1964 New York Yankees American League Championship Rolex Wristwatch Presented to Mickey Mantle....

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The Mick's twelfth and final Fall Classic!

1964 New York Yankees American League Championship Rolex Wristwatch Presented to Mickey Mantle. In terms of individual achievement, baseball is particularly unique among the four major sports for the immortalization of certain records due to the fundamental changes in which the game is played. "Platoon" pitching assures that Cy Young's record of 511 victories could never be broken, and while its already been nearly eight decades since the last .400 season, Hugh Duffy's record .440 in 1894 is likewise truly profound in its impossibility today.

Just months after man first walked on the Moon, and the year after Mickey Mantle surrendered his baseball career to Father Time, Major League Baseball debuted a postseason playoff format that would forever enshrine a dazzling record celebrated upon the Mick's forthcoming Hall of Fame plaque. The League Championship Series was born, requiring a seven-game battle for the pennant. Twenty-five years later, the Divisional round would further complicate the path to the Fall Classic. Since Mickey Mantle played the last of his sixty-five games in October, fellow Yankees legend Derek Jeter has seen the most World Series action, with thirty-eight appearances.

Mantle's record eighteen World Series home runs were the result of 230 at-bats, a rate of one home run per every 12.77, a scorching pace superior to even his one to 15.12 regular season standard. In the highly unlikely event that any player might match Derek Jeter's career tally of World Series appearances, it would require a home run every 8.67 at bats, a rate unseen in the full history of Major League Baseball outside the pharmaceutically-tainted era between 1998 and 2004.

It also should be stated emphatically that the record for World Series home runs is gilded by its very nature, celebrating elite performance under the sport's brightest spotlight, and the enduring dominance required to step beneath it time and again. Add to that consideration the fact that Mantle entered most Octobers with his knees held together by athletic tape and his liver swollen by a season's carousing, and the climb past the legendary Babe Ruth becomes all the more impressive.

Though the mighty Yanks would fall in seven games to the 1964 St. Louis Cardinals in Mantle's last postseason, the assumption of the World Series home run crown elevates Mantle-related relics from this Fall Classic to the pinnacle of desirability. This extraordinary presentational Rolex stainless steel Pre-Daytona, issued to all players of the 1964 American League Champions, ranks near the top of that special breed.

We ran the Rolex down to our watch department for evaluation, and they confirm it is an authentic reference #6238, case #1007718, with a Rolex caliber 72B movement. The watch does run when wound, but we suspect it will require servicing for accurate timekeeping. The only condition flaw to note is that the crown will unscrew completely, which it should not, however this will not affect either form or function.

The case back bears the historic engraving, a perfect style match to other known exemplars from the same team. Beneath the classic "bat and hat" Yankees logo, the text reads, "1964 American League Champions, Presented to Mickey Mantle."

The watch is accompanied by a 1992 notarized letter of provenance from the man who purchased the watch from Mickey Mantle, Jr. We have detached the case from the band for our catalog photography, but it will be reattached for shipment to winning bidder. Letter of provenance from original buyer.