In 1863, the artist Otto Botticher captured a lighter moment during the Civil War, when Union soldiers played a game of baseball at a Confederate prison in Salisbury, North Carolina. (Courtesy of the Smithsonian)
By Mike Wellman
Baseball? At Hoyt Sherman Place?
Sure, the front yard is pretty steep, but it’s certainly ample enough to accommodate a game, and the venue’s namesake would be pleased if one broke out there.
In fact, the upcoming baseball event on May 27 is set to take place indoors, in the auditorium and gallery, where historian John Liepa and the Des Moines Civil War Roundtable present “An Exploration of Baseball’s History in Iowa” in partnership with the Hoyt Sherman Place Foundation.
Let’s call it a doubleheader, and admission to both the lecture and special exhibit are free, thanks to Humanities Iowa and the National Endowment for the Humanities. (“Free” is $225.90 less than the average cost for a family of four to attend a big league game, according to the 2026 Fan Cost Index.)
From noon to 5 p.m. the historic mansion’s gallery will be converted into a mini-Cooperstown to host an exhibit featuring memorabilia dating as far back as the 1850s. In the nightcap, at 7 p.m., Liepa plans to talk about “Baseball’s Origins: The Civil War’s Role in Spreading the Game to Iowa.”
Liepa taught history at DMACC from 1972 to 2010 and is still listed in the lineup as a professor emeritus. He’s also a baseball fan and may have delivered more presentations on Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron than they’ve hit homers. He could share a nickname with the legendary New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel, affectionately known as “the Ol’ Perfesser.” (Liepa is pictured here in an 1869 replica uniform of the Cincinnati Redstockings.)
“I may have opened a Pandora’s box here of connections between baseball and the Sherman family,” he said of his upcoming talk. “Except that was a curse, and this will be nothing of that sort.”
During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Hoyt Sherman to serve as a paymaster for the Union Army while his brother, William Tecumseh Sherman, became a renowned general. Baseball was a popular pastime in the military camps, and soldiers took it home with them after the war, and it caught on nationwide.
Another Sherman brother, John, was a U.S. senator from Ohio who authored the Sherman Antitrust Act. (Side note: Major League Baseball holds a unique, century-old exemption from the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, thanks to a 1922 Supreme Court case that ruled baseball is not interstate commerce but rather a local exhibition and therefore not subject to federal antitrust laws.)
Depending on how strongly Liepa connects the brothers Sherman to baseball’s rise in the national consciousness, they just might rival the sport’s most famous trio of siblings: Felipe, Matty and Jesus Alou, all of whom enjoyed distinguished big league careers. Is there a case for that?
Maybe, Liepa said, but “the Alous were much better fielders.”
If baseball were a college major, it could certainly land in the physics department, given all the currently trendy metrics about the spin rate of curveballs and the exit velocity of batted balls. But the dimension of the game that most distinguishes it in American culture is the breadth of its history. The precursor of Major League Baseball was established in 1876, decades earlier than its counterparts in football (1920) and basketball (1946).
To date, 227 Iowans have played in the majors and seven have been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Liepa can name all seven (and probably the 220 others, too). Nobody knows more about Iowa’s baseball history than the “Ol’ Perfesser,” who knows it like the back of his hand — or the back of his favorite trading card.
Contributor Mike Wellman is a local freelancer, author, former staff writer for the Des Moines Public Schools and retiree who’s lived in Des Moines his whole life, a really long time.
Show Comments (0)