A Very OK Podcast
Episode 60: “Mickey Mantle”
August 18, 2026
Episode Transcript
(upbeat music playing)
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I’m the executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society, and here with me, as always, is Dr. Bob Blackburn. And Bob, we took July off. Hopefully, we got a little bit rested, a little bit relaxed. Now, we’re ready to start recording our episodes for the last half of the year, but I hope you’re having a good summer. How are things going for you?
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Having a great summer, doing some traveling, a little bit of lake, working on a new book, working on a couple of museum projects as much as I want, more golf than I probably should be playing, but shot my age a couple of times recently, so that’s encouraging. So, now that I started thinking about that, I haven’t shot my age once in the last two times.
Thompson: Don’t be too impressed. Bob is actually 95 years old, people.
(laughter)
Thompson: I’m kidding.
Blackburn: But yeah, it is a good summer and a lot of family. Going back to Denver next week to see my grandkids. So a lot of time with them.
Thompson: Yeah, that’s great. Well we’re having a good summer here at the OHS. We had a great spring with all the Route 66 events going on. And after May, things kind of dialed down a little bit in the Route 66 arena. But now we’re starting to ramp back up for the fall, and I’m excited about some of the projects that we have going on that are related to the centennial. And we’ve had a good summer as well. We’ve had some time to go to lake as well and enjoy some family time. And you know, with a house full of teenagers, anytime you can be with your kids, that’s an important thing because they’re going 50 different directions, and so you have to catch them in small doses. So when you do have a chance to go to the lake, you get them all to yourself for a little while. So that’s pretty fun. So and now you’ve got grandkids you’re chasing around.
Blackburn: That’s right. In fact, at the beach at Eufaula, I’ve always made characters out of pancakes and sand. So my son’s 44 now, so I’ve done that for at least 50 years with all my nieces and nephews, now the grandkids. And so I made another sand character of an alligator crawling towards some kids and sent it to him. I said, “Bring back memories?” And, you know, that’s what going to the lake is, and families, and just thinking about those times together and all the love.
Thompson: Yeah, absolutely. Well, speaking of memories, I’m really excited to talk about our topic today because, as you all know, all of our episodes this year we’re centering around Route 66, and this episode we’re going to be talking about Mickey Mantle. And Mickey Mantle, of course, was from Commerce, Oklahoma, and he is someone who is very important in the annals of baseball history. A lot of people have emotional ties to Mickey Mantle, and we’ll get into that in just a little bit. But I’m excited to tackle this one because Mantle was— he was complex, and he was complicated. And for all of his great talents, he was also, his life was filled with tragedy to a large degree, too, and so I’m excited to get into this. But, you know, sometimes we like to bring pop culture into these conversations. And you’re a Seinfeld fan, right?
Blackburn: A little bit, a little bit.
Thompson: So I love Seinfeld. It’s one of my comfort shows. So I kind of have it always on a continuous loop when I just need something to watch that I don’t want to have to think of what to go find and scroll through everything. I’ll just go watch some Seinfeld, and there’s a great episode of Seinfeld. Of course, for a time, George works for the Yankees, and George Steinbrenner is so well played by Larry David, and George is engaged to Susan. And George has a great idea about what he wants his future son to be named, and it is Seven. He puts this out to his fiancée and says Seven. And she has this confused look on her face. And why do you want it to be named Seven? And he says, after Mickey Mantle, of course. And she says, there is no way that we’re naming our son Seven, and of course, as the episode goes on, one of their friends who is going to have a baby loves the idea and steals the name. And George is very, very upset that he’s not going to get to, that someone stole that name from him. Now he can’t name his son Seven, and that’s a funny episode.
Last night I watched the movie 61, which is, well, 61*, which is a great movie that Billy Crystal did in 2001 about the 1961 Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle home run race, which we’ll get into in a minute. Of course, so many great baseball movies out there. Field of Dreams is one of my all-time favorites. Can’t ever watch that one without shedding a tear at the end when dad wants to have a catch with his son. So one of my favorite movies ever.
But getting into Mickey Mantle’s life, he was born in 1931, in Spavinaw, Oklahoma, which is the northeastern part of the state. When he was about four or five years old, his father, whose nickname was Mutt, and his mother’s name was Lovell. They moved to Commerce, Oklahoma, and that’s where Mickey spent all of his growing-up years, and even several years after he was in the major leagues, he would always come back to Commerce. He was a regular fixture around the town. Wasn’t until about 1957 that he moved his family to Dallas, which he always regretted. He said I should have stayed in Commerce as that grounding factor. But Commerce is on Route 66, you know, where Route 66 comes in from Kansas, and then it drops down through Quapaw, and then Commerce, and then Miami. And so, Route 66 plays a big part in the town’s development. But the thing that really puts Commerce and that whole area on the map is mining, and it's lead and zinc mining. And during those years, particularly by the 1930s, the mines had started to go downhill a little bit. But when you’re talking the early 1900s, the lead and the zinc that was taken out of those mines in that part of the country supplied a big part of our lead during World War I, and and to a partial degree, later on in World War II, as well. And so, Bob, I was wondering if we could kind of get into the Great Depression, what life is like northeastern Oklahoma, those life of those miners up there. And it’s a hard existence.
Blackburn: Well, Mickey’s personality would have been influenced by several things of the 1930s and the 1940s. Of course, in general, you have the Great Depression, just a lot of poverty, people suffering, people on the road, the culture of the time. Will Rogers trying to find, help people find some meaning in all of this suffering. And he would have been listening to radio in the 1930s as a little kid. World War II would have affected him with people going off to war, a rising demand for lead and zinc, and the mining district was a hard place to grow up. It was very physical work. People, this is deep-shaft mining. People were going down below the surface of the ground and mining and creating these huge caverns, many of which would collapse over the time, and not making much money. Largely, a company town, where if you were working for one of the lead and zinc companies, basically you were beholden to them to rent a house from them, to pay them not just rent, but to pay to buy groceries at the company store, the issuing of script in these very hard times. So that would have had an impact on Mickey and giving him something to push against, not wanting to go down into the mines. That would be motivation. Like a lot of kids did not want to be cotton farmers because their parents had been cotton farmers, making cash. They decided, I’m not going to do that. So money would have been that same motivation for Mickey to get off the farm, get away from small-town Oklahoma.
And then really, the other major influence on Mickey that’s changing while he’s growing up to be an 18-year-old kid, is the changing in broadcasting. When Mickey was a kid, he would have been listening to the radio, and the team that would have been beamed to the radio stations in Commerce, or Spavinaw, or Claremore, or Tulsa, or Miami would have been the St. Louis Cardinals. That was the team that they would receive. And so baseball, Major League Baseball, was a regional sport at the time. You really did not have a national audience for any team, even the Yankees, the Brooklyn Dodgers, or any of the other teams. But for Mickey, growing up, it would have been the St. Louis Cardinals. Stan Musial would have been his hero. He would have listened to that. My dad grew up in Claremore, born in 1920 and went a little earlier, but growing up it was the St. Louis Cardinals, and he was a lifetime fan of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball. They had a football team for many years, and even NBA team. I remember watching them, and while Mickey was growing up, that begins to change, and that whole change in the dawn of television. Television starts going on the air across the country after World War II. Here in Oklahoma, the first broadcast was in June of ’49, just as Mickey’s turning about 18 or 19 years old and trying to work his way into the major leagues.
By that time, baseball becomes a national sport. And for kids like me growing up in the 1950s, there was more than just watching the regional baseball team. Of course, there was no Texas team at the time, so it would have been St. Louis for us. There was no Kansas City team when I was a kid, and so it would have been St. Louis, would have been the closest major league team, just as my dad. But then suddenly here’s television, and television is going to broadcast the biggest stars, the biggest markets. And of course, at that time, it was New York Yankees. So the stage is set with the motivation for Mickey to leave Oklahoma, to get off of the farm, away from mining. His devotion to regional baseball becomes national baseball, and then the stage is set for him to be more than just another regional baseball player like Stan Musial, and he has a nation as a potential audience because of the timing of his life. So, in terms of connecting the dots of history, Mickey is stepping onto that stage of history at the best time with the right skills.
