The Carthage, Missouri, City Council Public Services Committee reluctantly decided recently to demolish the historic Carl Lewton Stadium, also known as The Rock, after contractors determined that saving it wasn’t feasible.
According to reporting by the Joplin Globe, the rock-facade stadium was built as a Works Progress Administration project in 1937 and was the home field for two minor league baseball teams in the KOM (Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri) League during the 1940s and 1950s.
Among the future Baseball Hall of Fame members who have played at the stadium are Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial, Ernie Banks and Satchel Paige.
The stadium later was named after a longtime baseball coach and umpire in the Carthage School District. Carl Lewton Stadium sits in Carthage Municipal Park, just off Route 66.
The newspaper reported that Carthage officials agonized over the vote to tear it down:
Council member Brandi Ensor noted her feeling of frustration before casting her vote in favor of the decision.
Member Ed Hardesty said it was the same for him. “It just absolutely kills me,” he said. “I feel like I let everybody down. The people who are calling us now, they don’t know what lengths we’ve gone to to try to save it.” […]
“I can promise you guys that I have cried over this,” (parks director Abi) Almandinger said. “You guys know me, this is not something I walked into and said hey, let’s take this down. I care very much about historic preservation and if there was literally any way we could save this I would promise you we would be talking about that option and going to other places for funding about this. It’s just not possible.”
Officials received word that Carl Lewton Stadium was full of cracks and holes and likely unstable, and they closed it in February.
Almandinger said the contractors all told her the concrete stands and the rock wall are supporting each other, so when one is removed, the other will fall in.
“We talked about boring holes in it and filling it with concrete to create the safety structure we needed,” Almandinger said. “We talked about shoring up the wall. We talked about bracing it. We talked about replacing the steel. We talked about replacing the concrete. We evaluated all of those things. We got four bids, we talked to the city engineer, we talked to an architect who is an expert in his field, and every single one of them have said it’s not possible to keep the wall upright.”
Here’s a video report from a month ago about the stadium’s closure:
A former Joplin Globe editor shared his memories of Lewton and the stadium with a local blogger.
According to BallparkReviews.com, the capacity of Carl Lewton Stadium was 2,000 and was home to the Carthage Cubs of the KOM.
(Image of Carl Lewton Stadium in Carthage, Missouri, via Carthage school district)
That’s a big piece of local (and national) baseball history gone. Hopefully some portion of it…the stone facade perhaps…can be recreated in a new ball park, perhaps even using some of the same stones?