Time In A Bottle

[Chris_]

Time In A Bottle
<sup>After 42 years of alcohol abuse, a legendary ballplayer describes his life of self-destructive behavior and hopes his recovery will finally make him a true role model

Mickey Mantle, Jill Lieber</sup>

I began some of my mornings the past 10 years with the "breakfast of champions"—a big glass filled with a shot or more of brandy, some Kahlúa and cream. Billy Martin and I used to drink them all the time, and I named the drink after us. Sometimes when I was in New York with nothing to do, and Billy and I were together, we would stop into my restaurant on Central Park South at around 10 in the morning, and the bartender would dump all the ingredients into a blender and stir it right up. It tasted real good.

Drinking had become an all-too-frequent routine for me. If I had a drink to start the day, I'd go out for lunch and go through three or four bottles of wine in the course of the afternoon. White wine. Red wine. It didn't matter, and I didn't care about the quality, either. In fact, I thought if I was drinking wine, it wasn't really drinking. To me, wine wasn't liquor.

At one time I prided myself on being knowledgeable about good wine. But over the years I just drank so much of it that I didn't care anymore. Late one afternoon, after I'd finished a round of golf, a guy sent over an expensive glass of port. I was drinking Absolut vodka on the rocks, and as the guy watched, I poured the port right into my Absolut. He came over to me in shock and said, "Man, that was a $15-a-shot port I sent over here." And I said, "Oh, I'm sorry. We drink these all the time. We call them Aborts."

I always took pride in my dependability when I was doing public-relations work, endorsements and personal appearances. I always wanted to do my best. It was when I had no commitments, nothing to do or nowhere to be that I lapsed into those long drinking sessions. It was the loneliness and emptiness. I found "friends" at bars, and I filled my emptiness with alcohol. In those instances I was almost totally out of it by early evening. I could hardly talk. I'd try to get somebody to go to dinner with me, and I'd start drinking vodka martinis. I'd order a meal, but I wouldn't eat. I'd just sit there and drink.

When I was drinking, I thought I was funny—the life of the party. But as it turned out, nobody could stand to be around me.

Sports Illustrated

[Eupher]

Compelling story. Mantle was a natural player who made the game look easy.

His alcoholism, along with Billy Martin's, was legendary. Very glad to read that he came to terms with the problem before he died.