Thompson: Yeah. One of the most important people in his life was his father, Mutt. And his father could be very, very harsh. His father could be very demanding. But his father also understood that he needed to push his son so that he could have a better life. And so Mickey, Mickey’s father, Mutt, was the sun that that Mickey’s world revolved around. And his father played semi-pro baseball. And in fact, Mickey would call his dad the best semi-pro baseball player in Oklahoma. But one of his childhood friends said he was a mediocre ballplayer. He said he was not as good as a lot of other players on the teams there; nowhere near. But Mutt wanted to set Mickey up, so the time that he was a toddler, he was propping him up on the ground. He was rolling baseballs to him. Mickey was throwing balls against the shed outside their house in Commerce.
In fact, later on in life, there was a group of people who got together, and they wanted to preserve Mickey Mantle’s house there in Commerce. And the shed was leaning, and they started to prop it up. And Mickey said, no, the shed always leaned when I lived there. And so they actually braced it to where it’ll always lean like that, and it won’t ever get propped back up again, which I thought was a great story out there. But his father also taught him to do something that would be very important in his career, and he taught him how to be a switch hitter. And that’s basically, for those of you who may not know the baseball lingo, that means you bat from the left side and the right side of the plate. And by the time Mickey enters the major leagues, there’s only a handful of switch hitters in all the leagues. And what that does is it gives you advantages over pitchers. You know, if you’ve got a left-handed pitcher or right-handed pitcher, you can hit from the side of the plate that gives you the advantage in trying to hit home runs. Yeah.
Blackburn: Well, let me add one last thing about his childhood, too, Trait, is that people today don’t realize how pervasive baseball was in American culture at the time. Today, we think of baseball as the high school stars who get drafted coming out of high school, and then the best ones go right to the to the professionals. Kind of the next layer down goes to college, and maybe they get to the professionals. But today, that’s kind of the way we look at baseball. Well, in the 1930s, and even into my generation in the 1950s, is that baseball, you had town teams. Every little town had their baseball team. So the men of the of the town would get together and practice and play the team in the next community. You had American Legion sponsoring baseball. So these high schoolers might play baseball for their high school team, and then in the summer, make an American Legion team. And the American Legion teams would travel, not only around the state, but around the region, going to tournaments. So baseball, at that time, professional football was literally the third most popular sport. I remember one of my dad’s Highway Patrol buddies, “Cactus Face” Duggan, played for the New York Giants, and he would be a highway patrolman during the week. Get on an airplane and fly to wherever the New York Giants were playing, and play football on that Saturday.
Thompson: That’s wild.
Blackburn: Or Sunday, and then fly back, and he was a highway patrolman. And so football was not what we think of today. It was not the big giant business. So football was secondary. Basketball was largely an urban sport. Baseball was the American sport. When you hear people like Bob Costas or even Billy Crystal talk about it, baseball was part of our lives. We all played Little League baseball for the YMCA or or some other sports league in whatever the community.
In Oklahoma City, it happened to be the YMCA. All you had to do was afford to buy a t-shirt. For me, it was the Calvin Coolidge Crocodiles—CCCs. I didn’t know what CC stood for at the time, but a cap, and your baseball shirt, a couple of bucks, and you were playing, which is where our, you know, our sneakers out to play, and your jeans, and that was baseball. Coach would have a few bats, a few balls, and you’re supposed to have your own mitt. But they were cheap, and so baseball was part of our lives. And we grew up. And so, having played baseball, to see a Mickey Mantle come along, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and all these incredible players of our generation in the ’50s made it a special sport. And because baseball was so personal, if you think about football, you know, they have helmets on. They all look about the same with the shoulder pads. They’re almost robots out there. Baseball—you’ve just got this uniform on. You see the face, you see the facial expressions. You see the way they kick the dirt, the way they put dirt in their hands, or the way they hold their glove, whether it’s one finger out or two fingers out. And when they’re holding the, you know, they’re wearing a batting glove. Some did; most didn’t. That was all very personal. And so baseball was special to a generation, and Mickey came along just as that culture was still very much alive.
Thompson: Yeah. There’s a story I ran into during my research that when his dad came home early from work, and he caught him batting right-handed against a right-handed pitcher, and one of his friends said the crap hit the fan over that. That was a no-no, and Mickey never done it again. So he was raised with a very exacting standard when it came to his baseball. Another thing that really shaped him for the rest of his life, and this is a sensitive topic, but he, and he didn’t admit this until much later in life to some of the closest people around him. But he, his dad, Mutt, had married a woman, Lovell. She already had kids coming into the marriage, and one of those girls, who was a teenager, molested him when he was young, and he also told a story about an older boy in the neighborhood who did the same. And so I don’t want to dwell on it too much, except to say that I think that many of the things that Mickey dealt with throughout his life, in his personal life, you know, and we can get into those a little bit, but he was an alcoholic all of his life. He was someone who could never remain faithful to his wife throughout his life. And some people have said that this could have been the reason for, you know, this was during the time you didn’t talk about any of this. You didn’t go to counseling. You didn’t go tell an older person what happened to you. You just had to internalize it and deal with it. And some people said that this could have been why he dealt with so many issues throughout his life. He actually wet the bed well into his teens, and so he was a man who had trauma. He had some demons that he was dealing with, and this was one of the earliest examples of that.
Blackburn: You know, we’re talking about popular culture. Right now, you know, The Odyssey is a popular movie. People have seen Troy, a great movie about Achilles and Agamemnon in The Iliad. Mickey Mantle was kind of an Achilles figure. Achilles, if you read Troy carefully, Achilles has all sorts of problems and psychological issues, and he’s dealing with those demons, and he wants to be immortalized forever. Mickey was a little bit of a flawed character, very much like Achilles would have been, but the superhero, they could do things that no one else could.
Thompson: Yeah, yeah. You know, later in life or when he got to the Yankees, the famous manager, Casey Stengel, would talk about just how much potential he had, and if he could only get his personal life under control, how great he could be, you know, and despite all of those obstacles, despite everything he’s dealing with, he still is one of the greatest baseball players. So this is the question that hangs over Mickey Mantle’s life, and his legacy is, what if, you know, what could his life had been like if he had been able to, you know, manage some of these things and deal with some of these things. We never know. We don’t know the answer to those questions, and he asked himself many of those same questions as he retired out of baseball, and he was facing his own mortality. So this is something that he deals with also his entire life. He’s got something that’s hanging over his head. And that is the fact that Hodgkin’s disease, which can be hereditary, has killed many people. There are many people in his family lineage that don’t make their 35th or their 40th birthday because of Hodgkin’s disease. And in fact, only a year or so into the major leagues, he, his father, ultimately ends up perishing from it, and that he doesn’t feel like he’s going to make it to age 40. And I think some of the habits that he developed as well centered around, well, if I ain’t going to live that long, then I’m going to make the years that I have here, I’m going to have as much fun as I can.
Blackburn: Burn the candle at both ends.
