Minnesota Town Team Baseball
Reprints
We’ve added a new section where we’d like to republish baseball stories that have been written for local newspapers and magazines. We’ve seen and heard about some local stories written about old championship teams, old ballparks, great players, or just the good old days, that we think deserve to be republished and given wider circulation.
1950 Was Peak Year for Town Team Baseball Top
By Armand Peterson
Armand wrote this article for the 2004 State Tournament program.
The modern era of Minnesota town team baseball began in 1924, when the first State Tournament was held at Lexington Park in St. Paul. That first year the champions of eight leagues competed for the State Championship. A second class was added in 1930, and by 1940 the State had 423 teams.
World War II placed a halt on this growth. During the first two years of the war the effects on baseball were relatively minor, but by 1943 the draft and rationing were taking a major toll on all facets of our society. In 1945 only 130 Minnesota amateur teams played through the season.
In 1946, however, buoyed by post-war euphoria, a rapidly improving economy and a sense of optimism not seen since the start of the Depression, Minnesota towns restarted teams shut down during the war. Over 400 teams competed that year, and many cities and towns were planning to build new fields and add lights.
There were two classes at that time – Class AA, which permitted three outside players per team; and Class A, which permitted two. To describe the teams “amateur” was misleading, as there were no restrictions on pay or salaries. Some towns took the game seriously, recruiting top players and aiming for the State Tournament, while others fielded teams composed of local men who just wanted to have fun playing on Sunday afternoons.
By 1948, teams were starting to bid against each other for the services of top players. Fueled by competition, and the desire to build winning teams for large hometown crowds, team officials began recruiting out-of-state college and minor league players. The former pros were lured by offers of year-round jobs in addition to monthly salaries that were more than they had been receiving in professional baseball. Top pitchers could make $2000 to $3000 for three-month’s work, while many collegians earned $300 per month. Many Class AA teams had annual payrolls in the $20,000 range – equivalent to about $150,000 today. Many of the State’s Class A teams also had substantial payrolls. Most often these teams hired pitchers and catchers, and might pay some of the other key players on a smaller per-game basis
Class B was created in 1948 in response to protests from small towns that did not want to or could not compete in the bidding wars for outside players. Class B prohibited salaries and required that all players be local.
The peak year was 1950, when the State had 799 teams. This included eight Class AA leagues (five all-salaried out-state leagues, plus the Minneapolis and St. Paul municipal leagues and the St. Paul Suburban league), 18 Class A and 78 Class B. Remarkably, 76 towns outside the Twin Cities had two or more teams. The 1950 State Tournament was held at old Municipal Stadium in St. Cloud, and set an all-time attendance record of 35, 318.
Attendance and team numbers began to decline after 1950. By 1955 there were only two Class AA leagues remaining in the State, and by 1958 there were none. In 1960 there were 499 teams left in the State – 50 in Class A and 449 in Class B.
Some are tempted to bemoan the decline in the number of town teams in the State. However, there are 303 teams competing this year (39 in Class A, 47 in Class B and 217 in Class C). This seems small only in comparison to 1950. But the State was a lot different in 1950. Not many people had television or air conditioning and baseball had no competition from other sports. We choose to fondly recall the Glory Days of the late 40s, but appreciate the great amateur program we have in Minnesota today.
Fergus Falls Pulled Upset Over Austin in 1950 State Tournament Top
By Tom Tomashek
Tom wrote this article for the 2004 State Tournament program.
The year was 1950 and though Minnesota’s town team baseball roster had been expanded to 800 teams and more than 100 leagues, the Austin Packers were considered by most to be in a class of their own.
In what Minneapolis sportswriter Ted Peterson would be refer to as the “Best State Tourney in 27 years,” the defending Class AA champion Packers arrived in St. Cloud as the odds-on favorite to repeat. Le Center won the Class A title and Lester Prairie won in Class B, but the competition will best be remembered for a classic upset, one in which 6-foot-2, 175-pound Fergus Falls pitcher Harley Oyloe out-finessed powerful Austin to end the Packers’ brief reign.
Upset by Litchfield 3-2 early in the double-elimination competition, the Packers – a collection of past and future professionals, including Moose Skowron (Yankees) and Harry Elliott (Cardinals) – got back on track with four consecutive victories in the losers’ bracket.
But the Packers were no match for Oyloe’s off-speed offerings and a stellar Fergus Falls defense, and Fergus walked away with a 3-0 victory and the Class AA title. Oyloe gave up only four singles and allowed just eight balls to escape the infield.
The Class AA triumph was particularly sweet for Fergus Falls, harshly ousted from the previous season’s tournament by Austin, 8-1 and 13-3. The Red Sox spoke of atonement before the season, but few fans beyond Fergus Falls took them seriously.
“Austin was certainly the favorite, but we really believed that we could win,” Oyloe said. “We were definitely ready, but I wouldn’t say that there were any emotional highs or lows. Baseball doesn’t have the rah-rah spirit like in football where you play once a week. We had played a lot of games that season.”
The Red Sox could have wilted after losing their first game to Austin on Sunday, when they squandered a chance to clinch the title in a 5-1 loss. The Packers scored four runs in the top of the ninth, highlighted by Skowron’s two-run home run, to break up a duel between Fergus ace John Kelly and Austin’s Bill Davis, and force one more game for the championship.
Fergus Falls’ player-manager Jim McNulty used Kelly twice during the week, with Fred Kroog and Mel Henson, a Red Sox draftee from Detroit Lakes, each pitching once. McNulty considered starting Kroog in the final game, but Red Sox catcher Joe Colasinski enthusiastically recommended rested spot starter Oyloe.
