OH, MICKEY
Take a look back at some of the players who were unfairly named ‘the next Mantle’
Jasson Dominguez is a toolsy, 16-year-old Yankees center field prospect who, like many young Yankees outfielders, has drawn comparisons to a legend.
“It’s like Mickey Mantle. He’s not 6-foot. He’s a switchhitter. He’s got crazy power. He’s fast as s—-. He loves playing,” said one international scouting director per ESPN.
It’s a lofty comp, and puts him in the company of pinstriped legends like … *checks notes* Roger Repoz?
Dominguez is his own player and person, and there is no reason to doubt his natural talent. Yet, given the singular career of The Mick, one of a small handful of the greatest players of all time, the comparisons to Mantle are well worn in Yankees lore.
“I don’t like to put comparisons like that on a 16-year-old,” said Yankees scouting director Donny Rowland of the Mantle comp. “I don’t want to put him in the same vein. I do know he’s got elite tools, elite athleticism. It’s up to him, we’re gonna do a good job of developing him, hopefully 20 years from now that’ll take care of itself.”
Rowland’s hesitance to anoint Dominguez as anything more than a talented minor was rightfully cautious. Perhaps he was acutely aware of how previous comparisons to Mickey Mantle shook out.
Throughout the mid to late 1960’s, the Yankees were desperate to continue their unquestioned baseball dominance, even as many of the greats like Mantle, staff ace Whitey Ford, catchers Yogi Berra and Elston Howard, and longtime home run king Roger Maris aged out of their primes. But the farm system that had produced so many team legends had dried up. Even the ones that did pan out by any reasonable expectation were unfairly diminished because they couldn’t match the Mick’s inner-circle greatness.
This is far from a concrete