Mantle Chose to Quit Calling Signals While He Was Ahead

Mickey Mantle was only kidding when he told Yogi Berra that catching was overrated, but Yogi took him seriously, and therein lies a tale.

“It was before a series with Detroit,” Mantle told Phil Mushnick of the New York Post. “I was telling Yogi I could call pitches better than he could. I was just pulling his leg, but he got mad and we wound up in an argument.

“So when it was Whitey Ford’s turn to pitch, the three of us made a deal. I’d call the pitches from the outfield. If I bent over, it was a curve; if I stood up, fastball; and so on. Yogi’d throw back to Whitey, then Whitey would turn around to rub up the ball, and I’d give him the signal. Since it was Whitey, I mostly called for the curve.

“Well, it’s about the seventh inning, and we’re winning, 1-0. No kidding. That’s when I’d had enough and I stopped. I got scared. I thought I’d give up a home run, or something.”

Add Mantle: Recalling the trade of Billy Martin to Kansas City, he said, “They said he was a bad influence on me. They traded him after the season I batted .353 with 52 home runs and 130 RBIs. Three years later, they found out the bad influence was Whitey Ford.”

Add Mushnick: Of Al McGuire’s new three-year contract with NBC as a college basketball analyst, he wrote: “It’s reportedly worth close to $500,000 a year, or roughly $100,000 for every current player he’s heard of.”

Trivia time: When a golfer says, “I had a Red Grange,” what does he mean?

Attn., Al Davis: Auburn baseball Coach Hal Baird, asked which sport he thinks Bo Jackson will eventually choose, told the New York Times: “It’s only my opinion, but I think football will be the thing to go. When he comes back here in the off-season, we always talk about the Raiders, but invariably he turns the conversation to George Brett and the Royals.”

Says Jackson: “Baseball was fun when I was in college. It’s my job now. But I like my 3-to-11 shift.

Says Brett, marveling at Jackson’s build, especially since he doesn’t lift weights: “I’ve never even seen him do a sit-up. I say to myself all the time, ‘I wish I could be in that body for just one day.’ ”

It-had-to-happen Dept.: Said golf analyst Ken Venturi, as Don Pooley addressed a tap-in putt for par in the TPC: “Watch how smooth this is.”

Pooley smoothly bogeyed.

Cow’s that? Tim Flannery, quirky infielder for the San Diego Padres, tells USA Today why he uses old-model gloves: “Because of the Greenhouse effect, they’ve had to give the cows steroids. That’s why the leather on the old gloves is better than the leather on the new ones.”

Trivia answer: He shot a 77. That was Grange’s number in football.

Add Grange: One year when John McKay was coaching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a linebacker named Jeff Davis intercepted a pass and ran it back for a touchdown the first time he touched the ball as a professional.

Said McKay: “I told the team that the last time that happened was when Red Grange did it, and they all just stared at me. They didn’t know who the hell Red Grange was.”

Quotebook: Mitch (Blood) Green, oft-arrested heavyweight fighter, on why he doesn’t fear going to jail: “When I go to the jailhouse, I run the jailhouse.”