Exhibit tells of baseball's deep roots in Springfield

Museum exhibit tells the stories behind the games.

 By Gail Reynolds
FOR THE NEWS-LEADER

Get out to the ballgame.

Only inside.

The History Museum for Springfield-Greene County offers a new exhibit, "130 Summers — The History of Springfield Baseball," through Aug. 20.

Explore America's favorite pastime through photographs, mementos and artifacts depicting Springfield's baseball history from the Civil War era through Springfield's original 1931-1942 Cardinal team and into the smashing new 2005 Cardinals lineup.

The exhibit "takes you back to the days when summers in Springfield were all about baseball," says museum curator Joan Hampton-Porter. "Baseball is Springfield — now. But it has such a long and lustrous history."

Baseball in the Ozarks began in the camps during the Civil War and also was played in the mining camps, she says. After the Civil War, soldiers came back to the Ozarks and probably brought the sport home with them.

Baseball buff Mark Ringenberg grew up in Springfield and has adored baseball since he was a young kid.

"My dad took me to St. Louis during the '60s and the early St. Louis Cardinals were my heroes," says Ringenberg, who viewed the exhibit on opening day, June 11. "The most interesting thing, I guess, about this exhibit is its connection to the people and the Springfield community."

Photographs and artifacts, he says, capture the moments when well-known major and minor league baseball players — Jerry Lumpe, Jack Hamlin, Mickey Owen, Scott Bailes, Bill Virdon and Orlando Merced — connected with the Ozarks region and were active in their careers.

"One of the neatest things there to me," Ringenberg describes, "is an unused ticket to the fifth game of the 1941 World Series."

Visitors to the "130 Summers" exhibit will be able not only to view the ticket donated by the widow of Mickey Owen (a former Greene County sheriff and catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers during the team's World Series standoff against the New York Yankees), they will be privy to the interesting tale surrounding why the ticket was never used.

Museum visitors will have the opportunity to learn about some local baseball heroes, such as Herschel Bennett, who played major league baseball with the St. Louis Browns and who, in the 1920s, was the first player from Greene County to go pro.

Another interesting artifact to search out is an early 1930s Springfield Cardinals batboy uniform, Hampton-Porter points out.

"What's really unique about this uniform is that it was worn by music legend Si Siman, who's most well-known for bringing the Ozark 'Jubilee' to this area," Ringenberg adds, "but there's that baseball connection once again with the community."

The exhibit in total definitely has something for the buff, he says, but should be interesting for all with the community tie-in.

"There are guys who've played professional ball who are just regular guys active in the community right now," Ringenberg says. "That's the great part — to be able to see pictures of them when they were active in their playing careers."