The Quality of Courage

(Book summary from inside jacket cover)

"I guess it's a foolish idea, trying to tell boys what they should do.  I know I didn't do much listening myself when I was that age.  Except in one way.  One thing grown-ups talked about I respected and admired... and I still do.  That one thing is courage.  That's why this book is about courage.  I hope the boys who read it will get some idea of what I think it is, why I admire it, and why I hope they will have courage as part of their makeup for all of their lives."

No one is born with courage, but it's the hardest thing anyone can learn - and it can only be taught by example.  In these pages, Mickey Mantle, the famous slugger of the New York Yankees, talks of the many different forms courage can take.  Most of the examples are taken from the lives of such outstanding ballplayers as Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Roy Campanella, Ralph Houk, and Red Schoendienst, but there are other stories far removed from the ball park - from a squad-leader's instinctive reaction under machine-gun fire to a small boy conquering his terror of the barber chair.

It was Hemingway who said, "Guts is grace under pressure."  Mickey Mantle describes the guts it took for Jackie Robinson not to fight back under the ugly barrage of insults he weathered that first year he broke into the Majors, for Yogi Berra to turn a smile and a deaf ear to the same thoughtless jokes year after year for almost two decades.  Some amazing comeback stories are here too - of Jimmy Piersall's triumph over mental illness; of Lou Brissie, whose shrapnel-shattered leg was almost amputated; of Don Zimmer, who never quit despite one staggering injury after another.

The Quality of Courage is an unusual, unforgettable book - a book for every father who wants his son to become a man in the truest sense of the word.