Thompson: Yeah, and that’s exactly what he did as well. In high school, he sustained a pretty bad injury, and he almost died when he was playing football, and he got kicked in the leg during practice. And he ended up getting an infection called osteomyelitis, which is a bacterial infection of the bone. And if it weren’t for— and thankfully this is rural Oklahoma, penicillin—he was given over 300,000 units a day of penicillin to treat that infection. He was hospitalized five times over a 13-month period. So this is something that he deals with for all of his life and all of his career. He develops these infections. He develops, he’s very injury prone, and it’s something that he has to struggle with. So, you know, as he’s playing baseball throughout high school, this is something. He doesn’t get noticed by a lot of scouts or anything because he’s, you know, a sickly kid. He’s prone to injury. But he is, in 1947, he’s invited to join Barney Barnett’s Whiz Kids, which is a prestigious semi-pro team in the Ban Johnson Baseball League. In 1948, baseball scout Tom Greenwade sees him playing in this league, and he says it’s his junior year. He says, I can’t talk to you right now, but you know, when you graduate, I’m going to talk to you. And so when he’s finally able to, Greenwade comes to him, and he offers him $140 a month to come play baseball, which back in those days, not too shabby, but could have been so much more had he gotten noticed by anything. And Mickey Mantle would later say, you know, I signed with him because I didn’t think anybody cared or was interested in me, and if anybody else would have seen him play, they certainly would have known.
Blackburn: And that would have been a lot better than working in the mines for $5 a day.
Thompson: Yeah, exactly. And so he ends up playing for the Class D Independence Yankees in Independence, Missouri. Very error-prone. He plays shortstop. He commits over 100 errors in 184 games. He goes then to the Class C Joplin minors in 1950. He kind of, he starts to get his stride then. He hits .383 and was named MVP of the Western League.
So he’s really catching fire, and nobody expected that he would get called up to the majors in 1951, but that’s exactly what happens. And he comes up to play for the Yankees, and he has an incredible spring training with the Yankees. He is hitting home runs. He is really impressing people. In fact, these are some of the headlines that are written about Mickey Mantle during spring training. They call him Magnificent Mantle. They call him Mighty Mickey. And of course, the one that really has stuck over the years, the Commerce Comet, which first appears in a headline in the newspapers; Rookie of the Eons. He is really impressing people. And, you know, one of the, or his manager, Casey Stengel, says, “He has more speed than any slugger and more slug than any speedster, and nobody has ever had more of them together. This kid ain’t logical. He’s too good. It’s very confusing.”
So he really starts to impress people, but plays a little while—about half the season. And in July, the Yankees end up bringing a pitcher from Brooklyn. So somebody has to get sent down back to the minors, and it’s Mickey Mantle that ends up getting sent back down. And that really, he’s a kid who doesn’t have a lot of confidence already. He deals with this his whole life. He doesn’t feel like that he’s any good. He doesn’t feel like he’ll ever measure up. He always questions why people want to be around him, why people are, you know, want to be a fan of his. He does this his whole life, and this kind of sends him into a dark period. So he gets sent down to the Kansas City Blues, and in playing for the Kansas City Blues, he stinks it up. It’s terrible. And at one point, he calls his dad and says, dad, this baseball thing ain’t working out. I’m going to come home. And his dad gets in the car and drives. It was funny, kind of a funny story. His dad was a notoriously slow driver, wouldn’t drive over 35 miles an hour. So he’s driving from Commerce to Kansas City. He has his wife, Lovell. He has Mickey’s fiancé, Merlyn, with him. They all drive up there at a very slow pace, and they get up there, and Mutt brings the tough love. He says, “I thought I raised a man. You ain’t nothing but a g-d coward.” And that really sets Mickey, it really sets him off his axis. And he says, I’m going to stay, and he does. And he starts hitting the ball, and he starts performing again, and he gets called back up to the Yankees, and the Yankees make the World Series that season. Bob, you were born in 1951. Do you remember watching the Yankees and Mickey Mantle on TV?
Blackburn: Absolutely. I don’t remember what year in the late ’50s, but one of the national networks, I think, was CBS. But I may be wrong, but I think it was CBS, actually was an owner of the Yankees, and so they became the game of the week. And at that time, baseball, you know, today you can see baseball any day of the week on multiple channels. But then, there were three channels, three networks. And so CBS had the Yankees, and so that’s what we all wanted to watch. So we started watching the Yankees in the late ’50s, early ’60s. And I was 10 years old in 1961, the year that he and Roger Maris were really slugging it out, going for the home run. You know, one would get one ahead or two ahead, the other would catch up. And it was an impressive year. And that ’61 team, the year that I was on a baseball team that did pretty well in the Oklahoma City league, had a pitcher on our team who could throw the curveball at age 10. Randy Sanders.
Thompson: Well, that’s pretty impressive. Good for you, Randy Sanders!
Blackburn: If you’re out there, Randy, give me a call sometime. But I could not hit your curveball. No one else could either. But we just loved baseball, and Mickey Mantle became our hero. And those are the days when, for two cents, you could buy a baseball card with a piece of bubblegum that was a flat piece of, kind of a rectangle sheet of bubblegum. Of course, we all thought we needed to chew bubblegum playing baseball because the major leaguers were chewing tobacco. So you wanted that wad of gum in your mouth to act like them. But everyone wanted Mickey Mantle baseball cards. So you might have two Willie Mays and two or three Harmon Killebrew or whatever it might be. And you’d trade all of those for one Mickey Mantle. That’s how popular he was. He was our hero. And watching him on TV do the things that he could, and his personality came through the television. And in reading about him and the newspapers, he was our hero. And there was really no one else like him. And that 1961 team, especially, a lot of people think, well, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, but I got to meet those players, many of those players, years later when they dedicated a Mickey Mantle statue at RedHawk Stadium in Oklahoma City. Leon Smith brought that ’61 team in, and I got to meet Whitey Ford, and Moose Skowron, and Tony Kubek, and Bobby Richardson, and two or three of the other players. Oh, Yogi Berra, and Max Nichols was working for me at the time, and he knew what Yogi meant to me as well as Mickey, because I was a catcher, and he says, Bob, you want to meet Yogi Berra? I said, do I?
Thompson: I mean, who wouldn’t?
Blackburn: We go in the middle of the crowd, and Max says, hey, Yogi. And he said, hey, Max. He says this is my friend Bob Blackburn. I got to shake his hand. He signed my program. I still have that, and he was there with Mickey. He had some great Mickey Mantle stories. And so that whole team, and you can verify I’m not speaking from notes. I remember that entire team of ’61. That’s how vivid that time was for me, that team, and Mickey Mantle was the star of the team. It’s just something you never forget in life.
Thompson: Yeah, and by the way, folks, Bob never speaks from notes.
(laughter)
Thompson: I have the notes. Bob doesn’t speak from notes. But, yeah, you know, Mickey was that all-American boy. He had the looks, he had the smile, he had the background. He had this sort of country “aww shucks” thing going on. And as you mentioned before, television was coming into view. So people got that up-close and personal view, and they really felt like that he was their hero. And it’s why later in life, you know, when grown men would meet him, they would weep because they were standing face to face with their boyhood hero. And that’s something.
Blackburn: Well, I had a personal experience similar to that, although different, is that I was working with Senator Rick Littlefield, who is a senator, chairman of our appropriation committee at the time, who was from that area of the state. And he wanted a Mickey Mantle museum in that little retirement town now, but anyway, wanted a museum dedicated to Mickey Mantle up there. And he was working with Mickey’s family. Merlyn was still alive. Danny was the one I worked with most of the time, but I’ll never forget. Finally had another meeting at the State Capitol, and in walked Mickey Jr. Mickey Jr. was a spitting image of Mickey Mantle, and I’ll never forget the day. In fact, the hair on the back of my neck is standing up right now, just remembering when Mickey Jr. walks in. It was like Mickey Mantle was coming into the room, and I was going to meet my hero, and we never got to build the museum, but it was fun working on. We got a plan in your files somewhere for a Mickey Mantle museum in Grove. I just remembered the town. It was going to be in Grove, Oklahoma, and we just never got to the point we could do it.
Thompson: And you don’t have any of those Mickey Mantle baseball cards?
Blackburn: I wish I did. Mom probably just used them to light barbecue charcoal or something later, I don’t know. But no, I don’t have any of those.
