Mickey Mantle's 1956 Triple Crown Year

As hard as it must be for baby boomers to accept, this year marks the 50th anniversary of one the greatest seasons in baseball history, Mickey Mantle and his Triple Crown year.

In 1956, Mickey Mantle had a baseball season that has been matched by precious few players, as his unlimited potential finally broke through all at once and the 24 year old from Oklahoma rose to full blown superstar status. Even today, the name of Mickey Mantle invokes a combination of power and speed that has never been matched in baseball.

Mickey Mantle came to the Yankees hyped as the great centerfielder that was to take over for the supremely talented Joe DiMaggio. Although he put together some very good seasons, Mickey Mantle was really only teasing baseball fans in his first couple of years with the New York Yankees. He knocked in 87 runs at the age of 20 in 1952, but it was not until a mid-April game in 1953 that Mickey Mantle's legend began to come to the forefront.

In the country's capital, on April 17th, 1953, switch-hitter Mickey Mantle hit what is still the longest measured home run in Major League Baseball history. Babe Ruth had reportedly hit a ball 600 feet in 1926 at Detroit, but despite numerous eyewitnesses who swore to the authenticity of the distance, it was never officially measured. Mickey Mantle's ball, hit off of the Senator's Chuck Stobbs, cleared the left field fence 391 feet away, nicked a scoreboard mounted on a 50 foot high wall that was 69 feet behind the fences, and kept going. Yankees public relations man Red Patterson smartly left the stadium to see where the ball landed. When he was shown the spot by the boy who had retrieved the ball, Patterson paced off the distance to the left field fence and came up with the figure. Mickey Mantle had hit the ball 565 feet!