RollinsField.com: The 1954 Championship Season

Missouri Tiger Baseball in 1954 was quite different from the modern version, in many ways.

Most notably, there was no Simmons Field, not to mention Taylor Stadium. Simmons was the name of the Head Coach - John "Hi" Simmons - and his team played their home games at Rollins Field, in the heart of the campus. The field was located (logically) on Rollins Road, near the still-standing Brewer Field House. As is apparent from the photos on this page (taken during the 1954 season), Rollins Field lacked some of the amenities now available at modern Taylor Stadium.

In 2003, Coach Tim Jamieson struggled with bad weather in the first months of the season, eventually failing to get in the 56 games allowed by the NCAA. Fortunately, his team played well enough to not only earn a 4th-place seed in the Big XII Tournament, but an invitation to the 64-team NCAA Regionals.

The weather was no better or worse fifty years ago. Coach Simmons, though, was not trying to fill out a 56-game schedule. His Tigers played a 20-game regular-season schedule, including 12 games against Big Seven Conference rivals (Iowa State, Kansas State, Colorado, Oklahoma, Nebraska -- MU & KU did not meet on the diamond that year, due to a rain-out). They then advanced directly to the College World Series, where they played just six games against five opponents on their way to the national championship.

University of Missouri Freshmen did not play on the varsity baseball team in those days. The entire roster listing for the '54 Tigers includes only 20 players, compared to 33 ballplayers in '03.

There is one thing, though, that has not changed from 1954 to 2004.

Baseball is still the same. Nine innings, three outs per inning, three strikes, four balls, fast balls, curves, stolen bases, home runs - the Game is the same.

And the best place to watch the National Pastime is still at good old Mizzou. Just don't expect to find the current Tigers at Rollins Field.

During the 2004 anniversary celebration of the Missouri Tigers' Championship Season, I posted day-by-day re-creations of the 1954 season.

My goal was to reproduce on these pages the local newspaper accounts the Columbia Daily Tribune and the Columbia Missourian) - and other information - of the season and the games. As closely as possible, these were posted on the exact anniversary of the days in 1954 on which they were first printed, beginning with a a few scattered articles through the fall semester, and increasing in frequency as the baseball season approached.

As I begin the process of moving some archived information from the old SimmonsField.com hosted by MSN Groups, I am beginning with these historic re-creations. I'd hate to see this record lost in the Twilight Zone of the dead internet.