Thompson: The stories are myriad of moms who discovered the baseball, the shoe box full of baseball cards and tossed them out. And boy, what we would give to have those today. Going back to 1951, this would be, he plays in the World Series, 1951 World Series, rookie year, playing in the World Series. How much better could it get? He is playing out in, I believe, right field. Roger, I’m sorry, Joe DiMaggio is playing centerfield. Now this is Joe DiMaggio’s last year. Joe DiMaggio was, you want to talk about a god walking on land? That is Joe DiMaggio. He is, you know, he is peak Yankee royalty up there with Babe Ruth and some of the best Yankee players of all time. And this, there is a fly ball that is hit out. And depending on who you talk to, you know, one of the stories goes is that Casey Stengel knew that DiMaggio’s legs ain’t what they used to be. Said if you get a chance to go get a ball, go get a ball. You know, you’re young. DiMaggio, he’s running on old legs. Well, but also part of the etiquette of playing baseball as you defer to the to the veterans, especially someone like DiMaggio.
Blackburn: And a center fielder too.
Thompson: Yeah, and so ball is hit out there, and Mantle is running for the ball. Just as he is about to get in position to catch the ball, DiMaggio waves him off. Mantle has to throw the brakes on. And Al Dark, who’s sitting in the visiting dugout, says all of a sudden Mickey throws on the brakes, and his legs went out from under him, and he slipped as you would slip on an ice thing. And then he couldn’t get up, and it looks like, and it didn’t look like he wanted to get up. Mantle lay motionless on the Yankee turf. There was a sewer drain out there, which in today’s world you you can’t even imagine that, you know, a stadium, somebody would have just a sewer drain out there. But it’s a different world. And he steps in that sewer drain, which most people knew was out there. He didn’t. He’s a rookie. He hadn’t played out there a lot yet. And he blows out his knee. He blows out his knee. And that’s the end of his World Series. Ultimately he ends up, he tears his ACL, he tears his MCL, and he has a medial meniscal tear. But they didn’t know that back then. This is 1953. There is no MRI machines. There’s you know, even X-ray machines don’t have all the abilities to see everything they need to see. And so they diagnose him with some ligament sprains, maybe a ligament tear, and that kind of thing.
They sent him to the hospital, but for the rest of his life, for the rest of his playing career, he’s playing on bad knees. This was out of a book. I read the book, The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood by Jane Leavy, which is a fantastic book. Highly recommend it. But doctor, a man named Dr. Haas says, “Mickey Mantle can be classified as a neuromuscular genius, one of a select few who are so well wired that they are able to compensate for severe injuries like this and still perform at the highest levels, overcoming a particular impairment at a given moment. It is a phenomenon comprised of motivation, high pain threshold, strength, reflexes, and luck.” And he plays on bad knees. His last year in the league is 1968, and of course, his knees continually get worse after that. Also said, “That October afternoon was the last time Mantle set foot on a baseball field without pain. He would play the next 17 years struggling to be as good as he could be, knowing he would never be as good as he might become.” I mean, what a tragic start to a baseball career.
Blackburn: Yeah. Then to reach those heights that he did.
Thompson: And to be so young. His father dies in 1952 at the age of 40, and this is something that throws him off his axis as well. His middle career with the Yankees is a mixture of success and failure. In 1956, he has one of the best seasons ever. He wins the Triple Crown. He leads the league in home runs with 52; RBIs with 130. His batting average is .353, and he was the Sporting News Major League Player of the year in the AP Male Athlete of the Year.
There’s a story from 1954 that I found that I think is a great story. This ties into Route 66 as well. After the 1954 season, outfielder Irv Noren offered to, he was driving out to California, and he offered to give Mantle a ride to Commerce. It was going to be the off-season, and so they drive on Route 66 to Commerce, and they’ve been driving for quite some time, and they’re tired, and they need a break. And they see a baseball field, and they see these kids out there throwing the ball around playing. And so they pull over, and Irv tells the kids and says, hey, I bet my friend over here I could strike him out, you know, do you mind if we if I see if I can strike out my friend? So Irv is pitching to Mantle. Mantle is just cranking them over the fence, over the houses in the neighborhood. You know, one of the things he’s known for is his power. The tape measure home run was invented because of Mantle when they started trying to measure, did he hit that one 500 feet or 600 feet, and he was hitting balls out of stadiums fairly routinely. And so he starts pitching, and one of the kids says, “Boy, you can’t strike that guy out.” And then Noren told the kid, “Hey, did you know that’s Mickey Mantle?” And the kid came back, “And I suppose you’re Yogi Berra.” As they were driving on toward Commerce, Mantle says, that kid’s gonna go home, tell his dad that he was playing baseball with Mickey Mantle, and he’s going to get in trouble for lying.
(laughter)
Thompson: I thought that was a pretty, pretty fun story.
Blackburn: That sounds like Mickey. Full of fun.
Thompson: Yeah. For sure. Nobody loved to have fun more than Mickey Mantle. We talked about it a little bit, but getting into the 1961 home run race, this was a time when they were having a good season. Casey Stengel is no longer the manager. And it is this time when they are having the home run race. And this is the asterisk year. And the commissioner of Baseball had decreed that if you’re going to break the record, you have to break it in the same number of games that Babe Ruth did, 154 games. So that was the big question. Could they break the record in the 154 games? And it was a tight race for most of the season.
By the time that they get to the All-Star break, Maris has 33 home runs. Mantle has 29. So they’re neck and neck. What’s interesting to you about this is in the media, Maris and Mantle are played up to have this big rivalry. In reality, they were very good friends, and in fact, they were roommates, and they were close to each other. They encouraged each other. They never had a rivalry in terms of wishing each other, wishing any ill will toward the other person. And then when Mantle gets injured toward the end of the season, he ends up rooting for Maris. The unfortunate thing for Maris is he was not the most media-savvy person. He was also seen as an interloper. He was relatively new to the team. He was not seen as a Yankees guy. And so the fans gathered up, and they put all of their support behind Mantle. How could this unknown, this interloper, this guy that’s not one of us come in and try to break the Babe’s record? And it got ugly. It got really, really ugly with the fan base. And Mantle said, “I became an American hero in 1961 because he beat me. He was an ass, and I was a nice guy. He beat Babe Ruth, and he beat me, so they hated him. Everywhere we’d go, I got a standing ovation, and all I had to do was walk out of the dugout.” And that was a tough season for Maris, and Maris would last, I think, five or six more years with the Yankees and never did quite gel with the fans there. Despite that, he and Mantle would remain friends for the rest of their life. And when Maris died pretty young in his 50s of cancer, Mantle was one of the pallbearers, and Mantle wept at his funeral. Couldn’t believe that his friend had died.
So, 1962, Mantle misses 40 games, once again dealing with injuries, and by late in his career, he just doesn’t have the spring in his step anymore. He doesn’t have it much. He, 1968 was his farewell tour, and it gave Americans something to get behind, and we’ve talked about it before on this podcast, but 1968, it’s a pretty terrible year in American history. The Vietnam War is going badly. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated. Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated. There’s not much good going on in America in 1968, but one thing that people can look towards is Mickey Mantle’s swan song, and he is on his farewell run. At this point, Joe Pepitone talked about “they had to tape his legs so tight that it would cut off the circulation just so he could get out there and play.” And on Saturday, March 1, 1969, he calls a press conference. He said, “I don’t hit the ball when I need to. I can’t score from second when I need to. I can’t steal when I need to.” And he retires from baseball. Sixty-eight was his last season.
