The year was 1967. I remember it vividly, which is impressive, because I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night. (It was either leftover meatloaf or something pretending not to be leftover meatloaf.)

Back then, baseball was my entire universe. I read every book, every magazine, every cereal box that mentioned the word “ball.” I loved two teams: the Cubs, thanks to my maternal grandfather, and the Yankees, thanks to my paternal one. This was how a ten-year-old learned diplomacy—root for everybody and disappoint no one. Eventually, I had to choose a side and went full Cubs, but the Yankees still held a mythical glow. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio… and Roger Maris, who hit 61 homers in 1961, just to keep things symmetrical.

But my true hero—the one I practiced imitating in the backyard—was Mickey Mantle. The Mick. I had a softcover reprint of The Mickey Mantle Story that I read until the pages tried to escape the binding. The cover was white, unlike the original pale-green edition, but I was ten: if it said “Mickey Mantle,” it was holy scripture.

I loved the stories about Mick’s father, Mutt, and his grandfather, George. These men were determined to manufacture a major leaguer the way other families tried to raise a decent garden. Before Mickey was even born, Mutt declared the boy would play in the majors, something Mutt himself had never accomplished. He named his son after Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane, which is the baseball equivalent of naming your kid “Destiny.”

Then came the training. Mutt decided his kid would be a switch-hitter, so Mickey hit left-handed against his right-handed father and right-handed against his left-handed grandfather. Most families bond over picnics or fishing trips; the Mantles bonded over turning a small child into a weapon.

And it worked. Mantle became the most terrifying switch-hitter in baseball history. Three MVPs. Eighteen seasons of All-Star selections. Seven World Series rings. 536 home runs. A .982 fielding percentage. I memorized these stats long before I could correctly multiply anything by nine.

All of which leads us to my own baseball career.

Television coverage in our area featured only the Cubs and White Sox, so my sole chance to see Mantle live was when the Yankees visited Chicago. I saw him once. By then, he was a little creaky and probably held together with tape, liniment, and willpower. If memory serves, he grounded out. I clapped anyway.

In Little League, I wasn’t exactly a rising star. In fact, if warming the bench had been an Olympic sport, I might have medaled. One season, my coach, Jerry (who I would later marry into his family) assigned me to play center field. Mickey’s sacred territory.

I galloped out there like a wild horse, pounding my glove the entire way as if announcing to the world, Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the excellence you’ve been waiting for has finally arrived.

During warm-ups, Coach Jerry hit balls to each position. When he called my name, I felt destiny tapping me on the shoulder. He lobbed a gentle pop-up, gentle enough that if it were any softer, it would’ve apologized for taking so long to get to me.

The ball drifted directly to me. Right where I happened to be standing. It was the baseball gods saying, “Here you go. Don’t mess this up.”

I pounded my glove. I yelled, “I got it!” I stood there like a champion-in-waiting.

The ball dropped out of the sky… and hit me square in the forehead.

Not the glove. Not the chest. The forehead.

The ball bounced to the grass in front of me, like even it were ashamed of me. The stitches were imprinted on my skin, proof that the ball had committed a personal assault.

I picked it up, burning with humiliation, and in a dramatic flourish of rage and athletic overcompensation, I hurled it over the backstop. It was the best throw I made all season, possibly in my entire childhood.

On that day, Mickey Mantle had a .982 fielding percentage.

Mine was .000.

Ironically, the center-field talent skipped a generation and landed squarely on my son, who played the position flawlessly in high school and later in men’s leagues. He glided under fly balls with the kind of grace I only thought I had that day before that pop-up tried to assassinate me.

So much for emulating The Mick.