“Kelly was a fire-baller while Harley was a control pitcher, and Colasinski figured Harley would offer a perfect contrast to Kelly,” McNulty said. “We had just played Austin using Kelly, and Colasinski told me, ‘Harley’s breaking stuff will drive them nuts after facing Kelly,’ and it did.”
Austin manager Emil Scheid entered the final game faced with a dilemma. He had used his pitching mainstays battling back through the losers’ bracket. The ideal would have been to throw left-hander Roman Bartkowski, who opened the tournament with a no-hitter, but Bartkowski pitched earlier Sunday and was spent.
Enter Sam House, a regular infielder and occasional pitcher who pitched admirably in his first start since June. He pitched well, throwing a six-hitter, but Oyloe was polished and poised and received enough offensive help.
“I had no reason to be nervous, I had been there before,” Oyloe said. “I hit the corners and I had good ball movement. They hit a lot of ground balls and the defense did the rest.”
Double A Baseball in Southwest Minnesota Top
By Bill Bolin.
Bill grew up in Slayton, and played amateur ball for Tracy in the late 50s and into the 60s. He has retired from teaching at Tracy and lives in Garvin, where his hobby/part-time job is writing historical articles. The following story originally appeared in The Sailor, published in Tracy and geared towards the tourist business.
Let me take you back half a century to the summer of 1951, back to the dizzy, daffy, dismal and yet often delightful days of double A baseball in the small towns and hamlets of Southwest Minnesota and Northwest Iowa. In 1951 Iona, Fulda, Slayton, Pipestone, Marshall, Worthington, Lamberton and Sibley, Iowa reformed the eight-team First Night League. Lamberton had replaced 1950 entry Wilmont and Worthington, who had dropped out in 1950, returned with neighboring Sibley to round out the league.
The teams were all salaried and it was often said that each town fielded not one, but three teams: “One coming, one going, and one playing.” The league consisted of a combination of college players, former professional players in the twilight of their careers and talented minor-league players who could do far better financially with their monthly salary and job than they could in most levels of organized baseball. Consistent to almost every team were two or three “local boys” good enough to compete well at this level of competition. Some of these players were Father Doug Gits, the three Snyder brothers from Larchwood, Iowa, Benny and Mutts Wagner, Art VandeValde, Delbert Zinnel, Jack and Mark “Spike” Dolan, Lefty Krohn and Elmer Kuhl, Elmer’s brothers Buddy and Dick Kuhl, Clair Springman, Pete Meyers and several others spread out over the entire league.
The First Night League was destined by simple economics for a short life. Directors quickly found that competition for players with the Southern Minny and Western Minny leagues and cities like Rochester, Austin, Albert Lea, Fairmont and New Ulm was not financially feasible for the Iona’s, Fulda’s and Slayton’s. Wilmont realized this in 1950.
Few connections to the ball player and the towns in which they played existed for long, if at all. Many of the great players from that era are now deceased, but not forgotten in baseball nostalgia. Some players made the community their permanent home. Some like Fulda’s Al Worthington (who later started for the Minnesota Twins) married local girls (Worthington married Shirley Reusse of Fulda). Some of the local boys continued to play in the area for many more years, but most seemed to vanish forever.
Three players I knew didn’t. They have remained connected to Slayton and to our family for fifty years now and have been back to visit several times. Their lives are very interesting and will be recounted later in this article.
They are Dick Cassidy and John Caulfield who played for the Slayton Rockets in 1950 and 51 and their close pal, Glen Gostic who played only in the 1950 season. The three have remained close friends ever since that First Night League experience fifty years ago. Many names joined them throughout the year, but very few lasted an entire season, let alone two seasons. Over twenty different names appeared in Slayton’s line-up in 1951, and nearly every other team also had a parade of names appearing at different times.
The Slayton Rockets manager, one of Southwest Minnesota’s all-time great hurlers, was Ed Pipgras. Ed’s brother George pitched several years for the New York Yankees. He collected World Series wins and was a teammate of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazerri and other Yankee greats. George was a major league umpire after retiring from active play. What a thrill to be in Jake’s Barbershop when George visited family in Slayton.
“Jerry’s Scoreboard”, a complete statistical account of all individual performances, appeared in Jerry Holden’s Hub Café for all to see after each game. Most fans were not tolerant of any “slump” or high ERA (earned run average). Hall Layne, hard hitting and slick fielding shortstop had a great year. He led Slayton in almost every offensive statistic and played all year.
By the first of August the league was in deep financial trouble. The Worthington Cubs dropped out and both Slayton and Pipestone, in close votes by the Board of Directors, chose to finish the season.
In both 1950 and 51 Slayton had former major-league pitchers in the line-up. Both John Burroughs in 1950 and Vallie Eaves in 1951 had been in the “Bigs”, but were far past their prime by the time they hooked up with Slayton. Both struggled some with “John Barleycorn”, but were also unbeatable at times. On July 12th, 1951 Vallie Eaves beat top ranked Marshall 2-1 in one of his best performances. I recall John Burroughs, one-time Chicago Cub southpaw saying, “I scatter the hits, some inside the park, some outside.” Glen Gostic once remarked that he could catch Burroughs with “a pair of pliers.” Being Slayton’s batboy from 1948-1951 exposed me to more baseball secrets, strategy and stories than most fifteen-year-olds growing up in Southwest Minnesota could ever dream about. In those days, prior to television, few youngsters had the opportunity to closely see the game played as it should be.
