Becoming a Baseball Player
His football career was over, but that didn’t mean he would stop playing sports. His first taste of playing professional baseball was with the Baster Springs Whiz Kids. During one of the team’s practices, a Yankee scout came to watch one of his fellow teammates play.
Photo by William Jacobellis/Stanley Weston Archive/Getty Images
It just so happened to be a good day for Mantle as he hit three home runs. Greenwade, the original scout who came, was impressed and returned after Mantle graduated high school and signed him into the minor leagues. The minor league team name was the Independence Yankees (class-D) as part of the Kansas-Oklahoma-Mississippi league.