How Modern Medicine Might have Extended Mickey Mantle's Career

In Game 2 of the 1951 World Series, New York Yankees rookie outfielder Mickey Mantle suffered an injury that would define the remainder of his career.

Playing alongside legendary center fielder Joe DiMaggio, who would retire after the season ended, Mantle faced a high fly ball to right center. He converged on it, though at the last moment, the stubborn, slow-footed DiMaggio called for the ball, and Mantle, like any dutiful rookie, abruptly screeched to a halt. In the process, his spike caught on a Yankee Stadium drainage ditch, and he suffered a cataclysmic knee injury, collapsing instantaneously. Onlookers said it looked as if he'd been shot, and he had to be hospitalized and his knee surgically repaired.

Mantle eventually recovered and went on to hit 523 more home runs, including at least 30 nine different seasons and secure his spot in the Hall of Fame. Other athletes have suffered greater repercussions from youthful injuries, surely. Over time, though, Mantle was less and less the same player, more injury-prone, and eventually, retired a few years before he should have been done. Surely, he was a man who could have taken better care of himself, his drinking and carousing exploits notorious. All the same, though, something went unheeded after that '51 World Series. More than likely, Mantle suffered a torn anterior crucial ligament, or ACL, that was never properly diagnosed.

Playing today, baseball might be a more sustainable endeavor for someone like Mantle, and where he last played at 36 in his day, he might last another five or seven years in the current majors. For one thing, there would be no arcane drainage ditch in a prehistoric ballpark like old Yankee Stadium, the wrecker's ball finally leveling the House That Ruth Built completely in May 2010. Mantle would also likely have better monitoring and treatment options for alcohol abuse, no media culture willing to sweep his carousing under the rug and dismiss it as youthful transgressing; places like Deadspin have none of that. And while it's a little cheesy to make the following pun, injury prevention might be a whole different ballgame for the Commerce Comet.

A range of different options could keep Mantle in good health, from improved medical care, to more experienced and deeper team training staffs, to arthroscopic surgery, the latter procedure only developed in recent decades. ACL injury prevention has become a more sophisticated art, with athletes and coaches alike understanding the danger of certain positions and moving knees in certain ways. In addition, there's more emphasis on knee strengthening exercises like weight work and water exercises. Athletes have more protections for their health these days, and the options only look to get more refined as more time goes on.

Mantle died of cancer at 63 in 1995, his life in many ways a sad case, his bum knee only the tip of his problems. Of course, he's no charity case, his name still the stuff of legend in baseball circles. Still, it's a wonder what could have been for him in so many ways in a different time.