BASEBALL LEGEND MICKEY MANTLE, who lived in fear of dying young of the Hodgkins disease that killed several members of his family, tried to reach out to comfort former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in the early 1990s when he learned she had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
Mickey’s longtime friend Pat Summerall, the former New York Giants football player and sports analyst, told Mantle biographer Tony Castro that he tried to connect the legendary slugger with the widow of President John F. Kennedy.
“But I think that by the time Mickey and the rest of the world were aware Mrs. Kennedy’s was sick that her condition had worsened and she was only seeing family,” Summerall told Castro, whose new book Mantle: The Best That Ever Was will be released April 12 by Rowman & Littlefield.
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