If that’s too much of a commitment, but you’d still like to help us, you can also make a one-time donation.
Now let’s get to Sunday. Heavy one today.
I tend to avoid reading recovery memoirs because I'm usually disappointed more often than not when I don't find my story in there. I know that "we're all the same" in some capacity, but then again, we're not because I believe that I'm one of the lucky ones who got away pretty unscathed even though I'm sure if I looked closer, that isn't close to being true. But I'm not dead, and I didn't kill anyone. I disappointed and frustrated some people. Maybe I terrorized them, too, but only a little bit.
But a friend of mine (PJ) recommended a book about Mickey Mantle called "The Last Boy" by Jane Leavy and it turned out to be a recovery memoir that I needed to read, even though it's not one, obviously.
It's relatively common knowledge that Mickey Mantle was a classic alcoholic in all the ways that men who became men in the '50s and '60s were alcoholics, like real bottle smashers with red noses and dirty fingernails. Mickey was unique because he was Mickey Mantle, obviously. And if you don't know the mythology attached to Mickey Mantle, as a Yankees centerfielder, as one of the greatest baseball players ever to walk the earth (although some people argue he was highly overrated), then you probably just know him as "Mickey Mantle," a famous American athlete who made grown American men cry simply because he existed.
Obviously, it's a long story, and I had a significant jump on it because I am a baseball fan and a baseball card fan (don't judge). I am too young to have experienced him as a player but old enough to remember how valuable Mickey Mantle was in cardboard form. After reading the book, it appears that's how Mickey Mantle saw himself: one-dimensional and damaged, therefore practically worthless.
I never realized how much Mickey Mantle hated being Mickey Mantle, but then again, how heavy a burden it must be to carry such a name, not unlike Muhammad Ali or Jesus Christ. And this wasn't only later in life, post-baseball when he was older and fatter and away from men crying over how far he could hit a baseball. No, the man was tormented for a long time. Look at this Life magazine cover from 1965, when he was only 33 years old: "Mantle's Misery: He faces physical pain and a fading career."
But it wasn't the fame and the pressure of outsized expectations—it went deeper than that. Mickey Mantle had a giant hole inside him before he became a Yankee, and there was never enough booze, women, or home runs to fill it.
And alcoholism poisoned his entire family, all four of his sons. He was an absent father most of their life, and when he did see them, they drank together. They drank alcoholically with him because that was the only way to spend significant time with him.
There's this one scene in the book when comedian Billy Crystal—a Yankee fan who is one of those men to whom Mickey Mantle is Jesus Christ and Ali combined—meets his sons at a special Yankee gala. He tells them that when he was growing up, he always wished that Mickey Mantle was his dad in a ha-ha Billy Crystal way. And one of his sons responds to him in a not-ha-ha way and says that he also wished Mickey Mantle was his dad growing up. It's just awful.
The book compassionately reports about the Mantle family's AA, the rehabs, the premature deaths from rotting livers and drugs — even Al-Anon plays a prominent role in the book. His wife, Merlyn, endured the coldness of his absence but also had to survive his drunkenness, his infidelities, and the public humiliation that came with it. "Al-Anon saved my life," she said. She found a way out through spirituality and forgave him, eventually, but forgave herself mostly.
There was this other part about Mickey Mantle she never knew but found out about later, something that came up from his past that he only began to say out loud because he wanted to be sober: Mickey Mantle was molested as a little boy and a teenager. I found this terribly shocking, and it sunk me mainly because that revelation was followed by this paragraph, which talks about the boundaries that Mickey Mantle lost forever after that:
"Every boundary had been crossed—familial, gender, professional—which could account for why Mantle crossed so many lines of behavior and decorum. If it was okay for others to violate his boundaries, it was okay for him to violate those of others."
It jolted me awake and reminded me of my past, one I detailed in an essay I wrote a couple of years ago, one I buried on the old site so no one would find it because I was so ashamed of it, but here's a portion of it and I'm sure you'll see why I couldn't ignore it after reading about Mickey Mantle:
"At an AA meeting a few months ago, a man we'll call Mitchell qualified and told his awful story about his own sexual abuse history during the What It Was Like portion of the share. He mentioned that he was sexually abused several times when he was a teenager. He didn't recognize it was abuse until he got sober almost 30 years later – and that was only after his therapist told him what he'd experienced was not okay. He retold his story with such admirable composure. It was like he was relieved that he finally had some answers for why he was the way he was. "I didn't know what boundaries were." He'd just let people do things to him he didn't want them to do over and over again. He thought that was normal! So he people-pleased. He drank. He had weird sex issues. All the hits.
I knew exactly what he meant because I realized, just then, that I had no boundaries either. Like, truly. What are boundaries! I had no boundaries, and I didn't respect other people's boundaries, and that tore me up. If I looked at a map and you asked me to point out the boundaries I would point at the ocean – but where it began, where it ended, where it fell off the earth, man, I don't know. Everything else between the landmasses is meaningless—there were only imaginary lines. It was both a disgusting but welcome discovery.
Goddammit. Anyway, the Mickey Mantle book—well, it did its job in a way because as upsetting as it was to read, especially the parts that sounded like my story, it also soothed me because underneath the sadness exists the vibrations of other people's sadness and, for whatever reason, that helps me. So, I reworked and republished my own essay and made it open and free here for anyone who needs it:
This is where I usually put the paywall but I’m gonna leave it down today. But if you’d like to support the work we do at TSB, we’d love to have you join us here every Sunday and in the comments each week. And because it’s my birthday month, remember that we are giving a 20% discount on all annual subscriptions until the end of March.
