Mantle Family’s Suit Makes It Personal

An assortment of Mickey Mantle’s personal belongings--including his birth certificate, his bathrobe and his neck brace--were pulled off the auction block Friday to settle a lawsuit by the late Hall of Famer’s family.

Leland’s auction house agreed to pull the 33 non-baseball related items less than 24 hours before today’s auction. Still available for bidding were 201 lots, including a lock of the slugger’s hair--an item that one Mantle attorney described as “ghoulish.”

The 33 items designated as “of a personal nature” will be returned to the estate, co-executor Roy True said. They include Mantle’s neck brace, personalized green bathrobe, prescription medicine bottles and an assortment of shoes and clothing.

“Mickey Mantle has been one of my heroes since I was a child, and the fact that the family was unhappy was of great concern,” said Leland’s chairman, Joshua Evans. “That is why we elected to settle the dispute.”

The questionable items were put up for sale by Greer Johnson, 46, Mantle’s agent and longtime companion. Her attorney, Richard L. Blumenthal, was irate with estate attorney Robert S. Fink’s characterization of the sale as “ghoulish.”

“George Washington’s hair was auctioned off,” he said, “and nobody considered that ghoulish.”

The family, as part of the agreement, agreed to drop its objections to the sale of three items: the lock of hair, Mantle’s passport and his signed American Express card.

The Mantle estate, on behalf of his widow, Merlyn, and their three sons, had filed the suit in Dallas on Thursday to block the sale of the personal items. Mantle, the New York Yankee great, died of liver cancer in August 1995.

Although Mantle and his wife were estranged for the last 15 years of his life, they never divorced. Mantle met Johnson in 1984 and the two had a relationship until his death.

While Johnson had possession of an assortment of Mantle’s belongings, he left her nothing in his will.