Categories crunchfx

State Historical Society exhibit tells story of Missouri baseball

State Historical Society exhibit tells story of Missouri baseball

play

At a different time each year, summer gets longer and hotter, lasting all day long.

The dog days can feel especially dog-like when your baseball team continues to drift in the swamp of mediocrity, like my fourth-place San Francisco Giants. Fortunately, a new exhibit at the Missouri State Historical Society refreshes the midsummer classics in the middle of this all-too-long summer.

Covering the Bases: The Evolution of Baseball in Missouri is comprised of seventh-inning-style panels that run the length of the Wenneker Family Corridor Gallery on the second floor. Framed in Royals blue and Cardinals red, archival photographs and observations convey that Missouri baseball was a success built on the collaboration and action of ordinary people and their communities.

Before you get to the expected figures – the Stan Musials and George Bretts – you encounter Cy Young, Branch Rickey and Satchel Paige and trace their connections to Missouri. More importantly, introductory panels about “town ball” played in areas like St. Charles and Concordia give the game an early boost.

Depictions of early stadiums add dimension and detail to the narrative, and team photos of ordinary men stand out. No longer faceless but still anonymous to us, some players look very ordinary, others suggest a reined-in star power.

Re-enactments of souvenir programs and tickets further enhance the moments provided; one bill, for example, commemorates the St. Louis Browns moving their spring training to Cape Girardeau for a year in the haze of World War II. Daniel Fitzpatrick’s “V for St. Louis” cartoon captures the pride of an all-St. Louis World Series in 1944, when the Cardinals swept the Browns in six games.

Intertwined with the big names are the lesser-told stories of pioneers like Helene Robison Britton, who became baseball’s first female owner and managed the Cardinals from 1911 to 1917. You want to meet and learn more about the Jenkins Sons, an all-black Kansas City team named after their sponsoring music company in the early 20th century.

And you encounter strange but true facts: Mickey Mantle teaming up with a businessman to build a Holiday Inn in Joplin; Royals legend Frank White helping build a stadium that would barely contain his own grandeur while working as a union laborer.

There are few communities with minor league names like Springfield, such as Highlanders, Jobbers, Merchants, and Midgets.

Covering the Bases also provides a literal listening experience for key figures. QR codes direct patrons to oral histories told by figures like Cool Papa Bell, Buck O’Neil and beloved Mineral Area College coach Harold Loughary. A final series of panels acknowledges that many of baseball’s voices are Missouri voices: Jack Buck, Dizzy Dean, Harry Caray, Denny Matthews and more.

More: Ludacris, Foreigner among hot artists headlining Missouri State Fair concerts

This spot in the exhibit commemorates several of the “Shannon-isms” of longtime Cardinals broadcaster Mike Shannon. Among the best and most Berra-like:

“A hit in the middle right now would be like a nice ham sandwich and a cold ice cream sandwich.”

“He did everything right to prepare for the shot, but if you don’t have a hose, the water just doesn’t flow.”

But still, the collective stories loom largest, as do the panels devoted to Little League and youth teams, high school teams and recreational league clubs. You can’t move a baseball around the diamond without teamwork, and you can’t move the game across an entire state without the collective will of people to never earn their big-league cup of coffee.

Small-town players with day jobs, segregated teams, and Missouri kids cared about the pop of the ball in the glove as much as the Royals and Cardinals with retired numbers. They loved the feeling of leaning back to throw a fastball or sliding to second knowing that in that moment long gone, you were truly safe. Covering the Bases honors those stories and reminds us that you can’t tell the story of baseball without Missouri, and vice versa.

Covering the Bases is on display through December 23. To learn more, visit https://shsmo.org/exhibitions.

Aarik Danielsen is the Tribune’s features and culture editor. Contact him at [email protected] or 573-815-1731. He goes by the name @aarikdanielsen on Twitter/X.