several Southwestern newspapers including the Houston Chronicle and Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He is a member of the Board of Contributors for the Waco Tribune-Herald and is a regular contributor to the Boryana Books website.

'Maris & Mantle' Author-Signed Books Now Available

With the Covid Delta variant now making public book store signings so iffy, here's a no-contact safe way of getting your author-signed copy of the soon-to-be-released MARIS & MANTLE dual biography. @TriumphBooks #MarisMantle http://tonycastrobooks.com

Remembering Michael Jackson

The following appeared as a column in the Los Angeles Daily News June 26, 2009, a day after Michael Jackson's death at his home.

Almost two decades ago, an actress friend and I posed as a grieving couple at a gravesite at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California, all just to catch a peak of a fellow mourner.

In May 1990 Michael Jackson attended the burial of his much-loved grandmother.

I was being wooed, as it were, to write an unauthorized biography about the world’s most mysterious man since the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, and I had insisted on at least getting a glimpse of the subject, if even from a distance, before I signed on.

As it turned out, I would have a face-to-face meeting with Michael Jackson himself, if only for a fleeting moment.

Michael was among the Jackson family members getting out of a limousine to attend the burial of his grandmother Martha Bridges, and his path to her gravesite took him directly past where we were standing, which we had known it would when we chose to stand there. When he was inches away, he slowed almost to a stop for a split-second and looked at us.

My friend, a gorgeous blonde from a popular TV show, could have that affect on people, which is why I had asked her to join me.

Michael was dressed in black except for a dark maroon shirt, sporting a black fedora under which his trademark black curls dangled over his forehead as if icicles of death. As he neared the tree shade approaching his grandmother's gravesite, he removed his sunglasses. He wasn’t wearing the surgical mask that had become a part of his wardrobe, and for an instant our faces couldn’t have been more than a foot apart.

'Mantle The Best's Starred Review from Booklist

"Mantle’s life story has been told many times, but it’s never received as loving a treatment as this one."

Saving Anne Frank

For two years, Anne Frank’s family hid in Amsterdam before being caught. Anne's diary was a testament to the horrors of the Nazi regime. She died of typhus at age 15 at Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany.

AS A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD schoolboy I grew up wanting to save Anne Frank.

Allow me to clarify that.

As a young man, the son of a World War II army veteran, I grew up wanting to save Anne Frank.

I’m still not clear, I fear.

As the son of a World War II decorated veteran who told me stories of the horror he saw at Nazi concentration camps, I grew up wishing there was some way I could go back in time and save the six million Jews killed in the Hitler holocaust. And when I read The Diary of A Young Girl.  I wasn’t sure if I’d fallen in love with young Anne and wished I could save this damsel in distress or whether I simply wanted to save mankind.

Audiobook of 'Mantle: The Best There Ever Was'

Audiobook coming for MANTLE THE BEST THERE EVER WAS #MantleTheBest https://tantor.com/mantle-tony-castro.html …

Short Synopsis
In Mantle: The Best There Ever Was, Mickey Mantle biographer Tony Castro brings to life the man who is arguably not only the greatest ballplayer of his time but also the greatest ballplayer of all time.

Full Synopsis
In Mantle: The Best There Ever Was, Mickey Mantle biographer Tony Castro brings to life the man who is arguably not only the greatest ballplayer of his time but also the greatest ballplayer of all time. Castro offers illuminating new insight into Mantle's extraordinary career, including the head-turning conclusion based on the evolution of analytics that the beloved Yankee switch-hitting slugger may ultimately win acclaim as having fulfilled the weighty expectations once placed on him: of being greater than even Babe Ruth. Mantle himself believed he would one day be the one to break Ruth's single season home run record.

Mantle: The Best There Ever Was completes Castro's Mickey Mantle Trilogy that includes Mickey Mantle: America's Prodigal Son, which the New York Times has called the best biography ever written about the Hall of Fame icon, and DiMag & Mick: Sibling Rivals, Yankee Blood Brothers. Its publication comes on the eve of the commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Mantle's death.