Still Foolin' 'Em (15 page)

Mickey slurred back, “No, not Mr. Mantle—I’m your uncle Bob.”

He saw me. “Hey, you little son of a bitch!” he said, which is how he usually greeted me. He nodded to our staff, and then he saw the director. “Fuck you!” he laughed.

“What did I do?” asked the Hollywood stereotype, now clearly uncomfortable.

“Look at ya,” Mickey snorted and sat down, and the meeting went on as best it could.

As we were leaving, Mickey asked if we were staying at the same place. “Yes,” I said, “it’s a great old inn.”

“Good,” Mickey replied. “I guess Shark Bite took my bags there.”

“Who?”

“Shark Bite,” Mickey said. “Ain’t that what happened to him?”

I explained what I knew about our host, and Mantle felt bad for a moment and then started laughing hysterically. It was locker room banter. Players always make up a name for someone with a distinctive feature. Guys with big noses were usually “Hook,” big-eared players were “Rabbit,” and so on. So I’m guessing in his boozy state of mind, when Mickey saw the huge indention in the outline of the fellow’s shoulder, he was thinking there was only one reason: shark bite.

At the inn, Mickey and I had adjoining rooms with a common bathroom. It was a rough night for Mickey—I could hear him thrashing about. In the middle of the night, he knocked softly on my door. “Hey, you still up?”

“Yeah, but, Mick, it’s two
A.M.
and we have to be at the hall at seven.”

“I can’t do this. I’m too nervous.”

I let him in. There we were, me in my pajamas and Mantle in his boxer shorts. We spoke in hushed whispers. He was visibly upset.

“You’ll be fine, Mick, it’s all on cue cards.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I’ve never been in the damn place. When I got inducted in ’74, I left after my speech. Had a hundred friends and family, Merlyn, the boys, and I just left. I don’t belong in there. I wasn’t good enough.”

“Are you kidding me?” I couldn’t believe the legend was having an anxiety attack.

“No, I should have been so much better. I can’t do this.”

I talked Mickey down and finally coaxed him back to bed.

At the breakfast table the next morning, our host was pouring Mickey some juice and Mickey couldn’t look at him. He kept staring down at his eggs like a kid in church who’d done something wrong. I knew he felt bad for calling him Shark Bite.

We headed over to the Hall of Fame. Mickey stopped me again.

“Please, I can’t do this. I’ve never even seen where my plaque is.”

“Well, let’s go find it,” I said, “’cause that’s where the first shot is.”

“Shit,” Mickey muttered. We met David Israel, one of the producers for the show, and we walked Mantle to his plaque. “There it is, Mickey,” I said.

He stared at the plaque and looked at the others on the wall, and then suddenly he said, “Why the fuck am I with that guy? I should be with Willie and Whitey. What the fuck is going on?”

So now the man who didn’t think he should be in the Hall of Fame was mad about the positioning of his plaque. It was a curious juxtaposition, and we all felt a little uncomfortable.

We shot some funny skits together, including a version of “I Hate When That Happens.” He was a natural. On a break, the director of the hall, Bill Guilfoyle, took us upstairs. A preacher type with wire-rimmed glasses and a kind shyness about him, he was obviously thrilled that the great Mantle was there. We went to a floor dedicated to Babe Ruth and his amazing career, and we stared at the accomplishments: 714 home runs, .342 lifetime batting average, over two thousand RBIs, 94 wins as a pitcher. Ruth was the greatest player in baseball history. His locker from the stadium was sitting there, poetically alone.

“Some career, don’t you think, Mickey?” said the president.

“Yeah, but I got more pussy than he did.”

I thought the president would have a stroke. I wasn’t far behind. Guilfoyle didn’t know what to say. His glasses fogged up, his voice cracked. “Uh … yes, I guess you did, Mickey.… Would you like to see Gehrig’s locker?”

It was a perfect Mantle joke. Totally wrong, but really funny. I put it into the script of
61*
, the film about Mantle and Maris I later directed for HBO.

At the end of the day, we were taping my good nights on the field where Abner Doubleday was said to have invented the game. I said, “When you’re a kid learning how to play this glorious game, you dream of a time when Mickey Mantle and you would be having a catch, and he’d say, ‘Nice arm, kid.’” With that, Mantle stepped in behind me holding two gloves and a baseball. “Hey, quit talking—let’s play catch.”

I turned to the camera and said, “I love when this happens.” The credits rolled as we were throwing the ball to each other. When it was over, we just kept throwing. I started to cry.

“What’s the matter?” Mickey asked.

“I got something in my eye.”

A lifelong dream. I had thought about playing catch with Mantle from the first time I saw him, in 1956. We moved farther apart, as he seemed to really enjoy throwing the ball again. Mickey couldn’t move too well, and I didn’t want to throw the ball where he couldn’t get to it. Sure enough, the harder you try to make something perfect, the more likely you are to screw up. He limped after my next toss, the ball falling at his feet. “Sorry,” I said, feeling awful. “No, I am,” he said. “If I could get that, I’d still be playing.”

We finished the taping, and “Shark Bite” drove us to the airport in Albany. The Mohawk Valley was in fine form; the spring rains had turned it into a green wonderland that would become a stunning red-and-gold watercolor in the fall. Mickey sat in the backseat with a six-pack of beer. I was up front with a tuna sandwich. After a while, Mickey said, “Pretty…”

With Mickey at the Hall of Fame, a comedy salute to baseball.

