4
Wednesdav. August 21, 1974
University Daily Kansan
Baseball 'The Game' at Ball Park
By MIKE FITZGERALD
Kansan Sports Reporter
Just by talking to Charles Sidman, in the Woodford Park, Ninth and Iowa State in the Hillcrest
"It is 'the game,' he said recently.
"There are no substitutes for baseball."
Shopping Center, one can tell his love for the girl, who goes far beyond that of even the last fan.
Rehabilitation Major Aim For New Judicial Center
The new Lawrence judicial center, now being built east of the present courthouse and county jail, can be a rehabilitative facility, which few county jails are, according to Mary Lee Brochmann, chairman of the Kansas Council on Crime and Delinquency.
Brochmann said that, with a properly trained staff, the judicial center could provide a humane and rehabilitative environment.
Construction on the judicial center, which will include courtrooms for Districts I and II, Douglas county sheriff and Lawrence police departments and a combined correctional facility for Lawrence and Douglas County, began this month.
The two-story correctional facility will include a multi-purpose room for exercise and religious services, as well as rooms for counseling and education. Facilities will also be provided for family visitation and medical aid, as well as offices for vocational
and educational counselors, social workers and correctional officer and his assistants.
The new jail will be a maximum security facility, with steel-reinforced walls and television monitors in the corridors, Brochmann said.
The jail will also include eight modules, which will contain three to five cells each.
"The modules are completely enclosed, allowing segregation of prisoners according to the schedule."
The judicial center could be completed by spring 1976, according to Walter Cragan, chairman of the Douglas County Commissioners.
The project is being financed by a combination of federal revenue sharing funds from both the city and county, general obligation bonds, which will be paid off by 1972, and money from a special building and equipment key collected from 1963 to 1972.
But when it came time to make a decision between going to college or trying out for a minor league team, he chose to give up baseball.
Sidman, a professor of history at the University of Kansas, started playing baseball when he was young and continued to play through high school.
"It wasn't a hard decision at the time," he said. "I just liked academic life too much."
IT WAS IN 1957, when Sidman was a student in Germany, that the idea came to him of making a game of the sport of baseball.
He worked on the game for several years before bringing it to the United States in 1960. By then the game was in playable form and became popular with many of Sidney's friends.
One of his friends was Charles Reynolds, professor of chemistry at KU. After an unsuccessful attempt at selling the game to a large game company in 1966, Sidman and Reynolds decided to open an establishment where the game could be played.
It took two years to further refine the game and open the establishment. In 1968, it was sold to a group of investors.
The game at the Ball Park today is played on the court all except there are no balls or strikes called.
Each player who has played in a World Series from 1920 to 1973 has a card with his statistics for any single season. A random selection is chosen, and by looking at the individual
batter's card, the resulting play is set in motion.
The statistics are very thorough. For any pitcher, a card will indicate how often the ball will be hit to any field position. For any pitcher, a card will indicate how often the ball, fvball, ground ball or spray hit.
THE STATISTICAL CARDS are so thorough it took the two men nearly 10 years to make cards for every batter since 1920. All of the cards were hand written.
For Sidman and Reynolds, the Ball Park is a combination of fun and profit. Sidman said it could have been more profitable if he hadn't made up that, but this way they did what they wanted.
Reynolds said it provided more fun than profit.
Life Simple in Big Springs, Stull
Important Changes 1-Party Phones, City Water
"We haven't made a dime on it," he said.
"With all the stockholders we had to get started and just one little business, there's not a lot of money."
By BRUCE JANSSEN
Kansan Staff Reporter
The Ball Park, then, seems to be a labor of love for Sidman and Reynolds. It is love of baseball, the sport they describe as being more intellectual than any other sport.
Dorothy Rake, who has lived in and around Big Springs for 55 years, described another of Big Spring's momentous events.
FARCHILD REFERRED to the incident as the passing of an era in Big Springs. He said that some people were even a little upset at the thought of no longer being able to listen in on other's phone conversations.
"When I moved into town 10 years ago there was no city water. Everyone either had their own pump or had a cistern and we didn't."
Springs was the demise of the eight-party telephone lines.
Doug Farish, owner of one of the two businesses in Big Springs, said that it had
"My business phone was on an eight-party line and I'd had complaints from my customers that the phone was sometimes busy for two days. When the telephone company directory salesman came to take my order, I told him that I wouldn't buy an ad until I got a private line. Two weeks later everyone had either a private line or a two-party line."
Life in Big Springs and Stall, two tiny communities in western Arkansas, is a little more up-to-date than the past year. Perhaps the most newsworthy event of the past year in Big
Six years ago, Big Springs residents had a water tower built
According to Rake, only two houses have been built in the last 20 years. Those were built to replace houses that have been destroyed.
and installed water mains. Thus, among other things, flush toilets came to town.
"I think it's the whole atmosphere of baseball," Sidman said.
Ray Cree, a resident of 62 years and the founder of the grocery and service station that is still in operation, said the church in Big Springs is perhaps, the last unifying influence in the town. He said the school had been a major influence. But now, the school, along with the post office and the Douglas County Fair, are only memories.
BIG SPRINGS, according to Cree and Rake, reached
the highest point on the continent. At that point it was
copying ship slowy above the Oregon Trail.
That figure was furnished by Ken O'Connor, owner of the only business in Stull and chief of the volunteer fire department.
Stull, three miles away, is even smaller than Big Springs. Big Springs has 62 residents, according to Rake's count. Stull has
O'Connor said that, like Big Springs, the only social influence in the community is the church. The churches in the two towns share a similar culture.
Stull's most famous former resident is probably AlRauh Hopf, major league baseball manager. Many of Houk's relatives still
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