Before getting to Cassidy, Caulfield and Gostic, I’d like to share the story of Howard “Curly” Palmer who lived at our home and played for Slayton and then Iona. As far as I know “Curly” is the only First Night League player to write a book. Its title is The Real Baseball Story. It was no Pulitzer Prize winner but fun reading. He writes from the experience of playing on seventeen different teams in thirteen leagues, rubbing elbows in the same league with Nellie Fox and playing with Sad Sam Jones and Steve Bilko, his one time roommate. He attended spring training in 1944 with the St. Louis Cardinals and worked with former major league stars Pepper Martin and George Sisler. By 1951 he had no job and happened to see in the baseball bible The Sporting News that Fulda and Slayton, MN were looking for outfielders. He telephoned Slayton first and was hired. Coming by bus from St. Louis he was snowbound eighteen hours in Sioux City, IA and for 2 ½ days in Worthington. In the book Palmer relates how he was out of money in Worthington. He called Slayton Director Buck Raunhorst, who wired him a hundred-dollar advance on his first months pay. Arriving in Slayton things looked up. He writes, “The big-hearted Bolin family gave me a room without compensation until I had a job, Jerry Holden at the Hub Café lent me two meal tickets and “Buck” Rauenhorst found me a job teaching school in Currie.” He also organized a square dancing class and was talked into officiating a woman’s wrestling match. Forewarned that the fans pay to see a show he was still surprised to have Violet Ray, Gorgeous Georgia, Tuffy Alexander and Fran Gotch, the “sensational farm girl,” show him no mercy. Curly was kicked, bit and thrown across the ring, and he vowed that night to never again referee a pro wrestling match.
Howard “Curly” Palmer was released less than a month after the season started, but was picked up by Iona and continued to live at our home. He managed a three-run homer in the bottom of the seventh in Iona’s first game against Slayton, but later in the season was pinch-hit for (the first time in his life) by (Iona manager and president of the First Night League), Benny Wagner.
The crazy economics was evident in Palmer’s situation. He made $300 a month at Slayton and Iona after being released from a Class D league team where he was making only $175 a month. Vallie Eaves made as much as Slayton in 1951 as he did for the Chicago Cubs in 1941. The league was no doubt a sanctuary for college players trying to earn some money playing baseball and yet be isolated enough to protect their college eligibility. Some players used assumed names for this purpose.
Glen Gostic was a young, quick, hustling catcher from the University of Minnesota in 1950. Glen’s attitude, enthusiasm and love of the game endeared him to Slaytonians and teammates. His close friend and high school teammate at Minneapolis North, Dick Cassidy, left the New York Yankee organization and minor league baseball after 3 ½ years to join Glen at Slayton in 1950. Cassidy exemplified the exact qualities of Gostic and the two of them had a ton of friends in the area. In late June the third of my personal “great triumvirate”, John Caulfield joined the Slayton Rockets and became a resident of our large home in Slayton for the first of two summers. John became the “big brother” I never had and his close friendship to Gostic and Cassidy made the three of them frequent quests to mom’s table at our home on Linden Avenue. She loved them all and often told me what wonderful young men they were. She was a good judge of people, as all three have remained in contact long after mom and dad’s deaths.
Gostic didn’t return to Slayton in 1951 as opportunities in coaching, baseball clinics, and schooling toward his athletic trainer degree all accompanied his chance to play in the metro-area. Glen later assisted Dick Siebert at the University of Minnesota and I believe was a part of their NCAA National Championship team. He later worked as a trainer with the Minnesota Twins, once riding a bike from the Twin Cities to Melbourne, Florida for spring training. He was an official scorer for the Twins at the old Met Stadium. I ran into Glen at a baseball clinic at the U of M, in which he was the presenter on the mechanics and secrets of catching. I spoke to Glen and he related how he had renewed his friendship with John Caulfield. John had returned to the Cambridge-Boston area after 1951. He realized Glen Gostic was running in the Boston Marathon and made sure they got together. That was all it took. Dick Cassidy was in the Minneapolis area and soon the three were pals again. The friendship remains to this day! I recall Glen, Dick and John stopping at Tracy Area High School for a surprise visit when John was in the cities to attend the NCAA National Hockey Championship game between the Gophers and Harvard. John’s connections at Harvard earned him tickets and he was happy to treat friends Glen and Dick to the Harvard over-time victory.
Dick Cassidy played nearly every position at Slayton and played them all well. In the mid-50’s he joined up with Gostic again, playing in the Minneapolis Park National League before huge crowds at Parade Stadium. Later Dick and Glen coached the North Side American Legion team. In an article about Dick’s volunteerism to Minneapolis Henry baseball Dick was quoted thus, in regard to his lifelong friend Glen Gostic, “No one knows and loves the game more than him.”
Dick, as strictly a volunteer, maintained the Henry ball field for a quarter-century. The same article about Cassidy said, “In a city where choppy, dirt infields and thick, shaggy outfield grass are common, the Henry field is a gem.” A Minneapolis Washburn baseball coach, after hard rains in the city, called several times to the Minneapolis Henry Athletic Director to make sure the game was still on. “He kept saying, I hope we can play. My kids have been looking forward to playing on your field all week.” That’s Dick Cassidy, if you do anything, do it right and do it well. That was Dick Cassidy in 1950 and 51 and that’s Dick Cassidy today. Our family still values his friendship.
