Lamar Porter Field in Little Rock is a special place to many Arkansans, including me. My father grew up on Maple Street in Little Rock just a few blocks from Lamar Porter Field. As a boy, he would utilize a not-too-secret entrance to the otherwise gated ballpark by jumping down into the creek ditch along 7th Street and evading the fence from below. Later, when I was going through the natural adolescent obsession with baseball parks, my father revealed this hidden entrance to me and I too, like so many before, became guilty of breaking-and-entering into Lamar Porter Field.

Memories like these of Lamar Porter Field are so ubiquitous among those who grew up in the Stifft Station neighborhood of Little Rock that they can easily fill a book. That’s exactly what Norris Guinn and Willis Callaway realized in the late 2000s when they began writing, collecting stories and eventually self-publishing Lamar Porter Field and Memories of Sports in Little Rock during the 1950’s. Part history and part memoir, the book offers a unique glimpse into the nostalgic mid-twentieth century baseball scene at Lamar Porter. As Guinn describes in the forward, “This book is a combined effort by two boys growing up at Lamar Porter Field in the 1940’s and 1950’s and then fifty years later trying to remember the wonderful times they experienced together.”

Recently, when Willis Callaway offered to let me host the book on this site, I gladly agreed. I’m excited to announce that the book is now available to be read in it’s entirety on Yakker. Click here to go to the book.

Much thanks to Willis Callaway for permission to republish this work, as well as to my uncle Jim Hardwick for getting Willis and I connected.