If you’d told me this morning we’d be graced with Will Leitch having drinks with John Rocker and Mickey Mantle fucking Marilyn Monroe, I’d have said “sorry Santa, you’re two weeks early.” From The Book Standard.com (link taken from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory)

After striking out with O.J. Simpson™s If I Did It, Regan Books is back with another not-quite-nonfiction, not-quite-fiction book, 7: The Mickey Mantle Novel, by Peter Golenbock, Publishers Weekly reported today. Described as an œinventive memoir by the author, the book is about baseball great Mickey Mantle and insiders who have seen the book called it œporn, œdebased and œexploitative. 7 is set to be published in March.

Golenbock, who has written other sports books and wrote 7 in Mantle™s own words, got the stories for the book from his friend, former Yankee player and manager Billy Martin, who passed away in 1989, and former teammates of Mantle.

œEvery time I sat down to outline it, I knew that all of the stories that were told to me over the years were not documentable, and it concerned me, especially after what happened with Jim Frey, said Golenbock, according to PW. œMy choice them became to write a biography and leave these stories out”but that wouldn™t be Mickey Mantle. It really didn™t leave me any other choice.

There are a few choice passages available at Publisher’s Weekly :

On being with Marilyn Monroe:

Mickey enters her, going in nice and easy. The look on his face changes from excitement and pleasure to surprise and then disappointment. He waits for the yelling and the screaming, waits for her to tell him how good it was, waits for an ooh or an aah, any reaction at all, but no¦. While he works away at it, Marilyn just lies there staring at him with cold, accusing eyes

On Billy Martin:

I don™t believe in having sex with women against their will the way Billy sometimes did.

Mickey Mantle, Comedian:

A girl is lying on the beach with no arms or legs. A guy walks up, and she starts to cry. He asks why she™s crying. She says, “I™ve never been kissed before. So he kisses her. She starts crying again. He asks why she™s crying. She says she™s never been screwed. He picks her up and throws her in the water. “There,” he says, “now you™re screwed.”

Billy Crystal and George Costanza, unavailable for comment.