Forgotten fields : FAYETTEVILLE BASEBALL HISTORIAN KEEPS ARKANSAS-MISSOURI LEAGUE FROM FADING AWAY
Posted on Sunday, April 13, 2008
Based on the current lay of the land, a passerby would never know that Fairgrounds Ballpark stood on the site of the University of Arkansas intramural fields along Razorback Road in Fayetteville.
In the 1989 film “ Field of Dreams, ” an Iowa farmer named Ray Kinsella carves a small baseball stadium out of the cornfields in his backyard after being driven by a voice informing him that “ if you build it, he will come. ” As evidenced by the research done by local historian Jerry Hogan, his driving force is “ if you tear it down, they will forget. ”
This weekend has marked the start of the Northwest Arkansas Naturals playing baseball in Springdale as the Class AA affiliate of the Kansas City Royals. By no means, though, is this the advent of minor league baseball in the area. That distinguished honor goes to the teams that made up the Arkansas State League, which was later changed to the Arkansas-Missouri League in 1936.
What started as a farm system for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1934 during the Great Depression evolved into a league full of entertaining curve balls both on and off the field before folding on July 1, 1940. For seven years, the Fayetteville’s Fairground Ballpark served as the home of a minor league club first called the Educators, then the Bears and finally the Angels. The park also was the home of the university’s baseball team until it was razed in 1973. Preserving the past While looking at the setup, the 62-year-old Hogan pointed through a gate to where home plate would have stood: between two plastic fences. There is no visible trace that the park ever existed, something that does not surprise Hogan.
“ I think all that stuff passed into history so quickly at a time when people weren’t paying attention, ” said Hogan, who remembers trying out for a city park league team at the venue as a child. “ The problem is that this all occurred so long ago and it’s virtually forgotten history. There’s almost no physical evidence that exists outside the written record. I like to find things that people don’t remember anymore and the [league ] is a perfect example of that. ”
At 1 p. m. May 3, Hogan will give a presentation on the history of the league at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History, the same venue that is hosting an exhibit about the area’s baseball heritage called “ Play Ball !, ” which runs through July 26.
“ That’s partly why I wanted to do this exhibit for that very reason, ” said Allyn Lord, the museum’s director who is in charge of the exhibit. “ People think ‘ Oh the Naturals. Oh, UA baseball. ’ And that’s what we know and of course there’s plenty of kids’ ball, but it’s not symptomatic of baseball. It’s symptomatic of everything: People’s historic memories are very short. ”
Such as remembering Fairgrounds Ballpark, a place in spite of being in walking distance from the UA campus was considered on the outskirts of town and too far away.
“ If you asked 100 people maybe one might know it if they’re old enough to know, so I think that’s part of it and that’s part of the burden of museums and historians and teachers and other people: to bring local history to the forefront, ” Lord said.
Hogan, a native of the Zion community, began researching the league in 1998 after his brother-inlaw Kirby Estes, who passed away in January, handed him an article written about the subject in the 1970 s in an edition of Flash Back, a quarterly magazine published by the Washington County Historical Society.
The historian who had the idea of writing a book on the subject was baffled at how the area suffered from a collective case of amnesia when it came to the league’s seven-year tenure. Out of the nine cities that at one time participated, Carthage, Mo., has the only ballpark still standing since the days it was home of the lowest rung of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ farm system from 1938-1940.
Pete Castiglione, who may be the league’s only living representative, played for Carthage in 1940 as an 18-year-old newbie from Greenwich, Conn., before eventually suiting up for Pittsburgh from 1947 to 1953 and the St. Louis Cardinals from 1953 to 1954.
“ I enjoyed [the league ] because I wanted to play baseball, ” the 87-year-old said from his home in Pompano Beach, Fla. “ I got all the baseball I could get from there. I was glad to be there. When the league broke up, I was sad. ”
To Hogan’s amazement, several city administrators and newspapers had no idea they ever had a team. He was trying to build a puzzle and not many people were aware of its pieces. Although Hogan received help through outlets such as the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History, the Fayetteville Public Library and the Washington County Historical Society, his two biggest sources were a booklet written about the Fayetteville minor league teams by noted local journalist, educator and historian Walter J. Lemke and the sports pages of the Fayetteville Daily Democrat, which later changed its name to the Northwest Arkansas Times in July 1937. Angels in the outfield
— and the infield The booklet contains mostly recollections of Lemke while he covered the Angels and wrote a column called “ Angel Food” for the Times, which was recently reprinted by the Washington County Historical Society. Before Hogan wrote his book in 2001 with the working title, “ Angels in the Ozarks: Professional Baseball in Fayetteville, Arkansas, 1934-1940, ” the booklet by Lemke, for whom the UA journalism department is named, was the only main written account of the league when it was first published in 1952. Hogan, who has revised his manuscript several times, is pursuing a publisher.