The closest contact has been the furthest from Southwest Minnesota. John “The Man” Caulfield returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1979 when my wife and I were flying eat to visit my aunt and uncle we realized that we would be having a three-hour layover in Boston. I wrote John, having corresponded with him before but not seeing him since 1951, about us being at the airport for a few hours. He immediately replied and said he’d be there to meet us. He was, with photos and a fantastic memory and wonderfully good feelings about those two summers in Southwest Minnesota.
What has happened in the life of John Caulfield, now the father of eight, is amazing and will be of interest to anyone who might faintly recall the short-lived, all-salaried Double A baseball fiasco a half-century ago.
The best way to start writing about John “Lefty” Caulfield is simply to quote Tom Brokaw, NBC news anchor, who recently completed two books on WWII veterans. The books were The Greatest Generation and The Greatest Generation Speaks. John Caulfield made both books. Brokaw wrote: “One of the joys of the reach of The Greatest Generation is the rekindling of memories and relationships that had faded. I have become particularly fond of John “Lefty” Caulfield, one of the Romeo Club members (Retired Old Men Eating Out), who returned to Harvard and his baseball scholarship after navy service during the war.”
Caulfield’s humor has helped endear him to everyone he meets. John told me last summer that Brokaw had called him and invited him to a Red Sox vs.Yankees play-off game with Pedro Martinez pitching against Roger Clemens. He jokingly said that many people wondered who that guy sitting behind home plate with Caulfield was. Also, while a delegation of twenty Japanese was visiting Harvard John was asked to take a picture of the entire group with their Harvard sweaters and huge smiles. Just before snapping the picture he spoke the only Japanese he knew and forty hands shot in the air amid laughter and larger smiles. “What did you say?” he was asked. “I told them to put their hands up and surrender,” he answered. “It’s one of the few phrases I remember from the war.”
Tom Brokaw chose to write about Caulfield and his friends, the Kerry Corner gang, from Cambridge, Massachusetts who had grown up together in the 30s and 40s, fought in WWII and stayed in touch ever since. He also did a film segment on the group for his NBC Nightly News.
Most all of the group were from families who had emigrated to America from County Kerry in Ireland (thus the Kerry Corner). John’s father had come from County Galway and his mother from County Cork. The Kerry Corner guys now meet on the last Friday of each month. One writer said, “They dine and drink from memory’s generous cup.”
John was the eldest of four children who lost their father when he was eleven. He became a breadwinner. Although being very poor, he extols the warm house his mother provided. He earned an academic scholarship to Harvard, but left for the U.S> Navy and service in the Pacific during his freshman year. After WWII he returned to Harvard as a second term freshman. In baseball he led the Ivy League in hitting as a sophomore with a .438 average. The same year he fielded .991. John again led the team in hitting as a senior and was also the captain of the Harvard nine. In 1978 John Caulfield was inducted into the Harvard Athletic Hall of Fame. Earlier John, who had been offered a professional contract by the Boston Braves, resisted the “tough decision” and decided to stay in school. A Boston area sports writer wrote that “John Caulfield was my real role model. He combined athletics with academics.”
John’s career involved many years of teaching, several as Master (Principal) of the King school and after retirement the position of Assistant Director of Operations for Harvard University Sport’s Facilities. An official in Harvard administration said about John, “He knows ten thousand men of Harvard, and then some. I’m sure he probably bleeds tiny H’s,”
Caulfield was a classmate of Henry Kissinger and James Schlesinger. He recalls beating Yale 2-0 in 1948 when the opposing captain and also first baseman was George Bush, the forty-first president of the United States and father of President George W. Bush. On the wall in John’s office you will find a personal note from then President Bush in regard to the 1947 Harvard-Yale game.
Despite his huge success, John Caulfield is genuine. He appreciates Slayton and Southwest Minnesota these fifty years later. A recent letter closes, “Warm regards to the family. Slayton means so much to me! Affectionately, John.”
Springfield Memories Top
By Mike Schwaegerl.
Our thanks to Mike, who wrote this story for our web site. He grew up in Springfield and has many fond memories of Western Minny baseball. He left Springfield in 1960 to teach in the Madison, WI area, where he still resides.
They were my boys of summer – Bassie, Eddie, Gizzy, Art, Les, Otey, Pat, Baggy, Dean, Norm, Paul, Preston – and all the others who played for the Springfield Tigers of the Western Minnesota Baseball League during their golden years from about 1944-1956, when the Tigers morphed into a Minnesota Class B/A dynasty.
I was the kid who hung around the ball club, ran the manual scoreboard, handed out programs at the gate, and cleaned up Riverside Park the day after the game. I was the substitute batboy when Eddie Bittler was gone, and occasionally was the visiting team’s batboy. I shagged flies with them in the outfield, and most importantly I talked to them. Many of them were ex-professional players, and if one thing is true about these players as a group, they liked to tell their stories. I would guess that habit came from their histories as baseball vagabonds. Most were tales woven in Class D, C, B, A, AA, AAA, the minor league classes at the time.
From what I remember, they told a lot about drinking, sitting around, playing games, talking about the big league players they knew. Sometimes they talked to me, but I was a young kid and I learned more by listening to them talk to each other. And, oh yes, the women. I heard several versions of the mythology: caught in bed with the owner’s wife, or the town groupies that we see in the baseball movies of today. They’re all a part of the mythology.
My biggest boy of several summers was Henry “Hy” Vandenberg. He came to Springfield to play for the Tigers in 1947, just about a year after I came to baseball consciousness. He came, heralded in headlines as “Pitched for the Cubs in ’45 World Series,” “Played for Bill Veeck in Milwaukee,” and, “Once Pitched for the Minneapolis Millers.”
