Still Foolin’ ’Em Page 16

  * * *

  In the midst of this career angst came the loss of two great friends. In April 1995, Howard Cosell died. I had made my network television debut on Cosell’s short-lived variety show on ABC. He’d always claimed he had discovered me, and I’d even played his wife in a sketch when he’d hosted Saturday Night Live. Also, my imitations of Howard and Ali had gotten me started in television. Howard was a very complicated and fascinating person, of course, but in his devotion to Muhammad Ali and Ali’s struggle for vindication from the Supreme Court, he’d had his finest hours. He had become a close friend over the years.

  At the funeral service, it was fitting that I sat next to Ali. In front of the closed casket, Ali nudged me and whispered, “Do you think he’s wearing his hairpiece?”

  I had to hold in my laugh. “I don’t think so,” I replied.

  “Then how will God recognize him?”

  “Once he starts complaining, he’ll know,” I said.

  We both shared a muffled laugh. “He was a good man,” said Ali—his last words to me that day.

  * * *

  Just a few months later, another sad good-bye. Mickey Mantle and I had seen less of each other over the last few years, and I knew he wasn’t doing well. His drinking had continued to get worse, according to Bob Costas and other good friends who spent time with him. I’d encountered the problem firsthand when I’d invited Mickey to come to the New York premiere of City Slickers. I talked about him and my first game in the film, and I wanted him to be there to see it. Also, that night I was being honored by the Anti-Defamation League as the entertainer of the year. The award ceremony preceded the film, and I could see Mickey’s empty seat as I was asked to come onstage and receive the award, which I assumed was a plaque. Instead, a large object covered with a cloth was brought out. The ADL representative explained that, knowing my love for baseball and the Yankees, they were giving me an original seat from Yankee Stadium. The ballpark had been renovated, so these seats were rare. It was the same kind of wooden seat I’d sat in back in l956. Amazingly, it had the number 7—Mickey’s number—on it. I was onstage, overwhelmed by this gift, and I could see that Mantle’s seat was still empty. After the premiere I went back to the hotel, and the doorman told me Mickey was in the bar and had requested that I stop by.

  “Hey, you little son of a bitch. Sorry, got held up here. How’d it go?”

  I told him about the seat. “A seat? I put asses in them seats, and I don’t have one,” he laughed. I asked him to sign it, which he agreed to do. “Where is it?” he asked.

  I explained that he should call the man on the business card I handed him. As I pointed at the name, I could only imagine Mickey with his Oklahoma accent asking for Schlomo Abromowitz.

  We said good-bye, and two weeks later the crate arrived at my home in Los Angeles. There it was, my Yankee Stadium No. 7 seat with this inscription: “Billy, wish you was still sittin here and I was still playing. —Mickey Mantle 6/7/’91.”

  It was perfect. Cowboy poetry, I thought. I’m looking at it now as I write this. I have a very nice art collection, but nothing comes close to this perfect piece of American folk art. Years later, I bought one of Mantle’s gloves from the sixties at an auction, and I rest it on the chair. It’s my own Hall of Fame.

  Mickey’s sons, Danny and David, were recovering alcoholics. Danny had gotten sober at Betty Ford, and in 1994 he convinced his father to go. Finally, Mick checked himself in. He came out of the program a changed man. Mickey and Bob Costas did a televised interview together that was just heartbreaking. Mickey sat there holding a handkerchief, using it to dab at his wet eyes. He seemed so much smaller in some ways, and so much bigger in others. He talked openly about his drinking, admitting that he was an alcoholic and that he now had a good feeling about himself and how he wanted to live the rest of his life. A few months later, I received a letter from him inviting me to play in his golf tournament. He closed his note with “Can’t wait to see you now that I’m sober.”

  The tournament never happened. Mickey was gravely ill and needed a liver transplant to survive. He got the liver, and with his life like a game that he couldn’t possibly win, he rallied.

