Mickey Mantle

📍319 South Quincy Street, Commerce, OK 74339, USA

“Commerce was a mining town, and my dad, Mutt, spent his days underground in the lead and zinc mines. He loved baseball more than anything and named me after his favourite catcher, Mickey Cochrane. Every evening, when he came up from his shift, he and my grandfather Charlie pitched to me in the yard of our little house on South Quincy Street, from opposite sides, so I'd learn to hit both left- and right-handed. That's how I became a switch-hitter. The dents my baseballs made are still in the tin barn behind the house. At Commerce High I played everything, and a kick to the shin at football practice turned into a bone infection that nearly cost me my leg — my parents drove through the night to a hospital in Oklahoma City, where a new drug, penicillin, saved it. Dad wanted one thing for me: never to go down the mines. He lived just long enough to see me in Yankee pinstripes.”

Sources: Wikipedia: Mickey Mantle