How to Live with Pain

The Yankees lost more than a pair of ball games in Baltimore. They lost Mickey Mantle for at least five weeks.

The medical description of Mantle's injury was "an undisplaced, slightly oblique fracture of the third metatarsal neck"-in plain English, a broken bone in his left foot. It happened in the sixth inning of the second game, when Baltimore's Brooks Robinson lofted a home run over Memorial Stadium's center-field fence and Mantle leaped high into the air in a futile attempt to spear the ball. On the way down, Mantle caught his spikes in the steel-mesh fence and crumpled to the ground. Teammates found him prodding his swelling foot. "It's broke," said Mantle calmly. "I know it's broke."

In his 31 years and twelve big-league seasons, Mickey Mantle has learned to live with pain the way most men live with shaving in the morning. He has an arrested case of osteomyelitis in his left leg. The cartilage is gone from his right knee. His right shoulder has been weak since 1957, when he collided with Red Schoendienst at second base. He has twisted innumerable muscles, and during the 1961 World Series, he bled through his uniform from an abscess on his hip. There is no telling how good a healthy Mickey Mantle might have been. Crippled, he has been good enough to win a triple crown (batting, home runs, RBIs) in 1956, to hit .365 in 1957, to clout 54 homers in 1961, to win the Most Valuable Player award three times, and to spark his team to nine American League pennants-a feat for which the grateful Yankees are currently paying him $100.000 a year.

Often a slow starter, Mickey was batting a lusty .310 last week, already had 1 1 homers and 26 RBIs. After the injury, > Manager Ralph Houkinsisted: "We ain't going to lay down and die." But

Mantle knew the measure of his own loss. After doctors poured a plaster cast around his broken foot, he hobbled up to Trainer Joe Soares. Asked Mickey: "Isn't there some way they can strap this thing up so I can play?"

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