A. DISSATISFIED B. PLEASED C. DISTURBED D. CONTENTED QUESTION III

55. A. dissatisfied B. pleased C. disturbed D. contented

Question III: Read the passage and choose the best answers to questions below.(10 pts)

MICKEY MANTLE

Mickey Mantle was one of the greatest baseball players of all time. He played

for the New York Yankees in their years of glory. From the time Mantle began

to play professionally in 1951 to his last year in 1968, baseball was the most

popular game in the United States. For many people, Mantle symbolized the

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hope, prosperity, and confidence of America at that time.

Mantle was a fast and powerful player, a “switch-hitter” who could bat both

right-handed and left-handed. He won game after game, one Would Series

championship after another, for his team. He was a wonderful athlete, but this

alone cannot explain America’s fascination with him.

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Perhaps it was because he was a handsome, red-haired country boy, the son of

a poor miner from Oklahoma. His career, from the lead mines of the West to

the heights of success and fame, was a fairy-tale version of the American

dream. Or perhaps it was because America always loves a “natural”, a person

who wins without seeming to try, whose talent appears to come from an inner

grace. That was Mickey Mantle.

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But like many celebrities, Mickey Mantle had a private life that was full of

problems. He played without complaint despite constant pain from injuries. He

lived to fulfill his father’s dreams and drank to forget his father’s early death.

It was a terrible addiction that finally destroyed his body. It gave him cirrhosis

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of the liver and accelerated the advance of liver cancer. Even when Mickey

Mantle had turned away from his old life and warned young people not to

follow his example, the destructive process could not be stopped recovery,

Mickey Mantle died of cancer at the age of 63.