Home Box Office has hit a gigantic home run again in sports journalism. This time, the cable television network tells the saga of former New York Yankee slugger Mickey Mantle. Titled simply, “Mantle,” the film touches all the bases in bringing viewers the life story of one of the greatest baseball players the country has ever seen.

I was especially fond of the old baseball footage, which flavored the biography with a sense of authenticity few such productions evoke.

Mantle was a larger-than-life sports figure for me when I was growing up.

In fact, the first major league baseball game I attended in person was a Red Sox vs. Yankees contest in 1961 at Fenway Park.

It doesn’t seem like 44 years have passed since that hot summer day, but HBO has brought it all back in their Mantle piece.

That was, of course, a classic year for fans of the nation’s pastime. After all, both Mantle and his celebrated teammate, Roger Maris, were chasing Babe Ruth’s all-time season home run record of 60. On that particular day in Boston, Maris hit one out of the park, adding to a total that was slowly creeping toward the Babe’s previously untouchable mark.

When my father announced that we had tickets for the ballgame, I was particularly excited that I might get the chance to see Mickey in person. Back in those days, all the neighborhood kids collected baseball cards. If you were lucky enough to get a Mickey Mantle card, you kept it. No Mantle card ever adorned the spokes of your bicycle. No, sir. Those spaces were reserved for players such as Frank Malzone, Pete Runnels, or Earl Wilson. If you opened the gum pack and saw Mickey’s face staring up at you, you put him in a shoe box. Discovering such a treasure could contribute to a blissful summer day’s activity for any 10-year-old boy.

Mantle’s story is not entirely a happy one, however. As the years progressed and his injuries mounted, the slugger’s dependency on alcohol increased. With that dependency came an infamous list of bad boy stories, which resulted in a failed marriage, and, ultimately, liver failure and the need for a liver transplant.

Perhaps Mantle’s finest hour was not on the baseball diamond. It may have been the time he spent not only attempting to increase organ donor awareness nationwide but also pleading to young people to avoid the use of alcohol as a recreational drug.

The day I saw Mickey in Boston, he was injured and could not play. All else that day seemed secondary to watching a limping Yankee slugger take a few swings in the batting cage.

I remember asking my father what had happened to him, and he told me that the kid from Oklahoma had a history of injuries.

In fact, Mantle missed nine games that season and fell short of the Babe’s home run record with 54 round-trippers. Maris, of course, broke the Babe’s record with 61 dingers that year.

Some have said that Mantle would have been the greatest ballplayer of all time if he could have remained injury-free.

For me, seeing Mickey again on HBO took me back to the days of baseball cards, bike rides, Yankees/Sox games on the radio, and time with my Dad at a baseball game in the summer sun.

Thanks to HBO for a wonderful story which recreated it again.

NEWS columnist Ron Brown, a retired high school basketball coach, can be reached at bdnsports@bangordailynews.net