Mickey Mantle

Mickey Mantle, wearing his familiar pinstripes and No. 7, walks through the stands of Yankee Stadium before a game in 1963. The Times called Mantle, “The most powerful switch-hitter in baseball history and the successor to Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio as the symbol of the long reign of the New York Yankees.”

When “The Mick” died at age 63 in 1995, The Times wrote, “He was the blond, muscled switch-hitter who joined the Yankees at 19 in 1951 as DiMaggio was winding down his Hall of Fame career. Wearing No. 7, he led the team through 14 years of the greatest success any baseball team has known before he endured four more years of decline. He not only hit the ball, he hammered it. He hit often, he hit deep and he did it from both sides of the plate better than anyone else. He could drag a bunt, too, with runaway speed, and he played his role with a kind of all-American sense of destiny.”