  The last time I saw him was on television. He appeared at a press conference to announce the Mickey Mantle organ donor program, which would go on to become very successful. Mickey needed help getting to the podium. He wore a baseball cap and had the look of a very sick man. He said that he wasn’t a role model. God had given him a body, and he’d blown it. Don’t be like me, he said, and was then led away. I was shocked to see him this way. His demons had had their way with him for sure, but it was also clear that he had a new insight. He was honest and direct. He was even able to make a joke. Barry Halper, a friend of Mantle’s and the biggest collector of baseball memorabilia, was in the audience. Mickey saw him and asked, “Barry, did you get the liver?” His joking gave me hope, but what I didn’t know—what nobody knew—was that cancer had spread throughout his body and he was terminal.

  I spoke to him once in the hospital and told him I wanted to come visit. “Not right now,” he said “Give me a little time. I wanna be able to have some fun when I see you.” A few weeks later, Costas called me to say that Mickey had taken a turn for the worse. He died the next day.

  “Come to Dallas and help me write the eulogy,” Bob said. I flew out with a heavy heart, jotting down some thoughts on the plane. Bob and I hugged each other hello like we were about to bury a favorite uncle, but in a way Mickey was much more than that to us. It’s hard to explain to some people what it was like to grow up as a Yankee fan during those glory days. Mickey was ours. There was no one like him. The power, the speed—but there was something else. He was vulnerable, it seemed, even then. He had the perfect baseball name. He looked better in the uniform than anyone else. He was the symbol of a simple time in our youth. We jumped onto his broad shoulders and he carried us to middle age, and even though we got older, we didn’t want him to. When I was with him later in his life, grown men would stand up and, with tears in their eyes, try to say how much they loved him. Mickey didn’t understand that until the end, but I know he finally got it.

  Bob and I stayed up most of the night working on the eulogy, which he delivered beautifully at the service. Giving Mickey Mantle’s eulogy is like trying to hit a fastball on a cool October night with the World Series on the line. You don’t want to foul it off, you have to get all of it, and only Bob could have done him justice. I sat there with George Steinbrenner and Reggie Jackson. The casket was covered with flowers forming the number 7. When the ’61 Yankees approached the casket as pallbearers to lead their teammate away, I lost it. That was my team, now all in their sixties carrying the casket of their fallen prince.

  Maybe it’s the baseball magic. When Dad rolls a ball to you for the first time and you roll it back, it starts; but then there comes a time when you don’t want Dad to throw it to you—you want Mickey to. I got that chance.

  * * *

  While I was shooting Father’s Day in Reno, I got a call from George Steinbrenner on behalf of Mickey’s family. They wanted me to speak at the unveiling of Mickey’s monument in Yankee Stadium. Moved and honored, I agreed and flew to New York. It was a somber occasion as the Yankees and fifty-seven thousand fans gathered to remember the legend. Many former Yankee teammates were there, and after a few spoke, Bobby Murcer, a former Yankee and now an announcer, introduced me. He told the crowd that I was a great Yankee fan and a dear friend of Mickey’s and that the family wanted me to speak. I almost tripped on my way out of the dugout, but I made my way to the microphone. At the home plate I always dreamed of stepping on after my World Series–winning home run, I spoke of my dad taking me to my first game in 1956 and asked the last row of the upper deck to stand up to show how far Mickey had hit the ball that day. I told them I was there representing all the fathers in the stands who were bringing their sons to their first game. I then introduced a film package of Mickey moments, which was shown o
n the big scoreboard screen. As it was playing, Murcer came over and said, “While you’re there when it’s over, introduce Joe DiMaggio.”

  Oh man, okay, I thought. In the dugout, Joe was pacing; I spotted his broad back, shock of white hair, and chiseled face. I had never met him, but he’d been my dad’s favorite player. “Ladies and gentleman, please welcome Joe DiMaggio,” I said.

  Joe bounded out onto the field and got to me quickly as the crowd roared. “I’m not speaking—what do I do?” he asked gruffly.

  “Wave and stand next to Whitey Ford,” I replied.