To appreciate how big this event was for Springfield, think about the Cubs of 1945, because they were not the modern “happy losers.” True, they were a wartime team, but they did win the 1945 pennant and had been in the Series in 1938, and were a good team in the early 1940s. They won the 1945 pennant because the Yankees traded pitcher Hank Borowy to them in the middle of the season. They had good, solid major leaguers such as Phil Cavaretta, Stan Hack, Bill Nicholson and Andy Pafko.
Vandenberg started seven games for the Cubs that year, and had a record of 6-3. He appeared in 30 games and pitched 90 innings, sort of a sometimes starter and long reliever. He was a part of the big controversy of the Series. In game seven, manager Charley Grimm decided to start Borowy with one day’s rest. This proved to be foolish. The Detroit Tigers hit Borowy with five runs in the first (he didn’t get anybody out). Paul Derringer ended the first, but left with two outs in the second after giving up a sixth run. Vandenberg then pitched 3 1/3 scoreless innings in relief.
Of course, the Springfield players talked to him about that game. Some already knew Hy. Some had been in the minor leagues in the 1940s when Hy was playing. They were well aware of the 1945 World Series. I heard Hy tell them an amazing story – that the Cubs players thought Charley was crazy, and that he hated Hy. The team wanted Hy to start the game. He had already pitched three scoreless innings in the Series. Anyway, Hy claimed that he and Charley had an actual fist fight in the hall of their hotel the night before the game. I did not believe that until I read a history of the Cubs that repeated the story.
After 1945, the Cubs traded him to Cleveland, but he refused to report, sat out a year of professional ball, and arrived at Riverside Park, 40 years old, about 6 ft 3 in, and about 200 pounds. So what was he like? He was a good pitcher. I happened across several box scores from the era. He struck out more batters than I thought, about 10 per game. He walked few and seemed to give up more hits than I remember. I never thought of him as a strikeout pitcher – more of a let-them-hit-it and my-people-will-catch-it type.
Springfield had a good defensive team and a big pitcher-friendly ballpark. He threw, as far as I could tell, a fastball, a curve ball, a changeup, a knuckleball, and as some would tell it, a great spit ball. He was a good hitter.
When I first met him, I did not know that he had a reputation as a barnstormer and a baseball clown of a sort, a role that did not always please the Springfield fans or team officials. When he did not have a game scheduled with the Tigers, he would be off pitching for some team in the state that would pay him more money to clown around for them. I would not be surprised to find out that he made more money barnstorming than he did pitching for Springfield.
What clown things did I see him do? In an exhibition game, he once rounded third base and stopped to tie his shoelace. He was of course tagged out, with a feigned, puzzled look on his face. His teammates were also puzzled. He once clapped when an opponent got a hit off him, and proceeded to blow the game. He also had rabbit ears. I’m sure it was part of his act, because the rabbit ears never seemed to rattle him. Instead, it seemed to inspire him more than once to lunacy. He might stop the game and walk over to a heckling fan and shake hands with the shocked person. Several times, we heard a fan say loudly, “Vandenberg, you should quit, you old has-been.” Hy would stop the game, move near the crowd, staring into it, and retort, “It’s better to be a has-been than a never-have-been.”
Sometimes, the voice from the crowd was Frank Schneider, a Springfield fan with a particularly loud obnoxious voice. In other words, the heckler was often a set up. Sometimes when that same heckle would come from an opposing dugout, Hy would respond by decking the opposing batter, which often led to a loud protest from the opposing bench and a warning from the umpire.
He baited and taunted umpires unmercifully. There was one really obese umpire that Hy often greeted, “Hey fatso, how many are you going to miss tonight?” There was one game in which he got thrown out by the plate umpire in the first inning, during a dispute over a missed call. Of course, a paid pitcher should not do such things, but the gossip was that Hy was drunk and really did not want to pitch that night.
He would often bait other teams, challenging their hitters and telling them what pitch he was going to throw. Of course, he was often lying, and laughed loudly when he crossed them up. Once, in a meaningless game late in the year, a big left-handed batter came to the plate. Vandenberg took a look at him and said something like this: “You know, I’ve been told that I dare not throw you a fastball up and in. I’m going to throw a fastball up and in to see if you can hit it. I’m not lying this time.” Vandenberg pitched, kept his word, and the ball went soaring over the right field fence. Vandenberg clapped the batter around the bases.
In what was serious baseball, Vandenberg brought the pick-off move and the spin move to second to Minnesota baseball. He approached base runners as hostile beings that he must eradicate. He often tried to pick off runners from any base, much more often than any other pitchers. Five or six tries were not unusual. The crowd would murmur, the other teams would sizzle, and the umpires would urge him to pitch to the batter. You know what? Often enough, Hy would pick off a runner on the fourth or fifth try. Then he would laugh and point at the opposing team. Then there was the spin move. You see it sometimes today, but I never saw it used before Hy. He would actually take his eyes off the plate, spin around, and face second base. Theoretically, the runner could start when Hy started his wind up and steal third. No one ever did. The opposing team would scream “balk, balk.” The umpires would shrug their shoulders, and Hy would laugh at the opposition.
Then there was the spitball. As a batboy or ball boy, I often had a look at Hy’s old and stained glove. Tobacco? Spit? Foreign substance? God knows what, and I’m not sure God wanted to know. The glove seemed to be black, but I’m not sure of that. It had no pocket. Instead, it had a hole, and Hy used a pad in the pocket. Sometimes it was a sponge, sometimes something more hideous.