As I mentioned before, you know, Mantle dealt with alcoholism his whole life. After baseball, it starts getting progressively worse where, you know, he was really directionless after baseball. He didn’t have a whole lot that he could hang his head on. His family life was not all that good. And in fact, Billy Crystal told the Mantle Boys he wished he had been Mickey Mantle’s son, and David Mantle replied, “We wish we had been too.” He was just an absent father. He was an absent husband. Merlyn stayed married to him all the way up through the 1980s, even though she knew very well and good that he was not being faithful to her, but she loved him all of her life, and Mickey loved her, too. He just loved a lot of other people as well. And even after they divorced, he left everything to her, and he left all the rights to his life, and his image, and everything, despite the fact that they were divorced and no longer together, he left it all to her.
He finally, after some interventions, one of his good friends was Pat Summerall, and Pat Summerall tried to have an intervention with him. Of course, Pat had been an alcoholic too and had gotten sober, and so several people tried to do interventions with him to get him to go get sober. I think one of the sad parts of that is he finally did. He goes to the Betty Ford Center. He does get sober, but by that time, the alcoholism, it had taken its toll. He is only sober for about the last year of his life or so, and he ends up dying on, he ends up dying August 13, 1995. He’s 63 years old when he passes away, so relatively young, but he lived a pretty hard life. And so he’s a man who achieved great things despite great odds. He’s a man who never quite grew up, never quite was able to have the family life that he may have wanted. He was a man who never had that confidence that he probably should have had given his abilities, and he was stymied by injuries his whole life, and kind of looking over his career, Bob Costas said this. “So what’s the big deal about Mickey? Here’s the big deal. Mays is the greatest all around baseball player I’ve ever seen. Aaron is the true home run king, and his career achievements are staggering. And yet, at his best in his prime, from the mid-’50s to the mid-’60s Mantle was pretty much their equal and at times was better. That’s even with all the injuries. Who knows what he would have been had he been healthy, since he was the greatest combination of natural power and natural speed the game has ever seen. Sure, there is some nostalgia and mythology connected to Mickey, but the real baseball truth is this: the more knowledgeable you are about the game and its history, the higher you rate him.”
Blackburn: Well, and that’s the way a generation of Americans remember him, and he’ll be among the pantheon of the great sports heroes in our lives. And kind of like Achilles, he will be, he’ll have a legacy.
Thompson: Yeah. In his own words, in a 1983 interview with the author of the book that I just mentioned, Jane Leavy, he said, “So who’s better, Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays?” And he says, “Expletive Willie.” So this is Mantle talking. “That’s what my father said. If you didn’t know either one of us and you wanted to know who’s better, Willie or Mickey, and you open the record book, what would it say? I guess, Willie. You have to go to the bottom line. I don’t alibi. I played in a lot more World Series games. I feel when I was good, I was better. Willie was probably about the best overall player I ever saw in my era. Him and Hank Aaron, neither one got hurt. He was a lot better fielder than I was. When I was healthy and going good, I was a better offensive player, and I played in a terrible ballpark for me. If I played in Atlanta, Fulton County Stadium, there’s no telling. I might have hit 800 home runs. Baseball was easy for him. Willie loved it. You could see it in him. I did too, when I felt good.” That was an interview he gave in 1983.
And so, today in Commerce, you can still go see his boyhood home. It’s still standing out there. And it’s a fixture for Route 66 travelers to stop and pay a little tribute to Mickey Mantle out there. In the memorabilia market, his memorabilia continues to gain in value. Things that he signed: balls, bats, programs, all of those things continue to rise in value. In fact, you know, signed baseball cards of his go for record amounts. He’s still popular. He’s still part of that American nostalgia, and I suspect he always will be. As we’re going to talk to Alex Freedman in just a few minutes, who is director of communications for the Oklahoma City Comets, the baseball park, the Bricktown Ballpark pays an homage to Mickey Mantle in several different ways, one of which is there’s a big statue of Mickey right outside there on Mickey Mantle Drive. So Mickey Mantle is a fixture not only in all of baseball, but particularly here in Oklahoma.
Blackburn: Yeah, one of our heroes.
Thompson: For sure. Well, Bob, after this brief message, let’s talk to Alex.
Blackburn: All right.
(school bell rings)
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Thompson: Welcome back, everyone. And we are here today with Alex Freedman. He’s been the director of communications and broadcasting for the Oklahoma City Comets since 2012. In his current role, he oversees team broadcasting, baseball information, public communications, media requests, and serves on one of the organization’s main conduits with the Los Angeles Dodgers’ player development and public relations departments. Since coming to Oklahoma City, Alex has been named the winner of the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters award for Best Play-by-Play two times. He has also been recognized by Ballpark Digest for an outstanding achievement in minor league baseball play-by-play. Outside of baseball, he has covered football, basketball, hockey, softball, and volleyball at different levels, ranging from high school all the way to Division I. He’s a proud native of St. Louis, and he graduated from Northwestern University, where he majored in both journalism and political science. Alex, we are so happy to have you in the podcast today. Thank you for taking time to join us.
Alex Freedman: Absolutely. My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
Thompson: Well, we’ve been talking about Mickey Mantle, and I thought it would be great for our listeners to understand a little bit about how minor league baseball works and your role in minor League baseball. But starting out, can we just talk a little bit about—you work for the Oklahoma City Comets. The Comets have been known by different names throughout the years. Most recently, they were the Oklahoma City Baseball Club. They have been the Oklahoma City 89ers. They’ve been the RedHawks. And so can you talk to us a little bit about the history of this franchise in Oklahoma City?
Freedman: And don’t forget the Oklahoma City Dodgers for about 10 years as well. I joke and I like to say that we would not be a case study in those studying business on branding and rebranding. But there are specific reasons why we had to change a few different times. But yeah, the history of Triple-A baseball in Oklahoma City goes back to 1962, and I don’t think a lot of people realize that it has been continuous all that time since 1962. Like in our league, there’s only one team that’s been around longer, and that’s in Tacoma, Washington. The Tacoma Rainiers.
Thompson: Oh, wow.
Freedman: So it has been a very long time to have Triple-A baseball at Oklahoma City, which started with then-known as the 89ers back in 1962. And their first affiliate, they came in and were created as a Triple-A team because that was the first year of the then-expansion. Houston Colt .45s, who then become known as the Houston Astros a few years later. But for the first seven years, the team was in the Pacific Coast League and then moved to the American Association from 1969 through 1997, again, another Triple-A league, and first few years with the Colt .45s and Astros, and then you get into the early-to-mid 1970s, where there’s an affiliation with the then Cleveland Indians. The team is horrible. Nobody is coming to the games, and it was a serious threat that baseball would leave Oklahoma City. Patty Cox Hampton, her husband Bing Hampton, stepped in and did in late 1970s to take over the franchise from a management and an ownership standpoint.
They did a great affiliation, and a strong affiliation, with the Philadelphia Phillies, which would see future Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg play for the team during that time. It would see the Phillies win the World Series in 1982, who until this current affiliation with the Dodgers, for several years, was the only time Oklahoma City’s parent club had won the World Series. And then you begin a long partnership with the nearby Texas Rangers, beginning in 1983, which lasted all the way through the end of the 2010 season. Of course, during that time, there was the big transition from All Sports Stadium to Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark in 1998, which plays such a huge part in the story of Oklahoma City. The first major project that was built as a result of the original MAPS package, which obviously you guys know, and I’m sure a lot of listeners know, that it was a very controversial ballot measure at the time, and barely passed. But once the ballpark was built, it really opened the eyes of those in Oklahoma City to realize this is what happens when we invest in ourselves, and really has help spurred a lot of the future MAPS packages that has been passed. And it plays again, like I said, just a huge role.
