Kansas baseball historian Mark Eberle, will speak Monday, Oct. 22, at the Barton County Historical Society Museum and Village. This Fort Hays State University professor’s book “Kansas Baseball, 1858-1941” has been placed on the 2018 Kansas Notable Books list.
The program starts at 7:30 p.m. at the museum, located south of the Arkansas River Bridge in Great Bend at 85 South U.S. 281.
“Kansas Baseball,” published in April 2017, describes the nature of early baseball. Eberle became interested in the topic in grade school, playing in his hometown neighborhood of Olathe and following the Athletics when their home was Kansas City instead of California.
Eberle, the biological sciences lab coordinator at FHSU, said the baseball book was kind of accidental.
“I was just curious about which ballparks in Kansas were the oldest, and it grew from there,” he said. “I was just doing the baseball research for the pleasure I derived from it, with no intention of writing a book, so it is humbling to have that work recognized.”
Larks Park in Hays, one of the oldest ballparks in Kansas, got him started.
“Larks Park, completed in 1940 and officially dedicated in 1941, was No. 10 on the list of oldest ballparks when I started looking three years ago, and became No. 9 after Independence demolished their 1919 grandstand,” he said. “Larks Park will soon become No. 8 after Wichita tears down Lawrence-Dumont Stadium, which was built in 1934.”
Town team baseball was widespread in 1858-1941, which is why Eberle chose the time frame.
“Virtually every town had a team at some point that played against other town teams,” he said. “These teams were a mix of amateur, semipro and professional clubs, but unfortunately this was also the period when most teams were segregated by race or gender.”
Some chapters describe baseball played by teams of women, African Americans, Native Americans and Mexican-Americans, while other chapters describe minor league teams and major league tours through Kansas.
The book, ending with a discussion on the disappearance of town teams after World War II, describes early baseball and histories of the nine ballparks built prior to the war that are still used in Kansas: Rossville, Kinsley, Wichita, Garden City, Chanute, Larned, Junction City, El Dorado and Hays.
The book was placed on the Kansas Notable Books list by state librarian Eric Norris. The list contains a selection of 15 books reflecting the rich cultural heritage of Kansas and features quality titles with wide public appeal that are either written by Kansans or highlights a Kansas-related topic. The book also received the 2017 Ferguson Kansas History Book Award.
