Mantle & Maris Magazine from 1961

I came across this on eBay and remembered having it as a kid. There used to be a lot of 'pulp' mags on the shelves at Lee's Candy Store/Newsstand in Nutley N.J. when I was growing up. I bid and won and probably paid too much but as someone once said.....'Nostalgia is a helluva drug' (or something like that). I remember also having a similar Mantle/Mays issue but I've never seen it come up on eBay and I'm beginning to think it exists only in my imagination.

Anyway, the mag was published in the summer of 1961 as Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were chasing the single-season homer record. I was living right in the middle of all the hype. I can't imagine what it would be like today with the 'net because it was out of control then.

The copy I bought is in pretty good shape. The spine is about perfect but the pages have browned as the cheap paper they used for these things tends to do. But there are no rips, tears or stains. I was very happy with the condition as I've been burned before on other old paper items.

I don't like scanning an item like this because I have to open it to place the pages on the platen and I've broken spines doing that before. So I've scanned a few easy to do pages and photographed a few others.

The content page lists over a dozen 'articles' but mostly the mag consists of black and white pictures. Lots of them. The text just serves to flesh out each group of pictures.

The center pages contain a full-page portrait of both Mantle and Maris. I thought I had scanned them both but apparently not. Here is the Mantle photo page.

The 'records section' is near the back.

They publishers dug up a lot of 'homey' shots for bios of the M&M Boys.

I'm sure it wasn't hard to find action shots of them either.

The text references the ongoing home run duel. I get the impression that the publishing date was mid- to late- summer of 1961.

Stuff like this is right up my alley collecting-wise. I can kill off a couple of evenings flipping through the pages and remembering the fun I had with my friends hanging out at Lee's and watching baseball with my father. I just wish I had hung on to all my old magazines. It would have saved me quite a bit of money nowadays.