On Mickey Mantle and Memory Sportswriter Peter Golenbock has written a novel, 7: The Mickey Mantle Novel, which tells a salacious and sleazy version of Mantle's life. The book is filled with tales of Mantle's drinking and womanizing, including a purported romp with Marilyn Monroe, either during or after her marriage to Yankee Clipper Joe DiMaggio.

The question is, Will anyone want to read it? Everyone knows that Mantle was no hero off the field....but do they really want his on-field heroism diminished thusly?

I recently read Golenbock's biography of Billy Martin, and it was so filled with tawdry detail, the book was a struggle to read. Martin was, off the field, a truly awful person. It was, however, exhaustively researched, and Martin had clearly participated; there was no question in my mind that the book was journalistically credible.

So why would Golenbock now take this route? He's being published, for example, by Judith Regan, who planned to publish that ghastly O.J. Simpson book....

Myself, I think I'll wait for the Mantle biography now being written by Jane Leavy, author of the terrific Koufax.....  ¶ 9:44 AM