Capaha Park Baseball Archives

Tuesday was a fun day. I got to speak to Dr. Lily Santoro’s Local Techniques in History class at SEMO. I brought along Carla Jordan from the Altenburg Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum in case the kids got rowdy. As it turned out, they were a very attentive group: the laughed where appropriate and were somber where appropriate. I hope they enjoyed the experience as much as I did.

I promised the group I would keep providing links to the subject matter they had been assigned, so here are stories about Arena and Capaha Parks.

Capaha Park Lagoon

Capaha park has many different facets, so I’ll break pieces of it apart. The lagoon is in more-or-less the center of the park. It was one of the first places I fished by myself. Except for one monster crappie I caught to win a rod and reel in a fishing contest, my results were mostly unremarkable.

Capaha Park Pool

The Capaha Park pool was THE place to be in the summer months. Wife Lila and her best friend were lifeguards there. When the pool was razed, they shared some powerful memories. She had a tear in her eye the first time she came back to Cape and saw it gone.

Capaha Baseball

General Park stories and photos

Arena Park

Arena Park was best known for the District Fair, stockcar races, animal exhibits and the train.

Looks like these boys could have used some more coaching about keeping their eyes on the ball. The sleeve says they were taken in 1965. You can click on the photos to make them larger.

My rookie mistake

I shouldn’t fault the boys: I made my own rookie mistake. I don’t know what I thinking when I framed the shots as verticals instead of horizontals. The action was moving ACROSS the frame, not up and down.

Brush back and zip down

He leaned back away from that pitch so far his pants unzipped.

Look how white those shoes are

Here’s a boy who is just dying to slide into second to get those whites a little dirty.

I wonder if any of these boys were in this picture the next year? It looks like the same field at Capaha Park.

Cape Central High Photos

Ken Steinhoff, Cape Girardeau Central High School Class of 1965, spent half a century in the ink-slinging business for papers in Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida.

He retired in 2008 and has been spending time scanning hundreds of thousands of images because “photos once taken as news have grown enough whiskers that they’ve become history.”

Please comment on the articles when you see he may have left out a bit of history, forgotten a name or when your memory of a circumstance conflicts with his.

(His mother said her stories improved after all the folks who could contradict died off.)

Your information helps to make this a wonderful archive and may end up in book form.

Tag: Capaha Park Baseball

Capaha and Arena Parks