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Mantle's build went well and here you can see the wood being
glued into place for the torso. I'm now working almost no end grain
whereas Babe Ruth was almost totally end grain. The waste is also reduced
as I laminate up only what I need and as you build the figure up from the
ground, you can see pretty clearly what you will need up above. If the
bottom wasn't defined so well, then you would not be able to cut it so fine.
One of the other big innovations for me was the use of the
chainsaw. It was during this time that I finally got over my fear of the
chainsaw and started using it. At first, I was only using it to save time
on cuts, but more and more I began to play with it and see what I could do with
it. I can tell that I'm using it in this photo because of the size of the
sawdust. The chisel gives you big chips and I see some of those, not to
mention chisel marks on the right breast but that finer dust is the stuff of the
chainsaw -- and saving time.
Here we are planning the twists in the jersey and the famous
number "7" and there is old Eddie Gaedel in the background.
It was somewhere around this point that Mickey Mantle got sick.
In a fairly short period of time, he came clean about his drinking and also, his
need for a new liver. At this time my own brother was in need of a kidney
transplant from the ravages of years of juvenile diabetes. He was put on a
list and told that he would have to wait a minimum or average of a year,
depending on how they phrased it. A year was the message, however, that
much was clear.
Mickey Mantle himself did not last long and it soon became public
that he was riddled with cancer and that he would soon pass. This brought
up questions of propriety about his transplant-worthiness. It was wondered
how these doctors could not know that he was in this bad of a shape and that
another person was denied that very liver that went to the celebrity.
Then, my brother got a call. It was just like the movies.
In the middle of the night he rushed off to the airport and flew to Minnesota
for a successful transplant. When he asked the woman calling how he got a
matched kidney in only a month, when they had predicted a year's wait, he got
the answer in the form of two words: "Mickey Mantle".
When I began the statue, I felt almost certain that one way or
another I would get to meet Mickey Mantle. I'm not a big autograph guy or
star struck, so it wasn't a big deal, but I did have that thought that it would
happen and it would be interesting. But by the time I finished the piece,
he was gone. And sure enough, I went to Mickey Mantle's Restaurant in New
York and offered it to them as a display piece and they took it for a period of
several months. So that would have been my opportunity to meet him for
sure. I preferred the reality of his notoriety raising the public's
awareness of the importance of organ donation. It is probably true that he
didn't merit the liver that he got. But if the publicity he generated,
scared up thousands of organs for people such as my brother, wasn't it worth it
in this case?
Here is a clipping from the New York Post. It's a photo of
a little boy posing with my Mickey statue at Mickey Mantle's Restaurant on
Central Park South. I was flipping through the paper and came across it
one day. I had no idea it would be there. It was quite a surprise.
I'll never get used to that.
