Banning Mickey Mantle

Mickey Mantle,, right, with Willie Mays

In yet another of his less-than-brilliant moves, baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn 42 years ago today bans Mickey Mantle from the game after the long-retired Hall of Famer takes a $100,000 per year job as a glorified greeter and golfer at an Atlantic City casino.

Four years earlier, Kuhn banishes Willie Mays, another long-retired Hall of Famer, for the same reason.

Mantle and Mays remain on the game’s banned list for two years before the team owners finally vote Kuhn out of office in 1984 with Peter Ueberroth taking over as commissioner.

Within a few months, Ueberroth formally reinstates two of baseball’s greatest icons.