An Exploration of Baseball’s History in Iowa

Hoyt Sherman Place Foundation, in partnership with historian John Liepa and the Des Moines Civil War Roundtable, presents a special exhibit An Exploration of Baseball’s History in Iowa. This exhibit is made possible by funding from Humanities Iowa and the National Endowment for Humanities. Noon to 5:00 PM Visit the art gallery for a free special exhibition featuring baseball items from the 1850s to the present, including Iowa’s oldest known baseball card, the oldest known piece of Iowa baseball memorabilia, and hundreds of cards representing Iowa’s seven Hall of Famers alongside many lesser-known players. To date, 227 Iowans have played in Major League Baseball, including seven who have been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. 7:00-8:15 PM John Liepa will give his presentation, Baseball’s Origins: The Civil War’s Role in Spreading the Game to Iowa, which examines how the war accelerated the game’s spread across the state while highlighting some of Iowa’s earliest baseball pioneers. This presentation is free and open to the public. The exhibition will be available for viewing after the presentation. Hoyt Sherman Place’s origins connect directly to the formative era when baseball emerged as America’s national pastime. Hoyt Sherman served as a Union Army paymaster during the Civil War, a period in which the game of “base ball” spread rapidly through military camps.