Pat Summerall and Mickey Mantle, both athletes of significant achievement, were also pals and drinking buddies. It went back to when they had adjoining lockers in Yankee stadium in the 1950’s.
Both men were serious athletes in their prime, Mantle with the New York Yankees baseball team and Summerall with the Chicago Cardinals and the New York Giants football teams, and both men were serious drinkers. The affects of their alcohol abuse killed both of them–Mickey in 1995 at age 64 and Pat in 2013 at age 82.
Both had liver transplants. Summeral’s was successful and Mantel’s was not.
Mantel and Summerall paid the price for their alcohol abuse but both, it would seem, found salvation.
I visited Pat at his home in Dallas two years before his death. He had graciously accepted my request for an interview that I wanted to publish in my quarterly newspaper, One Day at a Time to encourage others to seek recovery.
I had been a huge fan during the time he was playing for the N.Y. Giants (I was born and brought up in Summit, N.J., a short commute to Manhattan) and I also wanted to tell his story hoping that it would have a positive impact on those destroying their lives with alcohol and other drugs.
After Summerall got out of Betty Ford, Mantle asked his old friend about the religious part of the experience.
“I ain’t never been to church,” Mantel explained.
“Being from Oklahoma,” Summerall ventured, “you’re probably a Baptist,” to which Mantle replied, “That’ll be fine. I’ll take that.”
In December 1993, Mantle checked in to Betty Ford and in early 1995, Summerall said, “Mickey was diagnosed with liver cancer. He was admitted to Baylor University Medical Center in late May of that year and then approved to get on a transplant list.
“Unfortunately, the transplant did not restore Mickey’s health,” Pat said, and on August 13, 1995, “my dear friend died at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.”
Summerall mourned the loss, but he says, “I was glad for one thing that happened to Mickey after he became sober. Despite his lack of experience with organized religion, Mickey found faith. The things he heard at the Betty Ford Center and from visits from his old Yankee teammate Bobby Richardson led him to God.
“He was baptized and seemed to gain fresh wisdom as well as peace,” Summerall says. “In his last press conference, which he gave at Baylor, Mickey said he was no hero. ‘God gave me everything, and I blew it. For the kids out there, don’t be like me!’”.
As for Summerall’s experience, after more than ten years of sobriety, the physical damage he had done to himself mainly with his abuse of alcohol began to surface. Like Mantle, his liver, too, began to fail and brought him literally to within days, perhaps hours, of dying.
But Summerall got the liver he needed in 2004 when a young man, thirteen-year-old Adron Shelby, son of Melva and Garland Shelby of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, died. Summerall described the experience in his book:
“Adron was just a student in junior high school when he collapsed while giving a speech in history class. He died three days later of a brain aneurysm. A few days after I received their precious gift, and the Shelbys buried their son.
“I talked to Melva from my heart, and thanked her and her family. I expressed condolences for the loss of her son, and I told her what a difference their organ-donation decision had made not only keeping me alive but making me a better person.
“She hugged me again and said, ‘It’s almost like I’m hugging a part of my child.’”
Summerall struggled for some time with the idea that someone— Adron—had to die for him to live. Why did this have to be? The answer, which came from his local pastor, was “because God’s not through with you yet.”
Today’s Men and Women
The roles of men and women are under close inspection these days with a focus on revelations of men taking sexual advantage of women, not a new subject, of course, but under more serious scrutiny.
But there appears to be a more serious attempt to explain these behaviors and what to do something about it.
Dr. Robert Lewis, a founder, with Bill Parkinson and Bill Wellons, of Little Rock’s Fellowship Bible Church and the international Men’s Fraternity, has this to say about the wounds that contribute to the unacceptable behaviors of men.
“Physical wounds,” he writes, “leave physical scars, but the deepest wounds of a man’s life are not physical but are instead wounds of the soul.
“Circumstances growing up such as an absent dad or an overly controlling mom, the divorce of parents, bad choices and hurtful things that can mark a man deeply.
“Many times these wounds do not heal because our natural instinct, as men, is to pretend that the wounds are not there. We try to cover them and move on.
“But the reality is that unaddressed wounds become unfinished business. We hedge, dodge and compensate until our whole way of living life is shaped by the wounds.
“There is no such thing as a self made man. To become a real man you need the help of other men—men you can be transparent with who will hold you accountable and help you process your past. And remember, you are not alone. You may think you are, but you’re not. The fact is many men share a similar past. The issues you must deal with are the same issues many other men are dealing with.
Last month close to 50 men listened in a Little Rock conference room as Dr. Lewis talked about what he said were some of the challenges men face in today’s culture.
Manhood is in a state of confusion said Lewis, 68, the former lead pastor at Little Rock’s Fellowship Bible church.
“We have lived for basically the last 30 years in what I call high-octane times, and a lot of that change has kind of swept men off their feet.”
Those in the audience were there to hear Lewis speak and also to gather tips on how to lead because each of them will lead a group of men for a 10 week series, “Man to Man,” which Lewis described as a “journey into modern manhood.”
Manhood is hard to define, Lewis said, in part because many men have adhered to popular culture’s representation as the only version.
“The man of my generation was (actor) John Wayne, but the man of the next generation is (rapper) l’il Wayne.”
Presented to the public in the fall of 2016, Man to Man is an outgrowth of Men’s Fraternity an international video series curriculum Lewis designed and first presented in 1990 at Fellowship Bible Church that teaches men how to “live lives of authentic manhood as modeled by Jesus Christ and directed by the word of God.
“A real man rejects passivity, accepts responsibility, leads courageously and expects the greater reward—God’s reward.
Bottom line?
“We’re just trying to create a generation of guys, who, by investing in them, won’t be perfect but a little bit better. Men who are just a little bit better do a whole lot of good.”
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