Who Was #7 For The Yankees?

In American sports, it is tradition to honor a legendary player by retiring their jersey number from use. The Yankees have 22 total numbers retired, including numbers 1-10. The last player to wear #7 for the New York Yankees was Mickey Mantle. The Yankees retired this centerfielder’s number in 1969, the season after his career concluded. Read on to learn more about one of the best players to grace the MLB.

Mickey Mantle

An 18-year, career-long Yankee, Mickey Mantle played centerfield and first base in New York from 1951-1968. Mantle was plagued by various injuries throughout his career but still rose to a rare level of prowess and respect in the game. 1957 was Mantle’s best offensive season, in which he captured the Triple Crown with 130 RBIs, a .353 batting average, and 52 home runs. This same season, he also managed 16 stolen bases. 

Mantle is known as one of the fastest players in MLB history, with his success rate of stolen bases reaching as high as 87.5. Mantle was an important participant in some of the best Yankees teams in history, winning 12 American League Pennants and seven World Series. Mantle still holds the record of most home runs hit in a World Series (18).

Personal Life

While Mantle was growing up in Spavinaw, Oklahoma, his father was so determined he would be a baseball player that he named him after Tiger’s catcher Mickey Cochrane and trained him to switch hit from an early age. In high school, a freak accident left Mantle with an infection that developed into osteomyelitis. The then relatively new drug, penicillin, saved Mantle from a leg amputation and allowed him to continue playing baseball. Sadly, this wouldn't be Mantle's last brush with serious illness or injury in his own life or in the life of those he loved.

Mantle married a woman named Merlyn, with whom he had four sons. One of these sons, Billy, struggled with Hodgkin’s disease all his life. Eventually, Billy Mantle passed away from a heart attack linked to the disease at the young age of 36. Mickey Mantle was open about the fact he did not expect a long life, as most of the men around him passed away before they turned 40. Mantle exceeded this number, living until he developed serious liver cancer in the mid-1990s. Though older than 40, Mantle’s sad expectations did come true, as he passed away in 1995 at just 63 years old.

Hall of Fame Induction

Despite his proclivity to injury, Mickey Mantle still had a relatively long career, retiring from Major League Baseball in 1969. Mantle’s 18-year career with the New York Yankees was officially memorialized in the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974. He is remembered there as one of the fastest players in professional baseball, a three-time MVP, a Golden Glove winner, and a 20-time All-Star.