1950 New York Yankees instructional camp in Phoenix, AZ. The photo features some young New York Yankees including Mickey Mantle. Director of Player Personnel, Lee MacPhail, suit & tie, located in the center. This 1950 Instructional School was part of Casey Stengel & Del Webb's "Go West" experiment for the 1951 spring training season. The New York Yankees set up spring training in Arizona in 1951, and it turned out to be the only year. Like today ball clubs send promising prospects or rookies to play winter ball or to "instructional leagues." Those that showed promise were invited to the "instructional" camp ahead of the established players and had a chance to show their stuff and stay for spring training.

Stengel met Mantle for the first time at this 1950 pre–spring training camp held in Phoenix for the top prospects in the Yankees system. The kid, just eighteen, had missed the team bus to the practice field. He was standing with a teammate, Cal Neeman, neither of them knowing what to do, when a taxi pulled up. “Well, hop in, boys,” Stengel said, “we’ll go to the park.”

Neeman recalled, “And we’re ridin’ along, and he wants to know who’s in the car. Well, we really didn’t want to tell him. I give him my name. He come to Mickey and says, ‘Who are you?’ And he says, ‘I’m Mickey.’ And he says, ‘Oh, you’re that kid that’s all mixed up. You’re not supposed to be able to run like that and hit the ball so far.”

Mantle was all but invisible until the coaches said, “Take your marks . . .” Hank Workman, a prospective first baseman, recalled, “They were timing guys from home to first. Nobody noticed Mantle up to that. He was very quiet and extremely shy. He would pull his cap down so far over his brow that you could hardly see his face. Then he ran. And I swear he was going so fast you could still see the tufts of dust in the air from his footprints a couple of feet back from where he was.”

Bunny Mick, one of Stengel’s lieutenants, timed him from the left-handed batter’s box to first base in 3.1 seconds, a new land-speed record. 3.2 from the right side.

Workman also recalled Mantle’s debut in intrasquad games: “The first time Mantle came up, he hit one a mile outta that ballpark. About three innings later he comes up again. The pitcher’s changed, and he hits one a mile out the other way. And all he does after is, he trots out to shortstop in his non-ostentatious way with his hat pulled way down.”

The camp was shut down when Commissioner Happy Chandler got wind of the big-league instructors getting a head start on spring training. But Stengel had seen enough to see the future. “Mantle’s at shortstop taking ground balls, throwing ’em by the first baseman—and outta the dugout comes Stengel,” Workman remembered. “He’s got a fungo bat in his hand, and he runs right at Mantle. He starts waving this bat at him, and he shoos him out into the outfield, and turns around and loudly announces to all the coaches and everybody that’s assembled that this guy is gonna be a center fielder. ‘I’m gonna teach him how to play center field myself, and I don’t wanna see him at shortstop again.’ ”

But that’s where he played for the 1950 Joplin Miners. His .383 batting average deflected attention from his 55 errors and he was named the Most Valuable Player of the Western League. This begs the question, why did the process of converting Mantle to a center fielder not begin upon his reporting to Joplin? Seems Stengel made his intentions pretty clear.

Mantle, though he did turn heads with his speed and power, didn't make the cut this year and spent 1950 with class C Joplin with Harry Craft his manager with Independence the previous year. The following year he was again invited to the early camp and did make the cut this time, but not as a shortstop. After the 1950 season Harry Craft, Joplin manager in his season ending repot stated, “Top major league prospect, but not a major league shortstop, recommend another minor league season as a centerfielder.” Where did the disconnect come from? Under Tommy Heirich's guidance the conversion to outfielder began in the 1951 Yankee spring training.