The night New York Yankees star Mickey Mantle was taken to police headquarters in Baltimore – The Denver Post

Retired Baltimore City Police Sgt. Dick Ellwood was about to go off his shift one night in 1966. He heard a commotion and spotted some staggering imbibers.

He normally worked a foot post along Greenmount Avenue and Preston Street, near his boyhood home on East Chase and Valley streets.

That night he was assigned to a different spot, Charles and Eager streets.

“There were plenty of restaurants there. The idea was to keep things quiet. The area was very busy then,” he said, referring to the part of Charles Street where the old Harvey House, Blue Mirror, Owl Bar, China Clipper, Mount Vernon, Peabody Book Shop and Beer Stube, and Eager House were busy venues.

Ellwood was standing at a police call box, a private telephone in a metal box awaiting a message to end his shift, when he heard a commotion.

A group of well-dressed men were leaving the Eager House restaurant at West Eager and Morton streets. They were loud and walking the short distance toward Charles Street alongside the old Chanticleer nightclub.

“I was a New York Yankees fan then and I instantly recognized them. The group was composed of Whitey Ford, Tony Kubek, Clete Boyer, Ralph Houk, Joe Pepitone and Mickey Mantle,” he said.

Mantle was intoxicated and the loudest of them all.

“The others were under control. Mantle was not,” Ellwood said. “He was screaming and hollering, disorderly and causing commotion, and the team had to be back to the Sheraton-Belvedere Hotel by 11 p.m. It was a few minutes past then. They were in a hurry to get back.”

The Eager House restaurant’s owner, Bill Tutton, courted sports figures as patrons. Tutton also loved police officers.

“Mantle was falling on the street. When he went down, his teammates picked him up. He was boisterous and name-calling. They let him go and he went down again,” Ellwood said. “He was using bad language and very drunk.”

The mood changed when Ellwood confronted him and said, “I’m locking you up.”

“The others laughed at it because they thought I was kidding,” Ellwood recalled. “They may have seen this before with Mantle. Then they realized it was going to happen.”

Ellwood walked back to the same call box and summoned a patrol wagon.

The police van arrived and a pair of older officers assessed the situation. They asked Ellwood, who was 22 years old and recently honorably discharged from the Marine Corps, if he really had the temerity to arrest the best-known ballplayer in the country at Charles and Eager streets?

Mantle was winding up a long career with the Yankees at this time and was regarded as one of the greatest baseball players of all time. A three-time American League Most Valuable Player, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame eight years later. He also battled alcoholism and years later sought treatment at the Betty Ford Clinic.

Ellwood was indeed determined. Mantle stopped and sat on a low brick wall surrounding a parking lot.

The ballplayer was transported to Central District, then on Fayette Street in downtown Baltimore.

The lieutenant on duty that shift was Bo Fink, who when he recognized one of the legends of baseball, told Ellwood: “Do you realize what you’ve done? You can’t lock up Mickey Mantle.”

What happened? Mantle was released at 2 a.m. Police officers drove him back to the Belvedere, then a busy hotel that hosted numerous sports teams.

“The next day I’m driving to work and hear on the radio, “‘Now batting, Mickey Mantle,” Ellwood said. “I couldn’t believe my ears. He was able to play the next day.”

Ellwood went on to become a sergeant and retired in 1990. He worked in the homicide unit for 12 years and in 2012 he wrote “Cop Stories: The Few The Proud and the Ugly,” which included the unsolved murder of Dr. Sebastian Russo in Hamilton.

“It was an unusual night. It was hot and Mantle was my hero,” Ellwood said. “I was living in an apartment in Parkville, single, I couldn’t sleep that night. It was a crazy thing, growing up, loving that guy, and then having to lock him up.”

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