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoy this free Sunday roundup. — AJD
One More Broken Boy: Buddy Duress
“It seems paradoxical to say that an admitted and convicted thief was honest, but he was honest. He was honest about who he was.”
From the New York Times obit: “He was ungovernable and thrill-seeking — traits that, on the set, gave his performances authenticity, but that also led him to squander opportunities. Each time, though, he said he would finally change: He was ready to dedicate himself to acting.”
I’m a Safdie fan, and it’s impossible to be a Safdie fan without being a Buddy Duress fan. Spend the $4 to stream “Heaven Knows What” to marvel and mourn.
[NYT]
I’m exhausted are you exhausted?
Anyway, let’s log it out. Talk about how to live life by reading about death.
DAILY READINGS THIS WEEK
-------
Readers
* Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke
* The Practicing Stoic by Ward Farnsworth (Death section)
Daily Journals:
- Notable Fears this week:
I was afraid of the surgery. I don’t know why—just had a bad feeling. Thought I’d end up in a coma. Some Dalton Trumbo nightmare scenario. I was also afraid that part of me found that idea relaxing.
–Notable daily Gratitude List:
I am grateful for…
* Coming through it all okay.
* Staying off the drugs.
* Catching up with Gillin.
* Ozzy writing songs for me.
* Holly got her blanket.
* Ability to be of service with one leg.
* Buddy Duress.
* The opportunity to live a quality life.
* One last BJJ session.
* A recognition of time passing.
FAVORITE POEM I READ THIS WEEK:
10
by Rainer Maria Rilke
********
My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
in which you see me hurrying.
Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree;
I am only one of my many mouths,
and at that, the one that will be still the soonest.
I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death’s note wants to climb over—
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
And the song goes on, beautiful.
FAVORITE GROUNDING QUOTES ABOUT DEATH I READ THIS WEEK THAT HELPED ME APPRECIATE LIFE :
“How ridiculous to worry about passing into freedom from all worry!
– Montaigne
“Infants and boys and those who have gone mad have no fear of death. It is most shameful if reason cannot gives us the same peace of mind to which they are led by their simplicity.”
– Seneca
“Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, ever going to rest and sleep a little death.”
– Schopenhauer
“Not the longest life is the best, but the best lived.”
– Plutarch
MEDITATION PRACTICE: 10 MINUTES PER DAY MINIMUM
NUMBER OF SESSIONS: 10
LONGEST SIT: 10 minutes and 10 seconds
THERAPY SESSIONS: NONE
RECOVERY STEP WORK SESSIONS: NONE
OUTREACH CALLS: FIVE
MEETINGS: FOUR
SERVICE: SECRETARY TSB MEETING
EXERCISE: 1x BJJ, then knee surgery.
TOTAL SOBRIETY RATING FOR THE WEEK: 3/5
IMPROVEMENTS NEEDED: More quiet. Less laziness. Less comparing, despairing. Less complaining. More therapy.
ZOOM MEETING SCHEDULE
Monday: 5:30 p.m. PT/8:30 ET
Wednesday: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET and 4 p.m. PT/7 p.m. ET (Meditation meeting. Ten-minute meditation followed by 50 minutes of sharing time.)
Thursday: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET (Women and non-binary meeting.)
Friday: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET
Saturday: Mental Health Focus (Peer support for bipolar/anxiety/depression) 9:30 a.m. PT/12:30 p.m. ET
Sunday: (Mental Health and Sobriety Support Group.) 1:00 p.m PT/4 p.m. ET
*****
If you don't feel comfortable calling yourself an "alcoholic," that's fine. If you have issues with sex, food, drugs, codependency, love, loneliness, and/or depression, come on in. Newcomers are especially welcome.
FORMAT: CROSSTALK, TOPIC MEETING
We're there for an hour, sometimes more. We'd love to have you.
Meeting ID: 874 2568 6609
PASSWORD TO ZOOM: nickfoles
Need more info?: ajd@thesmallbow.com
TSB PLAYLIST ADDS!
Bleached. Kurt Vile. Wilco. [TSB PLAYLIST]
MUGS FOR ANYONE WHO LOVES SCREAMING!
TSB merch is a good thing. [STORE]
or
Enjoy your time. — xx AJD
ALL ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDITH ZIMMERMAN
I read this with some trepidation: I was Mantle’s editor at HarperCollins back in the 90s, for two books—All My Octobers, and Letters to Mickey (a compilation of fan mail he received when he was ill and dying of chronic hepatitis and then, cancer). Many Mantle fans in my family going back to the 50s. What I saw when I worked with him: anguish. When drunk, he was irascible, cruel, vitriolic, given to unpredictable racist ravings. I watched while he made an 8 year old in #7 antique pinstripes cry: the child was waiting for an autograph during a signing at B Dalton on 5th Avenue. A week later, an attorney representing the child’s mother threatened legal action. As his editor I had to explain to him in detail why it wasn’t a good idea for him to dedicate his book to his mistress. Such was working with Mickey. The flipside: as brilliant an athlete as he was, he had clearly been broken very young—the pain dripped off him in rivulets, and I recognized that. He clearly had no idea what it meant to even consider healing, and his family and handlers enabled every move he made. I will read this new book because I want to know more, I want to understand, I want to fathom him as far more than walking destruction wrapped in extraordinary talent.