Licking, Missouri: Baseball Water Tower

The baseball water tower was built by the Rawlings company, which had two factories in Licking. It started at the plant by Highway 63, but was moved to the Highway 32 plant in the 1990s. Rawlings is gone, but the tower is still up. When Rawlings went out of business a new sports company called Tag took over their building. Tag paints the water tower now.

It is on highway 32. You can't see it from highway 63. You have to go into the town and look toward the east, past the grocery store and the livestock auction. It is a white baseball with red stitches, with Licking on one side and Tag on the other.

I grew up in this town. When I was a little kid I used to think it was sad that some towns didn't decorate the water towers!

A 2009 tipster claimed to have visited the town and "was told that the tower isn't painted that way anymore due to a change in the town's feelings toward baseball." Although the Rawlings Apparel factory which manufactured Major and Minor league baseball uniforms in Licking closed in 2003, one of the town's two water towers remains painted like a baseball.

The tower is no longer painted like baseball. When I asked locals about not being able to find the tower, they informed me Rawlings was no longer in town and maybe "Their outlook on baseball had changed!"

Water tower painted like the World's Largest Baseball at the Rawlings Sporting Goods factory.