Reviews

On May 15th 1957, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Hank Bauer, and their wives joined teammate Billy Martin on a night out to celebrate his birthday. Their last stop was the Copacabana nightclub in Manhattan. When Sammy Davis Jr. took the stage as headliner, a drunk bowling team from Washington Heights began to heckle him with epithets.   After having integrated their team two years prior, the Yankees players were keen to stopping this and stepped in asking them to stop. What happened next was unclear for decades, but it ended with a broken jaw and concussion for one of the bowlers. The supposed victim pressed charges and when questioned in the ensuing case, Mickey Mantle explained what may have happened was “I think Roy Rogers rode through the Copa, and Trigger kicked the man in the head” . After the courtroom exploded in laughter, the district attorney would later throw out the case for insufficient evidence.   The outcome of the ordeal was bad press for the Yankees and a mark on the player’s character that would follow some of them through their careers. Today we understand the players more so as heroes for stepping up to abusive clientele for the club.   It wasn’t until June of 2020 that Joey Silvestri, an off-duty doorman of the Copacabana, would come forward with the whole story. He had known the Yankess players from before, and the players did indeed step in, but it was Joey who finished the job with a quick blow to the jaw.