About this Episode: Baseball great Mickey Mantle played hard both on and off the field. The belief that he would die young like his father may have led to Mantle’s failure to take care of himself. In the early 1990s, Mantle entered a clinic to combat alcoholism. Several years later, he was hospitalized for cancer. The former New York Yankees slugger had admitted years earlier that there was a void in his life. He had heard the gospel message many times from Christian friends. While in the hospital near the end of his life, he came to Christ while listening to a testimonial tape by NBA Hall of Famer Pete Maravich. A few weeks before his death, Mantle shared with a close friend that he “now trusted Christ as his Lord and Savior.”