A comic, wild, sad and salacious reimagining of the late Yankees life * The New York Times * Mickey Mantle was the most fascinating ball-player I ever covered. I thought I knew everything about him; but Peter Golenbocks wildly funny, shrewd and eventually compassionate fictional take is as intellectually satisfying as it is risky. The pathetic journalists and fans who have objectified the Mick to make him an icon wont like it, but I bet Mickey would laugh and cry his ass off. -- Robert Lipsyte, American sports journalist, ESPN Ombudsman, and author of An Accidental Sportswriter Mickey was one of my best friends, and this book is the closest thing to the real Mickey Mantle that I have ever read. No one could make me laugh like Mickey could, until now. I experienced a real joy, feeling I was with him again. -- Bill Reedy Mickey Mantle was a nice bunch of guys. We in the media were warned for years to get him early in the day or bad Mickey would pay a visit. Peter Golenbocks 7 is alternately funny and touching, and captures both Mickeys demons and his great sense of humor. Its fascinating to read these stories in Mickeys voice. His self-examination of what went wrong, driven by his insecurities instilled in childhood, is revealing. 7 distills the essence of this tortured soul, with all the heartaches and regrets. 7 is a grand slam. -- Ed Randall, Ed Randalls Talking Baseball, WFAN radio, New York This is a book solidly in the American grain. Mickey Mantle was talented, doomed, wry, outrageously lewd and tortured by poor-boy morality, and his comic soul comes busting straight through as he attempts to interview his guilt away in heaven. He was a sinner, absolutely, but he was one of us. Golenbock has made him inescapable as well as unputdownable. -- Burton Hersh, author of "The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA"