Then there was Henry Nicklasson of the New Ulm Brewers. He was Hy’s arch enemy. He determined early on that Hy threw a spit ball, and for four years he tried to catch Hy. He never did, but he always tried. (I suspect that Hy did throw a spit ball – his knuckle ball moved in strange ways and on occasion his curve really dropped.) In games, Hank would demand that Hy show him the glove. He sometimes walked out on the field (Hank coached third base) and demanded to see the glove. Hy would dangle it in front of Hank and then withdraw it. Once Hy put the glove down, and Hank made a lunge for it it. He missed. Hank or the umpire would demand the ball from Hy. He had a trick where he let the ball roll down his arm and when it reached his hand, he would flip the ball back to his shoulder, often missing the shoulder. The ball would fall to the ground, erasing any foreign substance. At times, when the umpire demanded the ball, Hy would roll it on the grass to the umpire, again disguising or erasing any foreign substance that might have been on the ball.
I do not know why the team got rid of Hy after the 1950 season. It was not good for the Tigers, who I think finished about 16-12, after 22-3 in 1949. The team got old. In 1951, the Tigers brought in Pat Davison and Otey Clark to pitch and went 25-10. Hy still had something left because in 1951 he had a good season with Fairfax. It was probably because people were kind of tired of him. He was sort of a high maintenance player who demanded and got quite a bit of attention. But he was fun to have around.
Gene O’Brien: Belle Plaine Tiger, 1946-1954 Top
By Tom Melchior.
Tom is a retired teacher, coach, author, and active County and school volunteer. He’s written two books: “They Called Me Teacher (Stories of Minnesota Country School Teachers and Students from 1915 to 1960),” and “From Both Sides of the Desk.” In 1997, “They Called Me Teacher” won the Merit Award from the Midwest Independent Publishers Association. In 1971 he was named Minnesota Teacher of the Year.
Melchior played baseball at St. John’s, and amateur ball at Belle Plaine (1954-1956); Benson (1957); LeSeuer (1958); New Prague (1959); and for several teams in the 1960s. He currently is writing a book on Belle Plaine baseball history up to 1960.
The following profile is part of a series Melchior is compiling about local baseball players. It appeared in the October/November Scott County SCENE.
Gene O’Brien moved to St. Paul from Richmond, Wisconsin, when he was eleven. He and his brothers developed their baseball skills in the St. Paul parochial school leagues. He attended Cretin High School and in 1939 Gene enrolled at St. Thomas, where he starred in football, hockey and baseball.
In December of Gene’s junior year, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He and twenty-five fellow Tommies signed up for the Marine Corps Reserve. Reserve members were assured that they could finish college before being drafted.
During his junior year, Gene signed a baseball contract with Fargo Moorhead of the Class C Northern League. “At that time athletes could play professional sports and also participate in amateur sports. In the winter of 1942, I was sold to the New York Yankees and assigned to the AAA team, Kansas City. I eventually ended up with Norfolk in the Piedmont League.” On July 22, 1943, Gene O’Brien was hitting .299 for Norfolk. His teammate, Lawrence (Yogi) Berra, was hitting .253.
On July 23, Gene was activated by the Marines and sent to Paris Island, South Carolina, to become an officer. “I was offered the opportunity to play on the Marine team with guys like Ted Williams and other big league players, but I didn’t because I had a strong commitment to the service, to the invasions, and to my friends from St. Thomas.” Gene fought two and one-half years in the South Pacific. He and his college buddies led the charge on Okinawa.
Gene moved to Belle Plaine in 1946 and became the player-manager of the town team for the next eight years. In 1948, we lived in Gaylord, but my Grandpa lived in Belle Plaine and he loved his Tigers. I begged my parents to visit Grandpa, so I could watch the Tigers.
That year Gene’s Tigers played Winsted for the state championship in Shakopee. Grandpa Pete took me to the game, but it was so crowded we had to stand in left-center field with several hundred fans separated from the playing field by a single rope.
The Tigers lost the game by one run. A Winsted player hit a drive to left center. The ball rolled into the standing crowd. While the Belle Plaine outfielder hunted for the ball, the Winsted player circled the bases for a homerun. The Tigers also lost the championship game in 1952, this time to Cannon Falls.
Year after year, Gene was on of the most feared hitters in the league. When he took batting practice, he cracked line drives to all corners of the ballpark. Whack, whack, whack filled the night air. On game nights, he bounced home runs off Vic Krumrey’s house behind the right field fence.
“How did you become such a great hitter?” I asked.
“Back in ’33 and ’34, my brother Bob and I played in our backyard. The bat was a broomstick handle and the ball was a bottle cap. We hit hundreds of bottle caps.”
“What?” I said. “How could you hit a bottle cap? It’s impossible to throw them straight. They dip and curve all the time.”
“I know it’s impossible but that’s how Bob and I learned how to hit,” he said.
We moved to Belle Plaine in 1952 and I graduated in 1954. In Gene’s final year of managing, I tried out for the Tigers. At that time, playing for the town team was the dream of every kid who loved baseball. To me the Minnesota River League was the major leagues.
1952 Belle Plaine State Tournament team, which lost to Cannon Falls 5-4 in the Class A championship game. Back row: Bob “Minnow Meyer, George Bodmer, Paul Keup, Norb Schmitt, Jim Pollard (Jordan draftee), Jack O’Brien, Lloyd Schultz, Fred Keup, Jr., Gene O’Brien, manager. Front row: Pete Johnson, Fred Schultz, Jerry Miller, Baldy Hartkoff (Jordan draftee), Jim Geske (New Prague draftee), Rollie Seltz. Bat Boys: Paul Johnson, Greg Engfer. Pollard was a four-time NBA all-star for the Minneapolis Lakers and was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978. (Photo courtesy of Tom Melchior.)