The story of Oklahoma City, if you look at the aerial photos of the area when the ballpark opened in 1998, it is unrecognizable. You would think it was a completely different city, a completely different part of the country, than what it looks like now. But then, going back to the modern history here, another affiliation with the Houston Astros for four years between 2011 and 2014. Then before the 2015 season, enter into an agreement with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Not only is it affiliation, but also a 50% ownership stake. Yes, and the affiliation has been going ever since then, but the ownership has changed. That was changed in December of 2021 to our current owners, Diamond Baseball Holdings, which has expanded its portfolio to over 40 teams across minor league baseball. That is part of the reason why these ownership changes, is we underwent several different team names and rebranding, going from the RedHawks to the Dodgers in 2015. The Dodgers’ ownership stake felt, hey, if we’re going to plant our flag in Oklahoma City, no better name to attach to it than the Dodgers themselves. But then, when that ownership change happen again to Diamond Baseball Holdings in December 2021, there was an understanding that the team would eventually transition away from the Dodgers, though the affiliation would stay in place. One of the biggest things of feedback we got from our fans was we love being affiliated with the Dodgers. We just wish we had more of a local and unique name.
Thompson: Yeah. That makes sense.
Freedman: And because there is so much that goes into not only rebranding a business in general, but rebranding a sports team, which includes not only just an infinite amount of signage. As I have said, you don’t realize how many places your name is until you go through a rebranding.
Thompson: Well, I can tell you, we did that here about four years ago, and it is eye-opening. You forget half the places your name is written down.
Freedman: Yeah, just from places in around the ballpark, in the office, to your email domain, your website, your social media, all that has to change. And in terms of the actual on-field stuff, you have jerseys, you have hats, you have suppliers that need very long lead times to get all this stuff done. And quite honestly, we weren’t in a place where we were ready quite yet that we felt comfortable and in a good spot to to have our full new team name for that 2024 season. So we had to go with the temporary team name for one year, kind of a la the Washington Football Team. Since then, we’ve seen the Utah Hockey Club do it, now the Utah Mammoth. And coincidentally, I’m recording this with you while we’re in Salt Lake, the home of the Utah Mammoth. They had to go through it, too. And then we came on the Oklahoma City Comets, and we’re finally able to reveal that in the fall of 2024, leading into 2025. And the partnership again, with the Dodgers, now is in year 11, which is hard to believe how fast it is all gone by. So I don’t know how brief of a history that is of Triple-A baseball in Oklahoma City. I certainly could go into more, but that is kind of more of a conversational history of Triple-A baseball in OKC.
Thompson: Yeah. It’s fascinating. I want to bring Bob in. And Bob, tell us about some of your longtime fandom of baseball here in Oklahoma City.
Blackburn: Yeah, I started playing Little League baseball when I was a kid. Of course, born in 1951. So in the late ’50s, early ’60s, baseball was it. YMCA league, and all you had to do was afford a t-shirt and a cap, and then find some dad who’ll coach the team, and there were diamonds, what we called diamonds, all basically dirt lots with the backdrop. But anyway, my mother worked for KOCO-TV. We had a box to the 89ers when they started in ’62. Of course, I was playing baseball at the time. Mickey Mantle was in the last three years of his career at the time. So almost every Oklahoma City kid wanted to be Mickey Mantle. That was your idea of the perfect baseball player, and going to the 89ers, I still remember that that 89ers stadium.
If some of our viewers will remember it well, most high schools have a better stadium now than the 89ers had in 1962. It was basically a dirt mound with some bleachers thrown on the back side of the dirt mound. And but we had some really good baseball players. I remember Rusty Staub played for those early teams. Jim Wynn, Dave Roberts, Dave Giusti, and we were a championship teams at the time, and it was so much fun to go to those games and get a hot dog. And of course, I left town in ’69 when I started off to college, but until then I was a huge 89ers fan. And then for the Oklahoma Historical Society, Patty Cox donated her last of her archives to us. So before she passed away, she came in. Bing had already passed away. She was with Bob Roloff at the time, an architect, but she donated a couple of boxes of 89ers memorabilia, or just whatever the affiliates name was. They were with the Phillies. I do remember that. But she was a good friend.
And then for some of our listeners who were even older than me, which is hard to imagine, but they are, they’ll remember the Oklahoma City Indians that preceded. And Eric, you may know, I don’t know if it was Single-A or Double-A. It was not Triple-A, but they had a stadium down on Pennsylvania, and that’s where the Oklahoma City Indians played. And we have a bat boy’s uniform from Oklahoma City Indians, because one of our employees was a bat boy for them and kept his wool uniform all those years later. And it’s in our collections now. So, Eric, if you ever need an exhibit on baseball in Oklahoma City, we’ll have that collection. Alex. Yeah. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I said the wrong name, but we have some artifacts that could go with an exhibit somewhere in the stadium at some point in the future. We did that originally when the stadium first opened in ’98. Clay Bennett was part owner then, and we worked through Clay and his partner at the time, and did an exhibit in the clubhouse for you on the history of minor league baseball in Oklahoma. So that’s always a possibility.
Thompson: Alex, I’d love to talk a little bit. We started in on the branding, but since we’re talking about Mickey Mantle, the name of the team is the Oklahoma City Comets. Of course, one of Mickey Mantle’s many nicknames was the Commerce Comet. I’m sure that played a big role in deciding to name the franchise, but can you get into a little bit of that, how that process went?
Freedman: There’s a lot of meetings. A lot of, like we said, really kind of a two-year process from when we started it to when we were able to launch. And of course, you start big and then you start to narrow things down a little bit. And one of my big things was, let’s try and work backwards if we can. We still want to emphasize our Dodgers relationship. The average person, when you hear, oh, the team that’s changing its name away from the Oklahoma City Dodgers to whatever was going to be, the assumption is, well, they’re not affiliated with the Dodgers anymore. And to me, to be able to not only have that partnership with the Dodgers, which is one of the best franchises, not only in baseball but especially now in all of professional sports, then we needed to keep that connection. We needed to find a way to keep it connected visually.
So I started thinking to myself, okay, what are some of the ways that we can do that? One of my suggestions was like, hey, well, you have the Dodgers and their famous shooting ball logo. Is there something we can incorporate that can convey that? And again, that’s just my personal opinion and what I brought towards the table. Of course, there are a lot of different other ideas and things that we had gotten from fans. You know, the thing that stuck with us from workshopping and having focus group with fans was, what I mentioned before, not only having more of a local name, but still having the Dodgers partnership, but also that you see a lot of minor league teams that either rebrand or they’re new. They have these kind of wacky two-word names, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I think it was made very clear to us that that would not work in Oklahoma City, that we wanted to still have kind of a cleaner, more traditional name. You know, we don’t want to have, you know, the Oklahoma City Thunder, the NBA champions playing down the street. And we’re now the Oklahoma City, you know, Wacky Wizards or something along those lines. So folks wanted to keep it professional but have it local as well. And to me it’s okay, let’s try and tie some visual aspects in, and then we start thinking about some other stuff. And I just start thinking about a lot of different things and okay, that shooting ball, and you see it kind of in our current logos now and our OKC main cap insignia, a ball streaking through the K, like a comet. It’s like in our jerseys as well, you know, prominently featured. And we’re just talking more, and you know someone you know, somehow the name, the word comet came up. And that reminds me of Mickey Mantle and how in our ballpark, we have statues to three Oklahoma City baseball legends, in Mickey Mantle, Johnny Bench, Warren Spahn.
The ballpark’s formal address has been ever since it opened, 2 South Mickey Mantle Drive. The silhouette of Mickey Mantle swinging is on the end of every section of aisle of seats, and knowing that his name was the Commerce Comet, kind of tying in also to that visualization element that we had talked about. Also, the fact that Oklahoma City’s aerospace industry is really burgeoning, and it’s a city that doesn’t necessarily want to just always be known now as an oil and gas town. It just kind of all came together at once. And I will be honest, when we first were kind of in the room as a leadership team, and we thought Comets, it’s like, okay, this is good, but is it really the winner? But once we worked with our designers on logos to see the logos, the marks, and everything, and when we first saw those, that was like, okay, this is it, this is it. And when we first revealed it there in October of 2024, I would say the reception was very positive. I went into it from a realistic standpoint, knowing you’re going to have a lot of people liked it, a lot of people who didn’t like it, but the number of people who liked it as opposed to didn’t like it was far bigger number than I would have expected.
