LOOKING BACK is a Leader online feature that highlights historic photos. Readers are invited to submit their historic Jefferson County photos for online publication.
A couple of months back, LOOKING BACK concerned itself with the Arnold Boosters, a softball team whose photo was published in a calendar issued by the Arnold Historical Society.
Other than the names of the players, the notes that accompanied the photo were sparse. Luckily, however, one of the Boosters has come forward to fill in the blanks.
“I’m the only surviving member of the team,” said Louis Arnold, 84, of Imperial. “All of them are gone. Most of their wives are gone, too.”
He said the team got started after World War II ended.
“A group of the guys who came home after the war just started playing pickup games on a field at Hwy. 61-67 and Church Road, about where the Knights of Columbus Hall is now,” he said. “I was 15 or 16 years old, and I’d play, too. I used to play with these guys who were quite a bit older than me.”
He said after a couple of years, a few of the regulars got the idea of forming a team.
“They asked me if I wanted to play on the team, and I said, ‘Sure.’ ”
Arnold said the team first played in the Tenbrook area, on a little field behind a tavern near the area where the Metal Container Corp.’s can plant operates today.
“We played there a year or two,” he said. “It was a very small field.”
The Boosters then moved their base of operations out of the county, just across the Meramec River to a bar on Hwy. 61-67.
“It was on the left side of the highway just on the river,” he said. “It was a place called Buck and Joe’s. The only problem was when the water came up, sometimes if you overthrew first base, the ball would go into the water.”
After that establishment closed, Arnold said, the Boosters were based on a field roughly at Hwy. 21 and Butler Hill Road in south St. Louis County.
The Boosters, he said, scheduled whatever teams they could for opposition, whenever they could.
“We played on weekends, almost always on Sunday, but sometimes on Saturday, too. We played during the week, too, especially if we played a team that had a field with lights. One time we complained to our manager that we weren’t playing enough games and he scheduled five games in one week,” Arnold said.
Their opponents, he said, came from far and wide – and the Boosters would travel to play them as well.
“We played teams from all over. We played in Millstadt and Waterloo in Illinois. We played in Elvins (now Park Hills). There was a team in Imperial that we played a lot. We played teams south of us and we played teams from south St. Louis, too. We’d go as far as 70 or 80 miles to play other teams – wherever we could get a game. We’d try to play the far-away games on Sunday, so we could bring our women and our children. We all were married. I remember Elvins had a field with lights, so we played them on Saturday nights a lot.
“Sometimes, we’d play some pretty good teams from St. Louis. Most of those guys wanted to play for a half-barrel of beer. The loser would have to buy. Back then, they charged about $20 for a half-barrel, so we’d all put in a buck or two. Those (St. Louis) guys drank the half-barrel after the game.
“Well, some of them started on it during the game.”
He said the roster was fairly constant through the years. However, in the early 1950s, a couple of players had dropped out, so replacements were recruited from the Imperial team – Jack Cronin and Diz Jones.
“We had some pretty good hitters back then – Charlie Schierhof, Francis Schierhof, Hank Mayer, Red Ziegler, Bill Wingbermuehle. I was not that good (of a hitter).
“Lindy Lindwedel and my cousin, Peck (Albert Becker) were our pitchers until Jack Cronin joined, then he took the place of my cousin.”
Arnold said he played mainly second base.
“I was not as big as some of those guys were. I was maybe 140 pounds, and many of them went around 200,” he said. “Sometimes I’d play the outfield, and sometimes first base.”
Because the Boosters played an independent schedule, few records were kept and there were no championships to win.
“I think we were a pretty good team,” he said. “I remember winning more than we lost, that’s for sure,” he said.
He said local businesses furnished uniforms, which were yellow and blue, that featured the business name. An occasional donation by other businesses defrayed some expenses (“we’d buy some balls and bats”), although players wore their own hats and furnished their own gloves.
The team was managed by several men over the years, he said.
“Bill Mayer managed us for a long time, then his brother, Joe. Clarence Ziegler also managed us for a long time,” he said. “When I got older, I got to manage for a few years, too.”
Arnold said he believed the team played into the mid-1970s, when many of the players felt they got too old to keep playing regularly.
“We just kind of disbanded,” he said. “A couple of us then joined the Imperial team.”
Unfortunately, Arnold said, he couldn’t provide a different photo of the Boosters.
“My wife and I didn’t take photos back then, and I don’t remember any of the other guys or their wives taking photos, either,” he said. “Back then, we just didn’t think about that. It’s sad, but that’s the way it is. I imagine somebody has some photos somewhere, but with all the other guys gone, and most of their wives, they might be sitting in someone’s attic somewhere. Who knows?”
Send submissions to LOOKING BACK to nvrweakly@aol.com or bring or mail them to the Leader office, 503 N. Second St., Festus (P.O. Box 159, 63028). Please include your name, phone number, a brief description of what’s in the photo and tell us how you came by it. Please also include when it was taken, where and by whom (if known). A new LOOKING BACK photo will be posted each week.
