FROM MICKEY MANTLE’S 1974 HALL OF FAME INDUCTION SPEECH:

“…I don’t know if all of you have ever heard about any of my business endeavors or not, but some of ‘em weren’t too good.

Probably the worst thing I ever did was movin’ away from Mr. Youngman. We went and moved to Dallas, Texas, in 1957, but Mr. Youngman built a Holiday Inn in Joplin, Missouri, and called it Mickey Mantle’s Holiday Inn.
And we were doin’ pretty good there, and Mr. Youngman said, ‘You know, you’re half of this thing, so why don’t you do something for it.’ So we had real good chicken there and I made up a slogan…

…I made up the slogan for our chicken and I said, ‘To get a better piece of chicken, you’d have to be a rooster.’
And I don’t know if that’s what closed up our Holiday Inn or not, but we didn’t do too good after that…”

To read the full speech by Mickey Mantle click here