There are two statues of Mickey Mantle in the state of Oklahoma. One is installed outside Oklahoma City's Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark. The 7-foot, 6-inch bronze statue stands on a 3-foot granite base at the ballpark’s third base pavilion. The statue was dedicated on the ballpark's opening day April 16, 1998. The ballpark is the home of the Oklahoma City Dodgers, the Triple-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers and frequently hosts the Phillips 66 Big 12 college baseball tournament. Mantle was born and raised in Oklahoma but really had no connection to Oklahoma City.

A nearly identical Micky Mantle statue stands further north, nearly 200 miles in his hometown of Commerce, but the statue in Commerce depicts the switch-hitting Mantle batting right, while the one in Oklahoma City shows him batting left. Frozen in time as if he'd just slugged one of his mammoth home runs, the 9-foot-tall bronze statue stands beyond the center field fence of the Commerce High School baseball field. Perched atop a granite base inside a miniature baseball diamond, the Mantle statue weighs over a ton. "The Commerce Comet," as he was later known, played for the Commerce High School baseball team after the Mantle family moved to town when he was four. Neither Mantle (who died in 1995) nor the statue's designer, Nick Calcagno, survived to see its dedication in 2010.

The Hall of Fame New York Yankees centerfielder came from a humble background far from the manicured green fields and metropolitan grandstands of Major League Baseball. Mantle was born in 1931, in Spavinaw, Oklahoma, and the family moved to Commerce when the boy was four years old. His father, Mutt, worked at the lead and zinc mines in the town and every evening, he would pitch balls to his son next to an old tin barn on their property, as did his grandfather Charlie. As a teenager, Mantle rooted for the St. Louis Cardinals, the MLB team closest geographically to Commerce.

Mantle never forgot his Oklahoma roots, living in Commerce in the off-season for most of his Yankees tenure, and keeping a home in the state until shortly before his death in 1995. On December 23, 1951, Mantle married Merlyn Johnson in Commerce, and they had four sons, who were raised, for most of their youth, in Mantle’s hometown. While he stayed true to his origins, he very rarely accepted, or acknowledged, the nickname “Oklahoma Kid,” perhaps not wanting to share a nickname with the title of the only movie Western to co-star Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart.  In any event, he apparently signed at least two baseballs as “Mickey Mantle Oklahoma Kid” in the 1980s and presented is one of those rare items. Mantle signed the Official American League Bobby Brown baseball in blue pen on the sweet spot and inscribed “Oklahoma Kid” below his signature. The signature is crisp and clear, as is the inscription, and the ball itself is moderately toned with a clear OAL Brown stamp and Rawlings logo in blue. This item comes with a STICKER ONLY from the Mickey Mantle Tom Catal Museum and a LOA from JSA.