Dropped by the publisher that was going to release OJ Simpson's "If I Did It," this book would make Henry Miller blush.Peter Golenbock, author of many sports books, has written a novel about baseball great Mickey Mantle. A fictional account of the late Yankee's life, the book is told in first person and packed with saucy tales, bawdy jokes, and celebrity-packed anecdotes from the life and career of this baseball great. It takes place in heaven, where Mantle, talking with dead baseball writer Leonard Shecter, coauthor of Ball Four, recalls his three favorite things in life: "puss," booze and,...

Dropped by the publisher that was going to release OJ Simpson's "If I Did It," this book would make Henry Miller blush.Peter Golenbock, author of many sports books, has written a novel about baseball great Mickey Mantle. A fictional account of the late Yankee's life, the book is told in first person and packed with saucy tales, bawdy jokes, and celebrity-packed anecdotes from the life and career of this baseball great. It takes place in heaven, where Mantle, talking with dead baseball writer Leonard Shecter, coauthor of Ball Four, recalls his three favorite things in life: "puss," booze and, lastly, baseball. Mantle is the first-person narrator and in the first half of the book takes us on a hedonistic yet misogynistic ride. There are stories of him and fellow teammate Billy Martin and their endless pursuit of women, in bars, on ledges outside of hotel rooms, in dark movie theaters, with telescopes and while signing autographs ("We'll sign your balls if you'd... play with ours"). Mickey seems more of the gentleman ("I don't believe in having sex with women against their will the way Billy sometimes did"), but the quest for sex is endless.Perhaps the most controversial part is about Mantle supposedly bedding Marilyn Monroe while she was married to Joe DiMaggio. In a scene where Mantle prematurely ejaculates and Monroe is "frigid," Mantle pronounces Marilyn "a lousy lay." Dropped into the book are samples of Mantle's sophomoric humor ("How can you tell when two lesbians are twins? They lick alike") that are sometimes downright offensive.The second half of the book looks at Mantle's impressive Hall of Fame career, but no one will be talking about that. This is not a book to give to your favorite nephew."A comic, wild, sad and salacious reimagining of the late Yankee's 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 Golenbock's 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 won't like it, but I bet Mickey would laugh and cry his ass off." --Robert Lipsyte, former New York Times sportswriter and columnist "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 Golenbock's 7 is alternately funny and touching, and captures both Mickey's demons and his great sense of humor. It's fascinating to read these stories in Mickey's 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 Randall's 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