An ‘accidental fan’

Baseball writer-historian Marty Appel is Putnam Fund guest speaker Oct. 12

By ROGER AMSDEN, LACONIA DAILY SUN

LACONIA — Marty Appel, award-winning author of more than 20 books on baseball, will provide a special presentation on his amazing career in a Putnam Fund-sponsored program at the Taylor Community's Woodside Building on Thursday, Oct. 12, at 7 p.m.

Hired by the New York Yankees at the age of 19 to answer Mickey Mantle’s fan mail, Appel developed a life-long friendship with Mantle, one of many New York Yankee players he has written about.

He say that Mantle was “a wonderful guy who was most proud of being called a great teammate by the other players. He knew how hard it was for the younger players to fit in so he would go over to them when they showed up in the locker room and say 'Hi. I'm Mickey'. It made them feel like they were accepted and could fit in,” said Appel.

He said that Yankee owner George Steinbrenner hired him as publicity director for the New York Yankees when he was only 23.

As a Yankee employee from 1968-1977, and as their television producer in the ‘80s and ‘90s, he never missed an opportunity to get to know the elders of Yankee lore – be they Lefty Gomez, Bill Dickey, Red Ruffing, Bob Shawkey, or Waite Hoyt from long ago – or his boyhood heroes like Whitey Ford, Bobby Richardson, and Elston Howard to his contemporaries like Catfish Hunter, Graig Nettles, Thurman Munson, Lou Piniella and Willie Randolph.

And of course, there were the ones everyone wants to know more about; Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Billy Martin, Casey Stengel, and yes, the Voice of the Yankees, Mel Allen.

He has written more than 20 books on the sport, including books about Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford and most recently, Casey Stengel, which includes information on Stengel’s connections to Boston and its baseball teams.

Stengel played for the Boston Braves and was their manager in the 1940s, the last big league job he held before being named Yankee manager after the 1948 season. He was best known as a player for an inside the park home run against the Yankees in the 1923 World Series when he was an outfielder with the New York Giants.

He said that Stengel studied at a dentist's college in Kansas City while playing minor league baseball and gave up on his studies after three years by saying that it was too hard to find dental tools made for lefthanded people. “You wonder why it took him three years to figure that out or whether it was a convenient excuse to give to his parents,” says Appel.

He says that he was motivated to write his most recent book about Stengel with the knowledge that not many people under the age of 40 even know who Stengel was and of his great contributions to the game.

Appel, who says he is an “accidental Yankee fan”, having been born in Brooklyn, has been cited by the New York Times as one of the nation’s premier authorities on Yankee history, and is generally acknowledged as one of baseball’s most informed historians. Indeed, a private library of more than 2000 baseball volumes is one of the largest private collections in the country.

He says that he has a link to New Hampshire, having spent summers in Bethlehem, where he remembers as a child having been quarantined during a polio outbreak. He says that he also enjoyed trips into Littleton and through Franconia Notch as some of the highlights of summers spent there.

Appel, for 21 years a collaborator on the plaques that hang in Cooperstown, was also co-author of books with Thurman Munson, Lee MacPhail, Bowie Kuhn and Tom Seaver. Through his public relations company, he handles Yogi Berra and the Yogi Berra Museum, as well as Topps, Leland’s Auctions, The Sporting News and other Yankee-related accounts.

He has known them all, from Babe Ruth’s mascot, widow and daughters to Eleanor Gehrig, to clubhouse man Pete Sheehy, PA announcer Bob Sheppard, Toots Shor, George Weiss, Don Mattingly, Dave Winfield, and Derek Jeter. And he’s been called a “storyteller’s storyteller.” And his book, Now Pitching for the Yankees, an autobiographical tale of his Yankee adventures, was named the best New York baseball book of 2001 by ESPN.

A large turnout is expected for his appearance at the Taylor Community and people are encouraged to show up early in order to claim a seat. There is no admission charge.

Marty Appel and Mickey Mantle. Appel was hired by the New York Yankees to answer Mantle's fan mail in 1968. Appel was only19 at the time. (Courtesy photo)