Just because the pitcher, one of your best friends, is serving up meatballs doesn’t mean you can feast on them. Just because 46,000 adoring fans at your old home ballpark are standing and cheering for you to work your magic doesn’t mean you can make that baseball disappear. Just because the announcer, another old friend, has joined the crowd in rooting you on doesn’t mean you can hit the ball where you want to nearly five years after you retired.

But just because you are Mickey Mantle, and just because this is Old-Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium , and just because you’ve always had a flair for the dramatic, of course you can deliver one more jolt, one more forever memory, one more home run . . . one last home run.

It’s Aug. 11, 1973. Whitey Ford is struggling with his control. The Ya

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