A Grand Slam Grand Marshal

   Mickey Mantle smashed a lot of home runs during his Hall Of Fame career with the New York Yankees.

   Twenty-nine years ago he had a smash of another kind at North Carolina Motor Speedway, where he was a big hit as Grand Marshal of the American 500.

   Neither the fun-loving "Mick" nor racing at the Sandhills track known as "The Rock" are with us any more.  Mantle died of cancer in 1995, and the Rockingham track was closed after its spring NASCAR race in 2004.

   Memories of Mantle and his visit to the speedway came racing back a few nights ago when his two sons appeared on a late-night talk show to reveal the re-introduction of some of their dad's most popular baseball cards.   

   I was fortunate enough to be among the motorsports writers invited to an informal dinner in honor of Mantle, who insisted on being called Mickey.  The event was held at an old hunting-fishing lodge far back in the pine woods about 10 miles from the speedway.

   Track official Frank Wilson, a mischievous sort of fellow who later would serve as the speedway's president until his death in 1994, produced some special spirits for the "social hour" prior to the meal.  Through acquaintances, Wilson had obtained a quart of fine peach brandy from a moonshiner in the North Carolina hills.  Frank invited Mickey to partake of the "white lightning."

   Mickey first took a sip, then drew long and deep from the jar.  He smacked his lips and nodded approval as the beaming smile for which he was so famous spread across his face.

   "Why, you ain't nothing but a bunch of country boys!" he exclaimed, much to the delight of everyone looking on.

   Wilson and other track folks beamed.

   The entree for dinner, however, caused them consternation and embarrassment. 

   N.C. Motor Speedway's president at that time, L.G. DeWitt, owned a twin-engine plane.  The aircraft and its pilot had been sent to Maine on Friday of race week to pick up live lobsters for the Grand Marshal's dinner.

   Wilson was giddy over treating Mantle to a surprise lobster feast at a backwoods location.

   "Mickey won't believe it!" Wilson gushed.

   When time came to eat a cook swept grandly into the dining area carrying a tray piled high with boiled lobsters.  Mickey hesitated a bit and then said, "Boys, I'm sorry, but I don't eat seafood.  Have you got a steak?"

   Wilson and fellow speedway officer Larry Hogan turned as red as the lobsters.

   Hogan pulled a $100 bill from his wallet, handed the money to longtime employee Shorty Mayhew and ordered, "Go buy the biggest steak you can find--and I don't care what it costs."

   "Lots of luck, Shorty," I thought to myself.

   It  was 10 o'clock at night on Saturday in a sparsely populated area of North Carolina.  There were no supermarkets or grocery stores within miles, and even if there were, they wouldn't have been open.

   Somehow, Shorty came through.  Within half and hour, Mickey was cutting into a thick porterhouse.

   He conceded to being astonished.

   "I don't get service like this in New York," he said.

   The most amusing aspect of the great slugger's weekend at The Rock, however, came during a break in practice for time trials and afterward while qualifying was in progress.

   Wilson and Hogan talked Mickey into taking a ride aound the track in a race car driven by Cale Yarborough, the Winston Cup champion at the time.  Wilson assured Mickey that Cale would go slow.

   Mickey reluctantly got in the car that team owner Hoss Ellington was fielding for driver Donnie Allison.  Jokester Ellington had put a second seat in the car to tease writers who were speculating wildly that he was about to fire Allison.

   Mickey, 46 years old that very day, wondered aloud as he buckled in if this birthday might be his last.

   Cale waited at the steering wheel, serving as driver because Allison hadn't yet arrived at the track. 

   Yarborough DID NOT go slow.  He turned a couple laps at about 130 mph on a track where pole-winning speeds at the time were in the 135 range.  Yarborough ran within inches of the wall along the straightaways.

   Mickey's face was ashen and his knees wobbly as he emerged from the car in the garage area.  He looked as he might have if just thrown a duster by Sandy Koufax or Don Drysdale.

   "It's going to take three or four days for my hair to lay back down," cracked Mickey when he finally got his voice back.

   Someone asked Mickey what he thought when Cale took him into the high-banked turns.  The man who had hit 536 home runs in regular season and a record 18 in World Series play before retiring in 1969 could only grin.

   "I didn't know when we went into the turns," confessed Mickey.  "I had my eyes closed."

   Then he began to laugh about it all.

   "I must have looked pretty scared," continued Mickey, "'cause I could hear Cale cackling over the roar of the engine.  There aren't enough drivers in this garage area to force me back into one of those cars."

   Mickey's most humorous, homer of a line came as he watched time trials from the press box.  When Donnie Allison ran 138 mph to win the pole, Mickey stood and hollered in a voice oozing with insincerity, "Gee, I wish I had been in there with him!"