And to those who maybe don’t get it, and still to this day don’t get it, once you explain in much shorter words than I just did— the tie to Mickey Mantle and the things we were looking to accomplish— the attitude tends to change pretty quickly.
Thompson: Well, it wasn’t going to be long until I had to employ a baseball pun. But I have to tell you, I think it’s a home run. It’s so unique, the branding that you guys have done and then bringing in the different mascots with the spaceman. I think you have a space dog, which is fantastic. And I just think it all works, and it’s fun, but I do think it also keeps that professional aspect there. So, you know, you and all your consultants, I think you really did do a great job.
Freedman: Well, thank you very much. And I think one of the other, like you said, the other logos, one of which was our astronaut logo, that was one where it was kind of a secondary thing that we thought it was cool. We didn’t think a ton of it, but that was a logo that everyone was drawn to. Immediately, we realized that, oh, this thing’s pretty popular. And at first, we didn’t really know what to call it. We call it Moon Man for a while, but then we decided, hey, you know, since the fans didn’t have a chance to maybe formally name the team or submit team name suggestions, why don’t we have a “name this astronaut” logo. And we were, we got quite a few submissions. And one that really stood out to us was Wally, in honor of Wally Funk, the aerospace pioneer who, unfortunately, recently passed away and has deep ties to Oklahoma. And that was the one we settled on. So that was another thing that was unexpected and unexpected from a popular standpoint that we were glad to be able to run with.
Thompson: You know, one of the things that was surprising for me to learn, and I’d love to get into this a little bit, is how much— I don’t think the local franchise has much impact at all. When it comes to player personnel, salaries for players, hiring the coaches or anything, is that correct?
Freedman: That is 100% correct. Everyone who basically wears a uniform, outside of the bat boys on the field, are employees of their parent club. So whether it’s us with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Right now, we’re playing the Salt Lake Bees. They’re the Angels’ affiliate. Those, again, are all people who are members of that organization. They are employees of that organization, and it’s the parent club that is making all the decisions in terms of who’s on the coaching staff, which players are on the roster, and so on and so.
Thompson: Bob, did you know that? I didn’t know that before last year.
Blackburn: Not totally. No.
Thompson: And I found that to be fascinating. And so from a local standpoint, you know, you all don’t have any choice. So much of whether a team is going to be successful is based on the players and the coaches, and that’s completely taken out of your hands. And so if you’re making the playoffs or not making the playoffs, if you’re on a winning streak or not on a winning streak, you could be doing incredibly well. Next thing you know, one of your best players gets called up to go play for the Dodgers, or somebody gets sent back down, you know. That’s completely out of your hands, which I just find to be fascinating.
Freedman: And it happens all the time, and you never know what’s going to happen on a day-to-day basis. It could be, like you said, our team is on a seven-game winning streak right now. And the Dodgers don’t play specifically today, but say in their next game, one of their big players gets hurt. That means we’re going to lose somebody. They have to use a lot of their bullpen. We’re going to lose a pitcher or two. We just had the trade deadline earlier this week. We lost a few players because of that, either getting sent to other organizations and trades or there’s domino effects in terms of you can only have certain amount of players on what’s called your 40-man roster. So you might have guys that are called designated for assignment to remove them from the 40-man roster, which we have a lot of on our team. So you just never know what the day is going to be like. You know, we’re very fortunate with the way the Dodgers have been successful that we’ve had not only successful teams in Oklahoma City, but we’ve had several of our players go on to win, now back-to-back World Series titles, as well as three World Series in the last six years. But you just, you never know. People always ask me all the time before season starts, well, how good is the team going to be? And again, we don’t know. We don’t know until they actually show up. But what I’ve said recently is we know they’re going to be good. We don’t know how good they are going to be because it all comes down to big league needs.
Thompson: On the flip side of that, we’ve had the luxury of watching some really, really good top major league talent play in Oklahoma City. Because occasionally, when someone is rehabbing from an injury, they’ll come down and play for the Triple-A team while they’re going through all of their rehab process to get back into the lineup, correct?
Freedman: For several years, several different years, we had Clayton Kershaw is going to be a no doubt, first ballot Inner Circle Hall of Famer who had quite a few times on rehab assignment with us, and always so special when he would come and pitch in Oklahoma City, none more of which than his first time in 2017, when he was really at the peak of his powers. And it was the first time it had happened, and I just remember that crowd that night being so locked in to every pitch that he was throwing. It’s almost quiet, despite having close to 14,000 people there just because they’re also focused on him. Earlier this year, we had Mookie Betts, the Dodgers superstar, play a few games with us in Oklahoma City, and the list goes on and on with the names who have played with us, whether it’s home or on the road. Like days ago, we had Blake Snell, member of the Dodgers rotation, two-time Cy Young Award winner who played with us as he rehabs an injury.
So yeah, it’s a nice treat for the local fans. There’s just such a big difference, even from Triple-A to the big leagues. I’m not talking about A-ball to the big leagues, just even Triple-A to the big leagues. The amount of access that fans have to players or how much easier it is, relatively speaking. For smaller stadiums, things just tend to be a lot more relaxed. In general, it’s a big stark difference. So when you are able to have a player of that repute be able to play in your local stadium, it’s always a special time.
Blackburn: And I might add right here, Alex, that I remember when the stadium opened. Tom Wilson and Kenyon Morgan, the architects who designed it, they were the local contracting architects, and I remember getting a tour before it opened. And Max Nichols, former president of American Baseball Writers Association, was on my staff at the time. And we went for a tour, and Max was just blown away by the details of the stadium, taking some of the best of all the major league stadiums in the country at the time, putting in the little eccentricities in the outfield, and, you know, the spacing. A lot of people don’t appreciate the quality of the place where you get to play, and the quality of the amenities where you can get your refreshments and restrooms and everything else is so convenient, and it’s a beautiful sight to watch a game. And I just always loved the stadium. And so in a lot of ways, I think the team has been fortunate to have that as a home stadium, and hopefully the fans appreciate it.
Freedman: 100 percent, and another great feature of the ballpark is the 360-degree concourse that, no matter where you are, you’re always able to see the game when you’re walking on the concourse. So that’s certainly something special. And, you know, hey, the reality is it’s a 28-year-old facility which most people cannot believe. Anytime I say that in public, people just get this puzzled look on their face. Like, how can that be? How could it be 28 years old? But that’s the reality; we’re coming up on 30 years, and it requires a lot of maintenance.
As great as our ballpark is, something that I point out is it was also built in a different time, in a different era. The new ballparks that open now are probably built about half the size as ours is. You don’t really see too many with a huge second deck like ours do., two full levels of suites and club services and things like that. And of course, we haven’t used the upper deck on the right side for 15 years now. So more stadiums, when they get built now, they’re much more intimate, and that’s a big difference between our ballpark and newer ballparks, and where you could have two crowds of the exact same size in terms of attendance between one or the other, and the newer ballpark is going to feel fuller than ours is. And we’ve also, a big trend in sports, just sports business and venues, is focusing more on the group settings and the group amenities than the individual seats. So we’ve had different areas of our ballpark renovated to accommodate groups from the Miller Lite landing in left field and the baseline patios on both the first base side and third base side, the skyline deck, right field; refurbishing suites, totally redoing our what’s now known as the Newcastle Casino Club behind home plate on the second floor. There’s such a big emphasis on that, those parts of the ballpark and the facility as well. But, you know, like I said, it goes back to the fact that this is a 28-year-old facility, and it requires a lot of maintenance.
