There was a time in Lawrence when drivers on Massachusetts Street had to look out for flying baseballs off the bats of kids playing at South Park.

Today’s little leaguers might be more concerned with who won yesterday’s game than the old leagues that their fathers and grandfathers played in, but the rich baseball history in Lawrence has had a profound impact on today’s game.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Holcom Sports Complex and the founding of the Louie Holcom Amateur Baseball Assn., both named after Louie Holcom, the man widely regarded as the father of modern youth baseball in Lawrence. For Holcom, and the others who devoted years of their life to baseball, the game was more than a sport. It was a way of life.

“The only entertainment Louie knew was baseball,” said Larry Hatfield, who played for Holcom in the 1950s and later coached with and against him in the old South Park leagues for players aged 13 and 14. “His love in life was helping kids with baseball.”

Holcom spent his summers coaching South Park teams during the day and older players at night. When he wasn’t busy with the leagues, he brought kids to practice and played out at his farm near the Dutton Bridge at the Wakarusa River on U.S. Highway 59. In back of his property, he had his own baseball diamond, known as Holcom’s Grove.

Holcom worked with any kid who wanted to play, teaching them elements of the game with his unique coaching style.

“Louie was very easy-going,” said Walt Houk, who played for Holcom. “He always had a smile on his face and he was very engaging. But, inside, he was very competitive. He liked to win, but he didn’t rant and rave.”

Houk, 63, is the owner of Travellers travel agency, named for a Lawrence semi-pro team he founded and coached. Houk has a long history with Louie Holcom, who coached three generations of Houk’s family — his father, his son and Houk himself.

Holcom worked with almost all the local baseball legends, from Louie Heinrich to Al Ice.

“He probably did more to get baseball started here than anyone else in existence,” said Houk.

Holcom made sure that kids from Lawrence could find the best competition in the area, and that they had a way to get to games in neighboring towns.

“He always had a truck full of kids,” said the 63-year-old Hatfield, who now owns a real estate appraisal company. “At the end of the year, he’d pick an all-star team or two, and we’d all pile in and we’d play Baldwin, Eudora and Topeka. I think it was against every safety rule.”

Holcom was legendary for his ability to support himself on the little money that the farm brought in and by renting out Holcom’s Grove every now and then.

“He lived very frugally,” Hatfield said.

Yet, whatever extra funds he had, he used to support youth baseball.

“He was very kind and interested in boys’ welfare, oftentimes at his monetary expense,” said Roy Taylor, who coached against Holcom for years and ran an art gallery in Lawrence.

Hatfield remembers helping with one of Holcom’s teams, the Odd Fellows, in Holcom’s later years. Hatfield figured out a team budget, then took it to the team’s sponsors, the Odd Fellows Lodge, to request money for equipment expenses that year.

The sponsors heard a much higher figure than they were expecting.

“They were in shock,” Hatfield said. “We came to find out that, for all these years, Louie had been paying.”

People who played with Holcom remember a jack-of-all trades who could do and teach almost anything having to do with baseball, despite an injury to his hand that left him unable to play the game himself.

“Louie could do it all, he could fix a glove, ice a sprained ankle, tape a shoulder,” said Kansas state Sen. Mark Buhler, R-Lawrence, who played for Holcom.

Holcom was born in 1894 and spent his entire life in Douglas County. A lifelong bachelor, Holcom began his involvement with youth baseball in 1924, a pursuit that lasted more than 40 years, until he was physically unable to continue. Holcom died in 1971 at the age of 77, from a heart attack.

With Holcom gone and Lawrence continuing to grow, the early 1970s were a time of dramatic changes in the Lawrence baseball world.

The old center of youth baseball in Lawrence was South Park, at 11th and Massachusetts streets. These days there is a playground and recreation center there.

But before the city moved the little leagues out in the early-’70s, the park was usually full of kids playing league or pickup games.

Back then, watching baseball was a prime source of local summer entertainment.

Walter Houk, one of the founders of the DCABA baseball leagues and owner of Travellers travel agency, holds a souvenir baseball in his office on Thursday.

“No one had air conditioning, so you were either sitting on the porch or you could go watch baseball,” said Hatfield, who grew up six blocks from the park.

South Park wasn’t the ideal place to play organized baseball, though.

“I got a little dissatisfied with playing in South Park,” Hatfield said. “There weren’t any dugouts. Foul balls were just ricocheting around you all the time.”

After the city decided to remove the baseball diamond, the South Park league temporarily relocated to Broken Arrow fields for a couple of years, before the Holcom field complex was built.

With Louie Holcom no longer around, the people he had mentored took the reins and began to transform Lawrence baseball into what it is today.

Hatfield and others led an effort to convince the city to build new fields. This resulted in the construction of the Holcom complex near 27th and Iowa streets, named for Holcom, who had died three years earlier.

But taking away the downtown baseball fields also changed the culture of youth baseball in Lawrence. No longer could kids walk or ride their bikes down to the field and join a league or jump into a pickup game.

“We moved all our athletic complexes out of the city. We ‘malled’ the athletics out,” Buhler said.

About that time, local baseball enthusiasts were looking to expand options for the local youth baseball players. As Lawrence grew, some of the better players and coaches had gone to the neighboring SCABA league in Topeka.

Walt Houk was one of those enthusiasts. And, with five others, he went to the Douglas County Commissioners office with a proposal.

They wanted to build a baseball diamond and start a new league for players ages 12 and under at the 4-H Fairgrounds called the Douglas County Amateur Baseball Assn.

Except there was one problem — they didn’t have any money.

The commissioners, though, accepted the proposal, and leased DCABA the land for only $1 a year.

The first DCABA players raised money through candy sales to add lights to the field.

DCABA grew into a competitive league, keeping the good players in Lawrence, and eventually building two more fields at the fairgrounds.

The South Park leagues eventually became the Heinrich and Houk/Ice leagues, part of the Louie Holcom Amateur Baseball Assn.

The people who grew up in Holcom’s time remember a game very different from today’s game.

“We had blue jeans and a T-shirt,” remembers Hatfield. “The uniforms were terrible. But there was more free play and relatively few practices.”

Baseball was all there was to do during the summer, and they’d play any way they could.

“We’d play it all day. We’d play long-base, pick-up games anything where you could hit,” Buhler said. “You could play baseball with four guys. Now, as with most athletics, there are very few pick-up games going. Kids have a lot of things to occupy their attention now that we didn’t have.”

Players in the old South Park leagues didn’t always have access to the quality of equipment and facilities available today.

“It just seems like, nowadays, every kids needs to have a hundred dollar aluminum bat, and play in a tournament at 9 years old,” Houk said.

Still, some old-timers think that today’s players have figured a few things out.

“I went to a Free State baseball tournament and I was in awe at how good those kids were,” says Hatfield.

No one will ever know what would happen if a South Park league team played a Heinrich league team of today. Would today’s players who’ve played in tournaments and attended coaching clinics, be a match for yesterday’s players who played all day in their backyards with taped-up balls?

One thing is certain — the game in Lawrence is as strong as it ever was, as a result of the efforts of Louie Holcom and the generations of baseball players and coaches he inspired. And the memory of Holcom driving around with a bunch of kids in the back of his red pickup truck is one that will live in the annals of Lawrence history.

And now, as then, there is something universal about summer baseball and the feelings it inspires among its faithful.

“There still isn’t anything better than seeing a kid who hasn’t gotten a hit in a long time, getting a hit and running to first base. That hasn’t changed,” said Houk, his eyes alive with the memories of summers spent watching dreams unfold between the white lines of a baseball diamond.