TODAY IS HOLLY BROOKE’S 93rd birthday. She was Mickey Mantle’s true love. They met in 1951, Mickey’s rookie season, and they carried on a romance well into the 1960s.
It was Holly who, after staying with Mickey in Kansas City during his month-long demotion to the minors, suggested that upon his return to the Yankees that he ask for his uniform number to be switched from 6 to 7 — special because her birthday was June 7.
In the new book DiMag & Mick, author Tony Castro reveals that the Yankees’ switch-hitting icon proposed to New York actress Holly Brooke in that 1951 season and that they carried on an affair for years even after he married his high school sweetheart to please his dying father.
For decades, sportswriters and authors tried unsuccessfully to interview Brooke — and were never even able to track her down.
But Castro, the author of the critically acclaimed biography Mickey Mantle: America’s Prodigal Son, not only found the elusive Holly Brooke but interviewed her exhaustively about her relationship with Mick and her recollection of Mantle’s time in New York — including the friendship he shared with Joe DiMaggio but which few others knew about.
To listen to Tony Castro talk about Holly and Mick go to his latest interview.