When Mickey was three years old, his family moved to this location. At age five or six, his father began teaching him to hit, using the tin barn as a backstop. Mutt, his father, pitched right-handed and Mickey's grandfather pitched left-handed as they taught him the art of switch-hitting. Every day when his father returned home from the mines, he and Mickey held batting practice until dark, inventing games to make the lessons fun: a ball hit below the windows counted as a single, above the windows as a double, the roof as a triple, and over the house as a home run. Mickey later said he was the only kid in town who did not get in trouble for breaking a window. Mutt's dream and Mickey's hard work carried him from Oklahoma's lead and zinc mining district to New York City, where "The Commerce Comet" burst onto the national scene in the 1950s and became a great American icon, entertaining the world with his Oklahoma charm, his Paul Bunyan-like heroics, and a popularity that helped spark the massive sports memorabilia industry that still flourishes today.
