With the Yankees World Series loss to the Dodgers, some old chestnuts about the pugnacious Billy Martin have resurfaced. I had not heard this one, but stop me if you have…

Long long ago, the legendary Mickey Mantle invited the infamous Billy Martin to go

hunting with him down in Texas to shake off a loss…

---

---

Mantle, the story has it, had a friend, Bud, who owned a large ranch outside San Antonio with a nice treehouse in which to sit while waiting for an unlucky deer to happen along.

Well, while Billy waited in the car, Mick walked up to the front door, where Bud welcomed him…

---

---

“Good to see you Mick. You guys have the run of the place. Make yourselves at home in the treehouse, here’s a map, and good luck to you. By the way, would you mind doing me a kindness on your way out?”

“Sure, Bud, anything, what is it?”

“My dear old horse is on his last legs, and I don’t have the heart to put him down myself.

Could you do me that favor on your way out?”

“Sure, you bet, Bud, what the hell.”

Mantle then decides to pull Martin’s chain, and tells Billy back at the car, “That son of a gun told me we cost him a fortune by losing the way we did, and that we were lowdown polecats, and should take a hike! You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to shoot his horse!”

With that Mantle walked to the barn, fulfilled his favor to Bud, and crossed himself.

Just then Mickey heard a couple shots ring out. He raced back to the car as Martin hollered, “Jump in Mick, I got two of his cows! Let’s get outta here!”

Anyways, that’s the way I heard it told by my friend Mike over a cold beer in a warm bar best as I can recollect…

Sam Clemens felt a need to request that his autobiography be released 100 years after his death so that he might be able to say things about certain people without hurting them or their immediate families. When Sam’s wife Olivia was promoted to glory in Florence, President Roosevelt instructed Customs to usher the Clemens family through without delay, so how could Sam say anything in his autobiography against Teddy Roosevelt. No, he waited a hundred years, and then felt free to say, “You know that Grizzly bear President Roosevelt said he shot up there in Wyoming? It was a cow!”

Take just a moment if you will and imagine what kinds of stories might surface about us, one hundred years after their authors’ demise. I’ve got a couple of my own that are just smoldering to get out, one of which might even be about you, the gentle reader. So you might want to caution your grandkids with fair warning that, “McAvoy is a good historian where facts are not essential.”