Several veterans retired from the 1953 team, so we rookies had our chance. During one of the first practices, Gene took me aside and said, “Tom, the pitching in this league is really tough. Give it all you’ve got all the time. Don’t worry about your hitting. You’re going to play.” I have never forgotten those words: “You’re going to play.” This spring, forty-four years later, I asked Gene how he could assure me that I was going to play.
“You’ve gotta participate,” he said. “You gotta get the chance. You’ve got to get in there and fail in order to win. That’s life, of course, so I felt if I could spot the talent in young fellas, like Paul, Fred, Dave, you and Pete, I wanted to get them in there and experience what you’ve got to do along with the advice that I or others could give. Pretty soon those young guys will start maturing and you’ve got a hell-of-a-ballplayer. If you have the main ingredients like intensity and anticipation, if you show me these qualities, then I think I can guide you and coach you and make you a pretty good ballplayer.”
After each home game, we gathered in Gene’s garage. The older guys drank beer, but there was always plenty of Orange Crush and root beer for Pete, Dave and me. The older guys re-hashed every play, and when they finished, the stories began. Remember back in ’48 when Lefty…? How about the time Minnow Meyer…? What about the night Bob O’Brien hit those two balls over the light tower in LeCenter? First two times up, two towering homers. When he came up the third time, every kid in the park headed for right field. Bam! Same spot, over the same light tower.
“Remember the night Mike was catching” laughed Norb,” and Gene was playing right field. He’s out there screaming. “Get Down, Mike. Squat down like this.” There’s old Gene out there screaming at his brother, “Miiiiiike, get down. Get down like this Miiiiiiike.”
Never once in those garage sessions did those older players hassle us young guys about blowing a play. There was nothing but, “Good job out there tonight, Pete. Great bunt, Dave. Way to go, Tom.” What great teachers gathered in Gene’s garage!
The stories went on for hours. One of Gene’s favorites involved his brother Jack and Minneapolis Lake star Jim Pollard, who played for the Jordan Brewers. “We were playing Jordan. I think we were ahead about 8 to 1, so I put Jack back there to catch. They kept creeping up, creeping up, and the score got pretty close.
“Pollard got on first base, and you know what a ballplayer he was. He could run. His stride was about twenty feet. He took off for second base and Jack threw the ball and it sailed into centerfield. Pollard slid, picked himself up, and headed for third. Our center fielder overthrew the ball to Lloyd at third. Pollard had slid but when he saw the ball roll against the fence, he headed for home. Lloyd threw to Jack. It got there a split second too late. The veins pounded in the side of Jack’s neck. He pounded the ball in his glove about three times and then threw it over the center field fence. The fans went crazy.”
“I’ve heard that story with a different ending.” I said. “Did Jack say, ‘Ain’t nobody gonna drop that son-of-a-b---- again’?”
“I don’t know about that,” laughed Gene, “but a lot of stories came from that incident. What a riot!” I have heard that same story told many times, but Gene told it as if it just happened last night. Imagine how much those Jordan fans loved that.
I never learned to hit a twisting bottle cap. I never faced mortar shells and machine gun fire in the South Pacific. I never blistered line drives off the board fence. But I yearned to play baseball and I was blessed to meet a hero who gave me the chance.
A few years ago I had the opportunity to write words similar to those to the nominating committee for the Minnesota Baseball Hall of Fame. What a thrill to sit at the table with Gene and the other players who were probably once pulled aside and told, “The pitching in this league is really tough. Give it all you’ve got all the time. Don’t worry about your hitting. You’re going to play.”
The Rails of the ‘50s Inspired a Boy’s Devotion to the Sport Top
(Courtesy of the Willmar West Central Minnesota Daily Tribune. Article originally published on August 8, 1997.)
By David V. Levine, who is a 1954 graduate of Willmar High School. Since leaving his hometown, he has worked for Xerox and American Express, anchored television sports, been a TV and radio spokesman for a Volvo dealer in Las Vegas, and, in the mid-to-late 1980s, called radio blow-by-blow fight broadcasts from the major hotel casinos in Las Vegas. He recently returned to Minnesota and lives in St. Cloud. Levine has written a book, “A Minnesotan Takes a U-Turn: Chronicles of a Gopher State Guy on The Move,” which is scheduled for release in late November. He is also working on a series of broadcast vignettes entitled, “Minnesota Sports Profiles and Nostalgia,” which he hopes to syndicate on Minnesota radio stations.
I was thinking about baseball today. I think about baseball every day.
I probably wouldn’t, if it hadn’t been for the Willmar Rails of the semi-professional West Central League of the late 1940’s and early 50’s.
Every season since 1950, I have digested major league boxscores every day. But nothing in my experience can ever surpass my introduction to the game via the Rails.
It is Summer, 1948. A 12-year-old boy reflectively strolls the base paths of a new ballpark known as Hodapp Field in Willmar, Minnesota.
Willmar is a community of 10,000 and the majority of its wage-earning residents are employed by the Great Northern Railroad. Located 90 miles directly west of Minneapolis, Willmar hosts a roundhouse for servicing steam locomotives, and is a major switching point for scheduling freight and passenger trains in all directions. It is also a gateway to a popular mid-state lake region .
World War II ended three years ago. America’s men are back home building new futures. For the great majority, much of their free time is taken up with the nation’s passion, baseball.
