The Farmington Times · Farmington, Missouri · 1922

What About a Ball Park?

A January 1922 front page editorial: Farmington is lagging behind towns with well built ball parks, good games are a real asset, Sunday ball is no more harmful than autoing, and this is unquestionably the time to start conversation and work. So there you are. Take it or leave it.

In January 1922, with “each day draws spring a little nearer,” the Farmington Times took up the cause of “a base ball park and suitable grand stand” on its front page. The case opens with civic shame: “Farmington has been lagging behind several other towns in the county in this respect. At least two other towns have well built ball parks, which are real assets to those towns. Is it right or just to ask or expect Farmington to continue to thus obscure herself from this cleanest and best of all sports? We say it is not.”

Anyone still opposed gets read out of the conversation: “Perhaps no one is so ignorant as to contend that a base ball park, where good ball games can be seen throughout the season, is not a real asset to a town. If there are any such, then what we say is not addressed to them until they can more nearly get facts properly adjusted.” And on the eternal Sunday question the Times issues a flat ruling: “Ball games are never played while church services are in progress, and The Times is firmly of the opinion that there is no more harm in playing or watching good base ball on Sunday afternoon than there is in autoing. So there you are. Take it or leave it.”

Farmington would not even need to hire outsiders, having “many splendid ball players in Farmington and near vicinity” while “most other small towns are compelled” to import. This was “unquestionably the time to start conversation” and work for a ball park, if it was to be ready by early spring, and the Times hoped everyone in favor of “the clean, expert and manly sport of better base ball” would “help push the good work to completion.” Seventeen years after a working man in Mexico, Missouri asked how else he was supposed to see the national game, the Sunday argument was still being settled one Missouri editorial at a time.