The Twin Brothers of Mickey Mantle

In baseball, it’s rare for a player to be deified to the level of former New York Yankees outfielder Mickey Mantle, who could seemingly do it all on the field. However, few baseball fans are aware that he had two younger twin brothers, Roy and Ray, who also played professional ball, but never reached the same heights as the Mick.

Mantle was the idol of a generation of children that grew up watching the Yankees in the 1950s and 1960s. The five-tool talent hit a combined .298 with 536 home runs, while winning three MVP awards and helping his teams to eight World Series titles (in 12 appearances). If not for nagging injuries and a fondness for the nightlife, his numbers might have been even more impressive, as hard as that is to believe.

Thus, it is with little doubt, teams must have been extremely excited about Mantle’s twin brothers, who were five years his junior and were also prodigious on the baseball diamond as outfielders. Naturally, there was only one team they were probably ever going to go to, and that was the New York Yankees.

Both Roy (batted left) and Ray (batted right), who were born February 22, 1936, signed with the Bronx Bombers in 1954 after start turns playing ball for their high school in Commerce, Oklahoma. They were both also football stars, a sport that Mickey preferred they pursue collegiately, but it was not to be. Ray had attended Northeast Oklahoma A&M College but decided to give professional baseball a try. He hit .231 with five home runs in 97 games spanning parts of two…