Thursday, August 19, 2021

Mickey Mantle's Boyhood Home

When I was a Littlefoot growing up in western New York, my first sports hero was Mickey Mantle, who at the time played first base for the New York Yankees.  (Papa Bigfoot would inform me that Mantle had spent most of his career in centerfield.)  After visiting Kansas, I decided to continue southward to Commerce, Oklahoma to see Mantle's boyhood home, located at the corner of C and Quincy Streets.  The front of the house, seen here, faces C Street.

Next to the house is a side yard and a barn, which served as a backstop when Mickey took batting practice.  His right-throwing father Elvin "Mutt" Mantle and left-throwing grandfather Charles Mantle would pitch, thus training young Mickey to be a switch-hitter.

I walked down C Street a bit to get a shot showing how the house and the barn are located relative to each other.

The front of the house includes this plaque which has some information on Mantle's childhood.  Although house faces C Street, the plaque indicates that its address in on Quincy Street.

Before leaving, I took a shot of the house from the corner of the two streets.  The front and both sides each include a door.

A few blocks north of the Mantle childhood home, along Main Street, is the one and only Dairy King, from which I purchased a couple of snacks.  To protect the innocent, I edited out the red car's license plate.

Before leaving town, I stopped in at Commerce High School, from which Mantle graduated in 1949, to take a picture of his statue.

For more on Mickey Mantle's boyhood home, go to Atlas Obscura, Roadside America, Changes In Longitude and Visit Miami Oklahoma.  (Miami, OK is a few miles south of Commerce.  I did not continue to Miami but instead turned back northward.  According to a YouTube video I once watched, the final "i" in this Miami is pronounced "uh" instead of "ee" like the city in Florida.)

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