FBI Maintained a File on Mantle
Mickey Mantle’s family was unaware the FBI kept a dossier on the baseball great showing he was threatened by gamblers and blackmailed for having an affair with a woman.
“They were dumbfounded the FBI would be looking into Mickey back in the mid-1950s,” family lawyer Wayne Miller of Dallas said Monday. “They knew no reason why the FBI should be following them. Merlyn [Mantle’s wife] had no idea it was going on at that time.”
The 28-page file, whose existence was reported Sunday by New York television station WCBS, contains a report that in 1956 the New York Yankee star was blackmailed by an unidentified person for $15,000 after being caught in a “compromising situation” with a married woman.
A 1963 entry has a source telling the FBI that Mantle received a number of telephone calls from a known gambler, the station said. The file also has a 1960 letter to Mantle threatening to shoot his knees.
The file covers Mantle’s activities from 1956-63, the height of his career. The FBI declined to disclose why it opened a file on the late Hall of Famer, WCBS said. The agency kept files on many Americans.
The file was once delivered to the White House, but WCBS’ report did not say which president asked for it.
Mantle died of liver cancer in Dallas in 1995.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