Lemke wrote the following: “ The Ark-Mo League, from bleachers to fences, from managers to players, from umpires to fans, was rugged individualism at its ruggedest. Where else in the hundred-year history of organized baseball can you find a one-armed umpire and a one-eyed umpire, a barefoot pitcher, a woman playing an entire game of league ball ?”
The one-armed umpire, Jack Clemmons, who lost his arm in a bus collision in his younger days, was one of the more revered in the league. A one minute of silence was paid to the one-eyed umpire, Pete Casey, who “ died suddenly, ” according to the booklet, on Aug. 5, 1937. Warren “ Moose” Fralick, who was said to have pitched barefoot before heading to Fayetteville, always wore shoes while playing for the Bears in 1935. The league’s biggest highlight may have happened when a woman named Frances Dunlap played nine innings in right field for the Bears on Sept. 6, 1936, and later played five innings for the Angels on Aug. 8, 1937.
According to Lemke’s accounts and Hogan’s research, Fayetteville’s team was the league’s flagship franchise. Although members of the Cardinals’ management had already established teams in Rogers, Bentonville and Siloam Springs, the league did not officially start until Fayetteville representatives Fred Hawn, who eventually became the team’s first manager and catcher, and Cliff Shaw signed on following rumors that Springdale and Harrison were thinking about joining the fray by posting $ 600 in seed money. The money was never posted, but the league started in 1934 with the now-defunct Class D status, the lowest classification. Fayetteville began with the moniker of Educators in honor of the university, before switching to the Bears. Huntsville had a team called the Red Birds for a year in 1935. During the seven years, four Missouri towns had teams at one point or another: Cassville, Carthage, Monett and Neosho.
Although Fayetteville’s teams floundered at or near the bottom of the league standings for the first three years, the team was able to overcome the concrete clay infield and weed-infested outfield of its home park by winning games when it changed its name to the Angels in 1937. After putting up with dirty and ratty uniforms (one fan wrote a letter to the Daily Democrat suggesting a Works Progress Administration project to have them cleaned ), the Angels cut a deal with another minor league team in Ponca City, Okla., who according to Lemke’s booklet, and received the uniforms from the Los Angeles Angels of the Class AAA Pacific Coast League.
“ It wasn’t until the Fayetteville entry in the Ark-Mo League acquired the nickname ‘ Angels’ that they really began to soar. They were a rough-tough crew, hardly cherubim and seraphim, ” Lemke wrote. “ They learned to take that extra base, to go in feet-first, to argue every called strike. They were a damn nuisance to the nice people of Rogers and Siloam but they won the pennant — those heavenly Angels. ”
In 1939, the Angels won both first and second halves of the season, but were still forced to play a championship series with Carthage, the team that finished second both times. Carthage ended up winning the series four games to one.
Interestingly enough, the biggest name to be associated with the Angels was their batboy, Sherman Lollar, a Durham native who served the position for four years before taking part in a Major League career as an All-Star and Gold Glove catcher, including a 12-year run with Chicago White Sox from 1952 to 1963.
When the Angels folded on June 28, 1940, the whole league followed suit three days later after a league that was strapped for cash from its infancy could not compete with World War II, which picked up steam and drained the country of its resources. Going to the top Hogan, who added that he plans to attend several Naturals’ games, said he was excited for minor league baseball to resume in Northwest Arkansas.
“ I love minor league ball, simply put, ” he said. “ I love the minors and I think Double-A is probably the best of the minors. The guys are still trying to go up and, of course, Triple-A is the real make-or-breaker, but Double-A is a big one, too. You get stopped there. … So it’s a real critical phase. [The players are ] more like college players still. They still care a lot. They care big time. They have a big goal ahead of them. ”
The local historian hopes that fans will not concentrate so much on the wins and losses of the club, but the game and the ambiance that makes minor league baseball truly unique. He said if a player has a good start, “ he’s probably going to be in [Triple-A ] Omaha by July. ”
“ These are developmental leagues. They’re meant to train players for the big time, so if you happen to have a team that wins a lot of games that’s great. That’s not what the big club is trying to do. The big club is trying to see who’s going to make it to the next step and who’s going to make it to the big time and so there’s going to be a lot of movement. If [fans ] don’t misunderstand why the team is here for, it looks to me like they’ll get supported really well. ”
Play ball.
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