Offered is a 1948 Commerce (Oklahoma) High School football game program with Mickey Mantle listed as a reserve on the Commerce squad. The two-page white paper program booklet is printed in color, with an illustration of a football player catching a pass on the front cover, a two-page “Time Out for Coke” color centerspread with team rosters, and a black and white printed back cover with 18 ads for local, Commerce merchants. The front cover features the legend, in black type, “Commerce vs. Quapaw Thursday, October 23”. The centerspread features the roster of the “Quapaw Wildcats” on the left page and the roster for the “Commerce Tigers” on the right. Mantle is listed as “Mickey Mantle QB 19” on the “B Team” reserves. The program booklet has fold marks on the front cover from when the booklet was folded in quarters but is otherwise intact. Mantle, once referred to as “The Commerce Comet” when he was just earning his stripes as a young New York Yankees outfielder, played football, basketball and baseball at Commerce High. His high school football career was capped when the University of Oklahoma offered him a football scholarship, but his high school football playing nearly ended his career and maybe his life. In his sophomore year, he was kicked on the left shin during a practice game, and he developed osteomyelitis (a crippling disease that was incurable just a few years earlier) in his left ankle. Mantle's parents drove him at midnight to Oklahoma City, where he was treated at the children's hospital with the newly available penicillin, which reduced the infection and saved his leg from amputation.  

Auction Notepad