There is a time when all the important choices in our lives are before us. It is a time pregnant with the excitement of adolescence and the promise of adulthood. This story is about that time. Baseball fans, even the casual ones, know something of Mickey Mantle - the tape measure home runs, the blazing speed, the nagging injuries. His story of becoming The Mick is part of American lore - the ultimate baseball father creating a legendary performer. Mickey became a great baseball player, one of the best ever, and certainly the finest switch-hitting slugger of all time. There was greatness in him, also vulnerability. Those qualities not only brought him the adoration of millions, but also gave his fans reasons to excuse his shortcomings.
Mutt's Dream presents the psychological and sociological threads that wove the tapestry of Mickey Mantle's life. His father's dream shaped who Mickey became--from humble roots in rural Oklahoma to a baseball legend. Elvin "Mutt" Mantle saw few options in life for himself: farming, working in the mines, or making it big in boxing or baseball. During the Great Depression Mutt learned that farming could be a gamble. He found mining work to be a hellhole that often brought an early death. Mutt did not know how to box, but he did know baseball, and he knew it very well - better than most men did. If his circumstances had been different, he might have become a Major League player himself. He wanted to give Mickey his dream, and did exactly that. Some have said the obsessive and unrelenting pressure he put on Mickey caused psychological damage to his son. Mutt knew only that he was giving Mickey the best chance to have a far better life than his, and the hope of giving his dream to Mickey was what kept Mutt going.
The book is targeted at baseball fans, particularly those of Mickey Mantle. Without question his legend continues to intrigue devotees. The story also will appeal to readers of coming-of-age stories.
There are many books detailing Mantle's professional career and life after baseball. Mutt's Dream, Making The Mick is unique. Thoroughly researched and enhanced with the dialogue of a playwright, it is an account of the background story of Mickey's life until the day he signed his first professional contract. Most fans already know the rest of the story. They know about his accomplishments on the baseball field, and about his later problems--his alcoholism, his womanizing, and his controversial final days. But how did he get that way? By exploring his early years, readers will come to understand how his father and his upbringing in Depression-Era Oklahoma forged the legend that became The Mick.
Howard Burman was born in Brooklyn. Occasionally in the summer his father would take him to Ebbets Field to see the Dodgers. His love of baseball, reflected in some of the books and plays he has written, began there. Burman attended Wilmington College in Ohio and later transferred to The Ohio State University, where he received his B.A. and remained to earn his Ph.D. He later helped form Cameo Entertainments, and toured productions with television and film stars such as Valerie Harper, Roscoe Lee Browne, Lee Meredith, Michael Learned, and Roy Dotrice. He also produced an off-Broadway show in New York, Behind the Broken Words. Burman moved on to become Artistic Producing Director of the Hilberry Theatre in Detroit and the Chair of the Theatre Department at Wayne State University, where he produced some 35 shows, including two that were nominated for a national critics award.
He returned to California to start the California Repertory Company, and chaired the department of Theatre Arts at California State University, Long Beach. There he produced more than 150 shows, including 23 which he wrote. Among the most successful were Article 24, The Boys of Summer, The Puccini Project, The Third Lie, The Miracle of Piaf, On the Beach, and Willie, Mickey & The Duke. He is the author of The Iliad Was Either Homer or Somebody Else of the Same Name, a novel--A Story Told by Two Liars, and several baseball books, including A Man Called Shoeless, which relates the life story of the enigmatic Joe Jackson.
Burman has traveled extensively in Europe and Asia and has been a Fulbright scholar in Taiwan. He lived part-time in Switzerland and then for a few years in Ireland. He and his wife, Karen, currently reside in Felton, California--a small town in the mountains of Santa Cruz County south of San Francisco. Their son, Ty, daughter, Kerry, and granddaughters, Gabrielle and Lucy, live nearby.
