The Long Search

By Robert Palazzo

About seven months ago, I received an email from a gentleman named Neil who had stumbled upon my Mickey Mantle article that is posted on The Diamond Angle web site. http://www.thediamondangle.com/archive/aug01/bobmickey.html.

Apparently he had missed Mickey's televised funeral in 1995 and had been searching nine years for a videotape of the ceremony. In his email to me he asked if there was a remote chance that I had taped it.

Of course I had!

I emailed Neil back and gave him the good news... and the bad. I indeed had taped the funeral but I had about 200 tapes in my collection. I used to be a videotape freak. I taped everything:

* Yankee games,
* Yankee game highlights,
* Yankee specials,
* Syracuse University football games,
* Syracuse University football game highlights,
* Syracuse University Basketball games,
* Syracuse University Basketball game highlights

You get the picture. Also, throw in television specials and music concerts for good measure! I had a mess. Not all were catalogued nor was there any consistency to what was on any particular tape.

Well, a Mickey Mantle fan was a Mickey Mantle fan, and I was determined to find the funeral tape for Neil, or so I thought. Weeks went by and I avoided the task. Weeks became months.

Finally, I tackled the mess and found one tape that had numerous Yankee and Mick footage along with one notation that read "Mick Funeral Part 1". Huh? Why did I split it onto two tapes and where was the other tape? I was becoming increasingly convinced that Neil might not be getting the video after all.

About one week later, I resumed the search and found Part 2. Now all I had to do was have the tapes copied and shipped off to Neil. One week dragged into another. Finally I bought some blank tapes and contacted a friend, who would copy for me. Of course, I had to get the tapes to him. You know the drill - one week became two... became three. Finally the tapes were copied and after about two more weeks I dragged my butt to the post office and shipped them to Neil.

By then I had decided I wasn't going to ask for reimbursement for the cost of the tapes nor the shipping. I had made Neil wait about five months.

Upon receiving the tapes, Neil sent me the following message, which I re-print with his permission:

I got the tapes Friday. I watched them last night. I cried when the service came on. I've always loved Roy Clark's "Yesterday When I Was Young" I know Mick knew there wouldn't be a dry eye in the house over that one. Costas' eulogy was brilliant, I have heard it and seen it in print, but seeing it on tape was really something.

He summed it up for guys like us perfectly. Again I can't thank you enough for the trouble you went through to get these tapes to me. As I told you before I had been searching since 1995. I guess Yankee fans never give up. Thanks Again. Neil

P.S. There will be a special thank you gift coming your way soon

I found out that Neil is eleven years older than I am but the admiration we share for our boyhood idol is the same and I know exactly what Neil was talking about when he said he cried. I remember being in the kitchen, TV on in the living room on WPIX (the former TV home of the Yankees), and asking my daughter to raise the volume because I couldn't believe what I had just heard. I sat on the floor in front of the TV and listened as Bob Shepard, (the Yankee public address announcer for just about forever) said, "Today is a sad day..." I too, cried.

About two weeks after Neil got his tapes I received a box in the mail. It was a FIGI box from Neil and I thought "How nice. This is the special gift he referred to in his PS to me". FIGI is known for excellent specialty cheeses and such.

But something was wrong here. This package came directly from Neil; it wasn't shipped directly from FIGI, as a regular mail order would have been. There is something other than food in here.

When I opened it, what I saw was a beautiful gift with tremendous meaning to a Mickey Mantle fan. Laminated and framed, was Bob Costas' eulogy, with an image of the Mick in the background, his back facing the observer. It was hand made by Neil. Again in his words, "I always liked the picture of Mick on deck looking out to left field with the roof facade and all. So I lightened it and printed it. Then I found Costas' eulogy, pasted it in Word and ran the picture through again. It was fun making it."

Since then, Neil, who lives in Florida, and I, in upstate NY, have continued to share e-mails. Neil collects CDs of old radio shows and will be sending me a couple of CDs from 1940's radio shows of another of my boyhood idols, Superman.

Neil can expect to get some Mick stuff from me soon.