Less than a month after she was to have released the since-pulped “If I Did It” by O.J. Simpson, publishing powerhouse Judith Regan has taken on another highly controversial project — this time about baseball legend Mickey Mantle.

In March, Regan’s Los Angeles-based HarperCollins imprint, Regan-Books, will put out “7: The Mickey Mantle Novel.” The author, sports writer Peter Golenbock, is calling his forthcoming tome an “inventive memoir” — his publisher is deeming it “reality fiction,” — while others are dismissing the book a crude and salacious portrayal of the Yankees legend who died of liver cancer in 1995.

“I won’t dignify it with a comment,” celebrated Yankee Yogi Berra, told Publishers Weekly, through his spokesman.

The author portrays Mantle as a foul-mouthed misogynist.

Golenbock wrote the first-person book “in Mickey’s own words,” according to a Publisher’s Weekly interview. He describes in vivid detail the ballplayer’s supposed sexual encounter with an adulterous Marilyn Monroe and refers to late Yankees player and manager Billy Martin as someone who would have sex with women “against their will.”

Writing as Mantle, Golenbock acknowledged the book would be offensive to “people who are deeply religious, who don’t like to look at naked gals, or women’s libbers” uncomfortable discussing their own anatomy.

Authors cannot be sued for libel if their subjects are dead.

Golenbock told Publishers Weekly that he decided against writing a traditional biography because he would be forced to leave out some of the most risqué anecdotes he heard from Mantle’s former teammates, and from Martin.”Every 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 with what happened with Jim Frey,” he said, referring to James Frey, the author of “A Million Little Pieces” who admitted fabricating large portions of his bestselling memoir. “My choice became to write a biography and leave these stories out, but that wouldn’t be Mickey Mantle.”

Incidentally, Jane Leavy, the author of the 2002 book, “Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy,” is at work on a scholarly biography of Mantle, slated to be published by HarperCollins 2009.

Regan found herself at the center of a firestorm last month, when she announced that her publishing house would release Simpson’s fictional account of how he would have murdered his wife and her friend. She had also conducted a two-hour television interview the former football star who was accused, and then acquitted, of the murders. Both the book, and the pre-publication television special were spiked due to public outcry.