The tale of Mickey Mantle's 1st HR, which went 600 feet and landed among the monkeys?

Longtime Independence, Kan., resident and educator Ken Brown puts his tiny town's big-time baseball history into perspective.

"When you study a little bit of Independence history, there's something about a feud we had between two bankers, something about Independence being one of the richest towns per capita, there's the big three: William Inge, Harry Sinclair and Alf Landon," Brown said over a Zoom. "And then, yeah, they know Mickey Mantle got his start here. If they know that, they know that legend has it he hit a home run off of Monkey Island."

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Mickey Mantle had some, um, let's say, generous home run distances during his professional baseball career.

A 600-foot clout over the football field at USC.

A 565-foot blast at Griffith Stadium in Washington D.C. that literally became the first "tape-measure shot."

A Tiger Stadium dinger that looked like it landed in another zip code.

So it's no surprise that his very first professional home run has a ridiculous story behind it. Maybe more ridiculous than all those others combined.

Mantle was signed by the Yankees in 1949 at the age of 17 and sent to New York's Class D Minor League team in Independence. The Independence Yankees played at Shulthis Stadium -- the ballpark where the very first night game in organized baseball history took place. Independence was assistant-managed by former pitcher Burleigh Grimes, who snarled and cursed and chewed on slippery elm to spitball his way to a Hall of Fame career.

Grimes was probably pretty excited to have Mantle on his squad.

The teenage wonder was a three-sport super athlete in high school in Commerce, Okla. He was a switch-hitter in baseball, learning to swing from both sides of the plate courtesy of his dad, Mutt, when he was a toddler. Even in those early years, Mantle was already seen by the Yankees organization as an heir apparent to Joe DiMaggio. New York scouts first developed interest in the high-schooler after he deposited multiple balls into a river in a semi-pro circuit.

“He has more speed than any slugger I’ve ever seen, and more slug than any other speedster," Yankees manager Casey Stengel said of Mantle before he even appeared in a big league game. "And nobody has ever had more of both of ’em together. This kid ain’t logical. He’s too good. It’s very confusing."

Mantle rose to those lofty expectations for Independence -- hitting seven homers with 63 RBIs, 20 steals and slashing at a .313/.408/.467 rate in just 89 games. And that first dinger for the Class D Yankees, the first in his iconic professional career, was a doozy.

It happened on June 30th, 1949, and it cleared the deepest depths of Shulthis. From Jan Sumner's book, "Independence, Mantle and Miss Able":

*"On June 30, 1949 Mickey hit his first professional home run over the centerfield fence at Shulthis Stadium. It was about 460 feet to the fence in center and he cleared the fence with room to spare."*

"Yeah, there's a cement wall, an oval wall that goes all the way around the stadium," Brown told me. "It was straightaway center field. When you stand in that corner now and look, there's a football field and a track and some grassy area, it is a blast to hit it to straightaway center field."

But the ball, at least according to legend, didn't stop there. Sumner's book alleges that fans yelled, "That ball is headed to Monkey Island!"

Monkey Island? That's right. Monkey Island.

"There was a road that goes around the stadium, around the outside of the cement wall," Brown said. "The wall was probably 10 feet high. There's the road, then there's a grassy area, then there's a moat around Monkey Island, and then Monkey Island is behind there."

Monkey Island was, and still is, a monkey exhibit in the Independence Zoo. It's located more than 100 feet from that center-field spot where Mantle hit his homer. Even more unbelievable? 10 years later, a rhesus monkey named Miss Able, from that very zoo, would be the first primate to survive space travel.

So yes, Mantle's very first professional home run -- which was never actually found -- may have traveled 600 feet into a zoo of screeching monkeys ... one of which eventually traveled into space. A mythical start to a baseball life that continued to blur and, at times, totally obliterate reality.

Mantle went on to hit 26 homers in Joplin, Mo., the next season and was called up to the Yankees in 1951 as a 19-year-old. He hit 536 MLB homers, won three MVPs and took home seven World Series titles -- becoming an inner-circle member of Cooperstown when he was inducted in 1974.

And this little, less-than-10,000-person town in Kansas will always know, and can always talk about, how he got his legendary start.