Thompson: Well, if we know one thing about anything, having 25 museums and historical sites around the state, we know capital maintenance, and we know deferred maintenance. So it’s a topic that we are very familiar with, and you have our deepest sympathies on everything you have to do. So that really brings me to, you know, going back to the responsibilities of the local franchise, your main responsibility at this point, since you don’t have much to do, if anything, with player personnel and the on-field product, is making sure the fans have a good experience in the ballpark. Correct?
Freedman: One-hundred percent. And that’s achieved through customer service, through all of our game-day employees, and I would say the folks who are game-day employees, they are much more important to the daily operation than I am. I don’t get to meet fans on a daily basis. I’m not in the middle of it like they are, and the same goes for a lot of the full-time staff members for us. So those game day employees are so important and making folks feel welcome, answering their questions, being a friendly face, and wanting folks to be able to come back. And on the other side of it is our in-game entertainment. Like you said, we can’t control who is on the team and how well the team is doing, so we have to make it a fun experience for the fan, regardless of how the actual game is going. So having something that’s constantly going on with every inning break, either a bit with our mascots, an engaging video on the center field scoreboard, a contest with fans, with our entertainment crew, the Space Squad. You have to make sure that people are engaged and are having fun from the time they step in the ballpark to the time they leave, in addition to everything that happens on the field.
Blackburn: Alex, you know, in a bit, I wonder how much at the minor league level at least, the Savannah Bananas are having on baseball in general.
Freedman: I can’t speak to that fully. I’m sure that it is, I don’t know how much it would necessarily affect each team. My opinion on the Savannah Bananas is I’m aware enough to know it’s not for me, but I am more of a traditional hardcore baseball fan. But I think when you’re having folks engaged with the game, even if it is a little bit less traditional, it’s a positive thing. I respect what they’ve done to now basically sell out NFL stadiums and essentially have offshoot teams in their own league, and we’re going to be hosting the Banana Ball League coming up with a couple of different teams that aren’t the actual Savannah Bananas themselves. But I believe the Indianapolis Clowns and Texas Tailgaters, and that’s coming up very soon. And they’re going to be packed houses at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark for that. I think it’s a little bit of a separate product. It’s kind of like, well, you know, the Thunder and the Harlem Globetrotters, they kind of play the same sport, but it really is a different product. So I don’t know, ultimately, how much it has an effect on other teams. But I can’t really speak to that one way or the other.
Blackburn: Good answer. Thank you.
Thompson: Yeah, and how do you feel about how Oklahoma City supports baseball, and what do you kind of see in the future?
Freedman: That’s a good question. I think overall, we get good support. But bat-and-ball sports in Oklahoma, the state in general, has a lot of really good teams. And I’m not just talking about us as the Triple-A team in Oklahoma City. You have the national champions down the street in the Sooners baseball team; the softball team, a perennial power. OSU baseball and softball are good every single year and always a contender. So there are a lot of really good teams to go around in a state that is not that big.
I think folks here in Oklahoma, and I tell this to people, that the talent of amateur players in Oklahoma is really underrated nationally. And you see so many players throughout my job with other teams who are Oklahomans, a lot of them from small towns. And a lot of it goes back to the fact that there are several areas that don’t have enough kids to field high school football teams, so they play an additional fall baseball season instead. So kids are just constantly playing, and we have a really strong crop of junior-college programs throughout the state. So I think, you know, we get good support. There’s certainly some. (audio cuts out) ...vice president of ticket sales said, you know, we’re not competing against other sports teams. We’re competing against people’s time.
And I think another big thing is for everybody, and we’re not an exception. For everybody, COVID changed a lot. COVID opened up people’s eyes into what they can do entertainment-wise. You know, whether it’s things they can do at home they weren’t able to do before. I think we just live, and it goes back to what I was saying earlier about the ballpark, in such a different time than it was in 1998, when you had entertainment options at your fingertips, where as opposed to going to the RedHawks game, and the first year of the ballpark was the thing to do in Oklahoma City, and that’s just not the world we live in right now.
Thompson: Yeah, there’s a lot of things to do out there. Of course, the Thunder coming had made a big impact on the entertainment landscape in Oklahoma City for sure. But I have to tell you, you know, I am one of those people. I’m a casual baseball fan. I’m one of those people. I wouldn’t really give you a nickel to watch baseball on TV, but I love watching it in the ballpark, and I try to get out to a few games every year just because there feels like something nostalgic, something fun, something all-American. And it’s a relaxing thing to do, just to go sit in the ballpark, have a hot dog, enjoy the weather. You know, hopefully, when it’s not a thousand degrees outside. But it is, to me, one of the most fun and relaxing things you can do to just go in the ballpark on a nice evening and watch a baseball game. And I hope that sticks around for a long time to come.
Freedman: It is still ingrained in our cultural DNA, I feel. I don’t think anyone denies that football is, of course, now the most popular sport in the country. But even though our games are a production, I mean, they’re nothing compared to a major college football game or an NFL game. And like you said, I think it’s something that we’ve just always had, and the proliferation of minor league baseball teams, where you have several of these teams spread throughout the country. I mean, there’s 120 affiliated minor league teams. That doesn’t count for the independent teams that exist as well. And then on top of that, you have the 30 major league teams. And I think just the outdoor nature of it, the slower pace of it just lends itself to being a more relaxing option, especially, and when we have certain promotions, like a $2 Tuesday, we can get $2 beers and things like that. You can enjoy a fireworks game, or fireworks after every Friday game. You can enjoy a lot of different things at the ballpark. And it might not be as prevalent as it once was nationwide, but like I said, I don’t think it’s going away.
Thompson: Alex, as we’re wrapping up here, if people want to go on and buy tickets to the game, what’s your website, and where can they listen to you do play-by-play of the games?
Freedman: The best thing to do is go to OKCcomets.com, our website. You can buy your tickets there. You can get all the information about upcoming promotions for home games, see the full schedule. It really is just a one-stop shop. So OKCcomets.com. Our broadcast, every single game, is carried audio on a local radio station for those who still listen on their actual radio stations. 1340 AM, that is the actual station itself, KGHM. But you know, we’re available streaming through the iHeart radio app, through the Minor League Baseball app. Our home games are streamed with video on what’s called MLB+, which is a paid subscription service. But there is a free app called Bally Sports Live where you can watch the games too. But I’m in every game doing at the very least an audio broadcast. When we’re at home, it’s, you know, my audio prepared, or I should say partnered with our in-house video. So we just appreciate the support.
You know, we’re on the air for every pitch, every single game. And when we talk about changes within baseball and professional sports, there have been several teams across our league that they still have broadcasts, but they’re streaming only. They don’t have a radio partner. There are several teams in the minor leagues that, well, they only broadcast home games, or they only do X amount of games. We are very fortunate in our situation. We’re not only still broadcasting all 150 of our games, but we are doing it over-the-air on traditional media, as well as the new type of media as well.
Thompson: Well, Alex, that is fantastic. And we certainly appreciate you coming on and helping us learn more about the Comets and minor league baseball in general, and wish you all the best, and have a great trip out there in Utah.
Freedman: Thank you. It was very fun. I appreciate you guys having me on.
Thompson: All right. Take care. We’ll talk to you soon. Well, Bob, I enjoyed our conversation with Alex. I learned a lot about minor league baseball I didn’t know before.
Blackburn: Well, he obviously is doing a good job for us. And let’s encourage everyone to go out and get a baseball game.
Thompson: Absolutely. No better time to go out and enjoy the ballpark. Well, Bob, I had fun with this conversation with you, and I can’t wait to do it again.
Blackburn: It brings back a lot of good memories. Thanks for choosing that topic. Okay, talk to you soon.
Thompson: You have been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visit us at okhistory.org, and find us on social media by searching for @okhistory. I encourage you to purchase a membership to OHS to help us continue our mission to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma’s unique and fascinating history.
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