  When the ceremony was over and we were leaving the field, Mark McGwire of the Oakland A’s called to me and tipped his cap as if to say, “Good job.” Joe Torre, in his first year as manager of the Yankees, invited me to work out with the team. I spent some time with Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford. I greeted Mickey’s widow, Merlyn, and their sons David and Danny. We were standing just outside the Yankee clubhouse when the door opened and Joe DiMaggio came out. He stepped toward me and, without warning, punched me in the stomach. Hard. I wasn’t ready for it, and it knocked the wind out of me. He put his face inches from mine. “Greatest living player!” he hissed, and he stormed off. I didn’t know what to do. Totally confused, I was escorted up to Mr. Steinbrenner’s box, and when I arrived, George was laughing. “Well, you pissed Joe off—he insists on being introduced as the greatest living player.”

  “I didn’t know. Can I apologize to him?”

  George laughed some more. “Joe was so angry that he left the stadium, and not just because of that. He was jealous of Mickey and couldn’t stand the fact that it was Mickey’s day, even though Mickey’s gone. I’ll take care of it,” he assured me. “Don’t worry.” But this would not be my last encounter with Mr. DiMaggio.

  * * *

  In 1997, Gil Cates started pressuring me to do the Oscars again, after a gap of three years. I kept saying no. Then one day a large gift box was delivered to the house. I opened it, and inside was a prop horse’s head with a note: “If you want to see the rest of the horse alive, do the fucking show.” I was getting tons of mail from people saying they missed me, so I decided to go ahead with it.

  Meeting Joe DiMaggio at Yankee Stadium on Mickey Mantle Day—a few minutes later he belted me.

  We started planning the show, and I came up with the idea of filming myself in scenes from the nominated films, so it would look like I was in all of the movies. The story would be that after three years off, I’m coming back to the Oscars and I’m nervous about how to do it. We could shoot it to make it look like I was in the five movies, and that could surprise the crowd and give me a funny opening. We hired Troy Miller and his company Dakota Pictures to shoot the piece. The movies that year were all small independent films, except for Jerry Maguire, which had been the lone big financial hit. The opening sequence began with a brief moment of Yoda telling someone, “You must go back,” and when I appeared, asking, “To the Oscars?” it totally caught the crowd off guard. I was then edited into scenes from Secrets and Lies, Jerry Maguire, Fargo, Shine, and The English Patient; David Letterman, who’d had a tough time hosting the Oscars a couple of years earlier, graciously agreed to do a cameo at the end of the film, poking fun at himself. We shot him flying the biplane from The English Patient; David looked like he was after me and then insanely started screaming, “Here’s what you have to do: introduce Uma to Oprah, and Oprah to Uma, and KEEP DOING IT!” The plane crashed into the desert, I ran toward the audience on film, and then at the precise moment, I burst right through the special screen the film was being projected on (which was a series of strips of fabric) and onto the stage. The audience stood up and gave me an ovation that was so emotional I had a tough time getting my first lines out.

  After the Oscars, my agent, Andrea Eastman, sent me a script by the wonderful writer Kenneth Lonergan called Analyze This. It was the story of a Mafia boss who is having a midlife crisis and starts seeing a shrink; then at one point he realizes he’s told the shrink too much and has to kill him. It was dark and funny, and I loved it. I brought in Peter Tolan to rewrite with me, and Paula Weinstein was to produce and I would be executive producer and play the shrink. I was convinced that Robert De Niro should play Paul Vitti, the midlife-crisis Mafia boss who can’t kill anymore and cries at life insurance commercials. He hadn’t done a mainstream comedy like this, but of course he was brilliant, and I kept telling everyone how many times he made me laugh in Raging Bull, King of Comedy, and even a dark movie like Sleepers. Over and over again studio executives told us that he would never do it. “De Niro? No way.” I had met him socially a few times, just small talk, but I called him. I told him about the script and how funny I believed he could be in this part. He read it immediately and called me two days later and suggested that we do a reading. In a conference room at CAA, I sat across from the great De Niro and, with a good cast in the key parts, we read the movie. He got big laughs right away, and I could see him enjoying himself. We had a natural chemistry, and I couldn’t get over the fact I was acting with him. “Let me think,” Bob said. His concerns were legit: How far should he go with this character? Would it hurt his chances to play a mob character again? Would he be making fun of himself? I told him that audiences would love it if he winked at himself.

