Tony Castro's America

A Conversation With

TONY CASTRO

 New York Times bestselling author Tony Castro talks about his new book Maris & Mantle: Two Yankees, Immortality and the Age of Camelot, and the role of teammates Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle in defining the 1960s in America. Publisher Triumph Books calls Maris & Mantle, "the never before told story of the profound and compelling friendship between the two New York legends." Tony was interviewed by Ashley Chase and the blog Start Spreading the News.

 

What brought you to this subject? And what compelled you to write a book on it?

Roger Maris, pure and simple. And the chance coincidence that I happened to sit in on a Harvard symposium on the Age of John F. Kennedy when Presidential historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. remarked that the early 1960s in America were possibly defined as much by Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle as they were by President Kennedy himself. And, of course I had written extensively about Mantle, and this seemed like the perfect place to write a book harkening back to a golden age in baseball and in America and what Schlesinger had said about Maris, Mantle, and JFK being a pop cultural troika defining that era.

What is this book about?

On one level it’s about America’s obsession with the home run not only in baseball but also in politics, entertainment, and pop culture. Sportswriter and author Richard Hoffer once suggested about Mantle and perhaps heroes altogether, that we don’t mind our heroes flawed, or even doomed.  In America, failure is forgiven of the big swingers, in whom even foolishness is flamboyant — and that, yes, the world will always belong to those who swing from the heels. And maybe that’s why Mantle once said, “I guess you could say I’m what this country’s all about.”

Check Out a Sample of MARIS & MANTLE

 

A sample of MARIS & MANTLE is available at https://bit.ly/3petTjq

Signed author copies of the book can be ordered at http://marismantle.com

 

THE M&M BOYS: A PROFILE IN CIVILITY is how presidential historian Michael Beschloss described them more than half a century later, harkening back to a golden age in baseball and America that Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle helped define every bit as much as John F. Kennedy.

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.

 

Guided by Tony Castro, bestselling author and foremost chronicler of Mantle, readers will journey into history, from the Yankees' blockbuster trade for Maris, whose acquisition re-ignited Mantle's career after a horrendous 1959 season, to the heroics of 1961 and far beyond. This dual biography is a thoroughly researched, emotionally gripping portrait that brings Yankees lore alive.

Few figures in American sports have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Roger Maris. Castro's biography gives Maris his due and sets the record straight, deftly illustrating that his slugging and baseball greatness were the result of Roger's countless sacrifices to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. "To repudiate his legacy," Castro writes, "is, in many ways, to repudiate the modern home run hitter." Castro's portrait of Roger is a Maris far more human than we've encountered before--from his rise as the son of Eastern European immigrants to his fiery aspirations to beat Yankee fan favorite Mickey Mantle to the most cherished record in all sports.

Living in the Shadow of Ruben Salazar

Tony Castro shortly after arriving in California to write a column for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. (Photo by Laura Chester)

I HAD BEEN IN LOS ANGELES only a couple of days in 1978 when the unique pressures on Chicano journalists in this city first began weighing heavily on me, fittingly perhaps, in a bar at the Ambassador Hotel, where I was living at the time, not far from the kitchen pantry where Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated.

Frank Del Olmo, then the veteran Los Angeles Times reporter I had known since the early 1970s, was welcoming me to his town over drinks and conversation that inevitably turned to the man by whose standard both of us would ultimately be judged.

Los Angeles still had two daily newspapers, though barely. The Los Angeles Herald Examiner had recently settled a labor strike whose impact would kill it a decade later.

But in 1978, the Herald was attempting a comeback with big-shot editors, a New York tabloid-style approach to its stories and a stable of young, outspoken, controversial columnists — of which I was one.

“I took the job because I thought they wanted me to be me,” I told Del Olmo over a bottle of Chivas. “But when I got here, they told me, without pulling any punches, that they wanted me to be Ruben Salazar.”

Del Olmo smiled somewhat uncomfortably into his beer. “Too bad. But I guess there’s a lot of people who expect us to be Ruben Salazar. What did you say?”

“I told them, `I don’t want to be Ruben Salazar — Ruben Salazar got his ass shot off!”

Thank You, Readers!

Ashton Kutcher was among more than 400 who attended Tony's book signing at Lucy's El Adobe Cafe in Hollywood.

People often ask me which is my favorite out of all the books I’ve written, and I always reply that books are like children – you love them all equally but differently.

I stand by that answer, but sometimes the characters in a book will resonate so much with you that you want to continue spending time with them. That happened to me with Mantle: The Best There Ever Was, and also with my newest book, Maris & Mantle: Two Yankees, Immortality and the Age of Camelot. I completed that manuscript two summers ago, and surprisingly Maris stays with me even as I move on as a writer.

Fortunately, the promotion of Maris & Mantle has givien me ample opportunity to keep Roger in my immediate thoughts. He was his own man, and sometimes I feel as though the book is more of a biography of Roger Maris -- a biography of an American original in which Mickey Mantle played an important part.

Of course, you, readers, are my partners in this adventure. For that, I’m so truly grateful to those of you who helped make Maris & Mantle a bestseller at Amazon -- and helped return Mickey Mantle: America's Prodigal Son, originally published in 2002, back to the bestseller list this year as well. 

 

 

Why I've Written About Mickey Mantle

I was attracted to the double tragedy of Mickey's youth and his death hanging over him and how he loses the only person who meant anything to him -- his father. Mutt Mantle, the center of Mickey's universe, died tragically young in the spring of 1952, Mantle's second season as a Yankee. And, in his own way, Mickey goes mad with grief and rage. How could you not be moved by that story?

Set in the epic world of baseball in which Mantle has a grand destiny, Mickey's story is just an updating of one of the oldest classics in literature. Whether it's Achilles going mad with grief and rage after the death of his cousin and friend Patroclus. Or Hamlet going mad with grief and rage after the murder of his father. 

Achilles used his rage to help conquer Troy, and Hamlet's rage drove him to destroy the kingdom that had been stolen from his father. 

Mantle? Though he, too, was doomed and without giving much thought to his own health, Mickey led a New York Yankees wrecking crew to championship after championship, becoming certainly the greatest switch-hitter in baseball and arguably -- certainly in the minds of his legion of fans -- the greatest player in the game.

Mickey's is the definitive father-son story of our time. http://marismantle.com