COMMERCE, Okla. — The Mickey Mantle name is worth millions, but you won’t find that kind of money in the town where Mantle learned to switch-hit by hitting tennis balls, using the side of a metal shed as a backstop.

Commerce has more than its share of sagging porches, peeling paint and overgrown lots. The main drag is quiet, with only the Western-themed Hitch N’ Post Antique and Flea Market and a few other businesses trying to make a go of it. On one recent weekday afternoon, it felt as if everybody had gone someplace else.

Still, there is Yankee pride of a sort, even here in Kansas City Royals country, near the Kansas state line. In the middle of town, the Commerce water tower is painted with pinstripes and a No. 7. A statue of Mantle, the “Commerce Comet,” greets visitors on Mickey Mantle Boulevard at the edge of town, just behind the center-field wall at the high school field named for him.

All who come here to reconnect with their childhood hero look for Mantle’s home, the square, four-room white house with a big yard and rusted, corrugated metal shed where, the story goes, Mantle’s father and grandfather would pitch to the boy as he hit from the left side, and the right, for hours every afternoon until the sun went down. The shed’s roof is partly peeled away, but the legend is intact: This is the spot where baseball’s greatest switch-hitter grew up.