  I was on pins and needles for a few months as he thought and thought. Finally he said yes. When it was announced that we were doing this together, there was a great buzz about the pairing—two actors so different in every way playing opposite each other. Harold Ramis came on to write and direct and he took what Peter and I had done and elevated it. We started shooting in New York, and Bob asked that we film all his anxiety-attack scenes first, so that when he came into my office for the first time, it would be in perfect sequence.

  Eight days later, our first day of filming together arrived. We met on the set at seven A.M., and Bob looked sleepy and unshaved, his hair unkempt. After an easy rehearsal, Harold figured out the shots and then Bob and I went to our dressing rooms to get ready. Two hours later I’m called to the set, and Robert De Niro isn’t there; Paul Vitti is. Wearing a silk suit, clean-shaven, with his hair slicked back and a menacing but needy look in his eye, Bob was ready to—pardon the pun—shoot. Just seeing him helped me get firmly into character. Ramis called, “ACTION,” Vitti walked into my office and said his first few lines, I did mine, and “CUT.” Bob motioned me over secretively. Uh-oh, I thought, he’s gonna say, “Is that the best you can do that? Where did you learn to act?” Instead, he whispered into my ear, “Listen, if you see anything you think could be funnier, let me know, okay? Just take me aside with any ideas.”

  “You have a gift, my friend.” The great Robert De Niro, Analyze This.

  I was amazed. The world’s greatest actor was saying it was okay to give him ideas, that he trusted me. We did the next take and after “CUT,” I went over to him: “Is that the best you can do that? Jesus…” We laughed, and from that moment on, playing straight man to De Niro was as good as it gets. I felt like a trapeze catcher. One guy does the spins and somersaults, but he needs the other guy to catch him. De Niro’s technique was fascinating. He loves to keep doing different versions of line readings, all of them coming at you at lightning speed. He would keep going back and starting over as he repeated lines four or five times, each time with a different spin to it. Bob made me better just by being great himself. I played a man who listened for a living. That’s what I had to do playing opposite him: listen and respond in kind. When we’d finish a really tough scene together, Bob would hug me and say, “Good day today,” which was better than any good review I could ever get.

  After we wrapped the film, I started planning a big event: my fiftieth birthday party. This was a big one. Fifty is the last stop of middle age. I felt much more reflective. I wasn’t as anxious as I’d been about turning forty; I found myself thinking that life is short. My dad had died at fifty-four, and I knew how hard he’d worked for us, but I wasn’t sure he’d had enoug
h fun in his life. I wanted that to be a goal for myself. I had been very fortunate in my career, doing all kinds of things I hadn’t thought I would get a chance to do. Only one experience was missing: Broadway. I started making notes for a one-man show that I’d had in the back of my mind. I wrote a four-page blueprint of a show about me and my family and my relationship with my late father. I called it 700 Sundays—for the number of Sundays (his only day off) we were able to share before his death when I was fifteen. When my mom came out for my birthday party, she brought tons of photos and audiotapes and home movies that she wanted me to have. Little did I know how much they would mean to me when, six years later, I would use them as I began the process of creating the show. But I didn’t do anything with the four-page outline then, except file it in my desk drawer. I wasn’t ready yet.

  Doing Analyze This had put me in a good frame of mind, and I invited two hundred friends and family members to my fiftieth birthday party. Janice and I rented the ballroom at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills and had a set designer turn it into an old-fashioned nightclub, complete with red leather banquettes, that we called “Club Fifty.” March 14 fell on a Saturday that year. The day was normal. I worked out in the morning with my friend and trainer, Dan Isaacson. My mom joined us for a while. She had gotten heavy late in her life, and Dan said, “Helen, there are a lot of good diets for people your age.” She replied, “I don’t need a diet—I put on some weight after the last baby.” Which was me. I went to get the mail, and my fucking AARP card had come. Did the card have to arrive on the very day I turned fifty? Did they think, Hey let’s ruin his day and send him this reminder that he’s an old fart? I said to Janice, “Hey, honey, I’m old now, which means you are officially a trophy wife.”