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Date
2025
Abstract
Small baseball parks with grandstands constructed prior to the Second World War continue to be lost around the country, and much of the sport’s history is lost with them. Missouri has a few such ballparks remaining within its borders, including those in Carthage, Hannibal, and St. Joseph. In addition, Sedalia has what is arguably one of the finest examples in the nation of a small ballpark with an historic wooden grandstand constructed in 1937–1938 that continues to serve its original purpose. This article is a brief introduction to baseball in Sedalia from the end of the Civil War through the Great Depression, along with the history of baseball in the city’s Liberty Park that culminated in construction of the grandstand still in use more than 80 years after it was constructed. This essay was originally published in 2017 and has undergone revisions and corrections for its release in 2025 as part of the five-volume anthology Peeking through the Knothole. The open-access, digital version of this essay is available through the “Download” button on this webpage. The print-on-demand version is available through the “Buy this Book” button for volume five of the anthology (Essays on Baseball from Various Viewpoints, 1856–1940).
Keywords
Liberty Park Stadium, Sedalia Goldbugs, Dick Rohn, Ed Reulbach, Harry Suter, Bill “Plunk” Drake
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Rights
© The Author (s)
Recommended Citation
Eberle, Mark E., "Early Baseball and Historic Liberty Park Stadium in Sedalia, Missouri, Revised" (2025). Monographs. 2.
DOI: 10.58809/XIHI4061
Available at:
https://scholars.fhsu.edu/all_monographs/2
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Originally Published 2017
Revised Edition 2025