“You should see it in October,” said Shark Bite.

“Yeah,” Mickey muttered, “maybe I should come up here more. When they put the new guys in, maybe I should come.”

“Of course you should,” I said. “Williams comes, Musial, Bob Feller … they all come…” I continued, and as I turned I saw Mickey staring out the open window, the breeze blowing his now thinning blond hair. “Hey, driver,” he said. “I never got your name.”

“Ted,” the sweet man answered softly, his eyes, still focused on the road, now misting up.

“I’m Mickey, nice to know you. If I get up here, maybe you’ll drive me again.”

“Anytime,” said Ted. Mickey soon fell asleep. He looked like a kid who’d had a big day and conked out in the family car on the way home. We drove in silence now. Ted and I looked at each other and smiled as we headed through the lush hills of upstate New York.

*   *   *

Soon after, I recorded a live stand-up album at the famous Bottom Line nightclub in New York, and wrote a single called “You Look Marvelous” with Paul Shaffer, which was nominated for a Grammy. We made a fun video of the song for MTV, in which I played Grace Jones, Tina Turner, Sammy, and, of course, Fernando. On the promotional tour I met a young Chicago talk-show host named Oprah Winfrey, who called me “the designated Negro” because I could play black people so realistically. I think what made it work was that they were characters I loved, and having been around all those great musicians growing up, playing African Americans just came naturally to me. I did a concert tour and made another HBO special, called
Don’t Get Me Started,
which I also codirected. It was a parody of Sting’s movie
Bring on the Night,
where he rented a mansion in France to write music and rehearse for his new tour and made a documentary of the experience. For my show we rented a house in Pasadena and Rob Reiner played Marty DiBergi, his director character from
Spinal Tap
, who this time was making a “yockumentary.” The show also featured Chris Guest, Eugene Levy, and a strange older German comedian named Brother Theodore. I played Fernando, Whoopi, Sammy, and Buddy Young Jr. The show was mostly improvised, and working with these incredible talents was inspiring. Sammy (the real one) particularly loved the scene where I as Sammy show some footage of “himself” in the Jack Nicholson part in
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
which he was fired from after one day for “creative differences.”

Rob was in the midst of doing a string of terrific movies:
Spinal Tap, Stand by Me
, and now came
The Princess Bride
, from William Goldman’s classic screenplay. Rob asked me to play Miracle Max, an ancient gnome of a medicine man. Carol Kane was my equally ancient wife, Valerie, and we made a magic pill that helps bring the hero back to life. No director had a more varied slate of films than Rob, and this trend would, of course, continue. His trust, sense of humor, and timing were sensational. He would always get the scene as written but would never stop finding new places for me to improvise. For instance, in a take when Rob told me, “Say whatever you want,” I came up with “True love is the greatest thing in the world, except for a nice MLT, a mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean, and the tomato is ripe. Mmmm. They’re so perky. I love that.” We’d become the closest of friends and could talk about anything with each other, which in a few years would figure in a unique way.

For Max, I asked Peter Montagna, my makeup artist from
SNL,
to make me look like a cross between Casey Stengel and my grandmother. After five hours of makeup, I was that funny-looking little old man. I hope if I get that old, I’m as much fun as Max was. To this day people will say to me, “Have fun storming the castle.” The movie wasn’t a big hit, but it is now considered a classic. I’m so proud to be in it. (If only for three minutes!) The film means something to people. I’ve now watched it with both my kids and my grandkids. In 2012, we had a twenty-fifth reunion at the New York Film Festival. The screening at Lincoln Center was raucous. A thousand fans applauded everyone’s entrance in the film and said their favorite lines with the actors on the screen. It was like going to a midnight showing of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Tears came to my eyes as they chanted Mandy Patinkin’s line “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die” and my “Have fun storming the castle.” Generations of families came to see the film and pay tribute to Rob and the cast. Sadly, André the Giant and Peter Falk had passed away, but the rest of us were there, united forever by this special film.

“Have fun storming the castle.” In London with Carol Kane.

Next came
Throw Momma from the Train,
directed by Danny DeVito, who was also my costar. I learned a lot by watching Danny act and direct himself. A funny, dark movie, it opened at number one at the box office. After that, I cowrote a movie with my great friend Eric Roth. It was called
Memories of Me
and starred Alan King and JoBeth Williams. Alan and I played an estranged father and son. Working with Alan was like going to the Museum of Comedy every day. He had a big personality and an endless wealth of stories, and we became fantastic friends. The movie didn’t do well, but I had learned how to take body shots and keep moving forward. Eric is now one of Hollywood’s best writers; he won an Academy Award for
Forrest Gump
and has been nominated for Oscars numerous times.

In 1986 HBO’s Chris Albrecht along with Bob Zmuda created
Comic Relief
, a telethon featuring every comedian they could get to raise money to help the homeless. Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, and I hosted it, and by the time we had finished all nine of our shows, we had raised over $50 million to supply medical aid to homeless people on the streets of America. We also cemented a friendship that will never fade away. They are powerful talents who go about being funny in different ways. Whoopi is smart, outspoken, and fearless. Robin is simply a comet. The challenge of keeping up with him onstage is one I relish.