Earlier, in the Spring, workers had begun building Hodapp field.
The wide-eyed boy watched and then offered to help with the laying of sod, and the tapering and rolling of the infield. Then came the erection of light standards, the building of the wooden grandstand behind home plate, with its tucked-under vendor stands, and the placing of bleachers along first and third bases.
Dugouts were measured and dug. Protective screens for the fans were placed in front of the seats. Finally, the eight-foot-high wooden outfield wall enclosing the park was finished and painted typical ballpark dark green. Signs display the outfield distances of 315 feet to the left- and rightfield foul poles, and center field is 404.
Within days, car dealers, dairies, clothing stores, food markets, auto repair shops, sporting goods stores and fraternal clubs have purchased advertising spaces on the outfield wall. Hodapp Field has taken on a ballpark charm and personality.
By mid-April, the boy watches with reverence as the players begin workouts. The team will be semi-pro and feature a couple of past-their-prime former major leaguers, and some minor leaguers, whose professional baseball futures ended with WW II.
The team is called the Willmar Rails. It will play a 35-game schedule in the West Central League.
Later, the boy receives permission to man the electric-manual rightfield scoreboard on game nights. He makes it known he wants to work at Hodapp Field during school vacation. To mow grass, to chalk the foul lines and batters’ boxes, pick up post-game debris, and ready the park for the next game.
It isn’t long before the players warm to him, and he accompanies the team on the road. Litchfield, Olivia, Alexandria, Benson, Atwater, Morris and Glenwood become as important to him as if they were Pittsburgh, New York, Cleveland or Brooklyn.
It isn’t “just Summer” anymore. Every morning becomes a daily and hourly countdown to the next game.
As the summers pass, the boy’s baseball responsibilities expand. He’s paid $75 a month to help with the day to day maintenance of Hodapp field. From 1951 through 1953, he becomes the club’s public address announcer.
On game afternoons, in a car with two roof mounted speakers, he tours downtown and the neighborhoods announcing: “Tonight at 7:30, the Willmar Rails play Litchfield at Hodapp Field. Gene Kelly will pitch for Willmar, Paul Giel for Litchfield. Tickets are available at Dave’s Sporting Goods, Fran’s Togger, and tonight at the ball park. Remember, too the Rails will be home this Sunday afternoon at 1:30 against Morris.”
Too young to drive, he sits in the back and is chauffeured by a Willmar Daily Tribune photographer, Don Nelson. It was all too good to be true.
Some of the ex-major leaguers who played in the West Central League in the early 1950’s included Howie Schultz, formerly of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Rudy York of the Boston Red Sox, Hy Vandenberg of the Chicago Cubs, Dick Siebert of the Philadelphia Athletics. These names had marquee value and helped Willmar, for example, average an attendance of approximately 2,500 per game in a town whose population was then listed at 9,800.
There was Art Grangaard, the skipper and third baseman, and now a member of the Minnesota Baseball Hall of Fame in St. Cloud. He played and managed The Rails to the state semi pro (Class AA) championship in 1954, and was named tournament MVP.
He was every bit a Leo Durocher in his heated arguments with umpires. To his team, he was The Boss! Every player held him in very high esteem. At third base, Art, getting on in age, (the fans called him Grandpa), played as well as anyone in the league and hit over .300 every year.
There was Byron Sharpe, a meat cutter by trade, behind the plate. I never heard that he sliced a finger on the job, but one night in Litchfield, he came down with Catcher’s Disease. He caught a pitch on the end of his thumb, it split and that was it for a few weeks.
Dwayne Netland took over for Byron. Netland caught for the Gophers at the U of M, became a sportswriter for the Minneapolis Tribune and now is an executive with golf Digest. He was a fine catcher, but perhaps only a journeyman hitter.
Ken Birenkott was a utility player who had a quick bat and pretty good power. I remember the time when he slammed a pinch-hit homer from the left side that was higher than the light standards. He had that uppercut swing and could launch the ball to the heavens and yet often times those homers barely cleared the wall.
Joey Hutton Jr., was a reserve forward for the World Champion Minneapolis Lakers basketball club and played shortstop for the Rails in the summer. It was storybook stuff when he married Shirley Nelson, the Willmar Kaffee Fest Queen and future WCCO TV personality.
Other names that come to mind include Chub Ebnet, Clarence Litch, Arnie Atkins, the fabulous Gene Kelly ( Willmar’s Recreation Direction and premiere pitcher), Pete Kramer, Max Ross, Donnie and Howie Peterson (not brothers), Don Hagie, George Parenti, and Dick Selvig.
Radio coverage, home and away, was provided by KWLM’s Joe Martinson and Jack Lynch. Joe handled most of the play by play. He was a hugely gifted broadcast personality who grew so attached to Willmar that offers to go elsewhere were ignored.
Among the thousands of Rail fans were two middle-aged pals who had season tickets directly behind home plate at Hodapp. They were Akie Keelan and Roy Wetherby. These two barrel-throats could be heard blocks away. They baited umpires and opposing players unmercifully and good naturedly and kept the fans in stitches. Although I wasn’t privy to the truth. It was rumored that some of their bellowings may have been liquid-fueled by Mr. John Barleycorn.
That was my introduction to baseball, the game I still consider to be the finest of all athletic contests.
I refuse to partake in the age old arguments about baseball versus any sport. To my way of thinking there is no sport that requires such pure day-in and day-out athletic competence as baseball. One must be able to throw, throw with power and accuracy, and be thinking on every pitch about what to do when the ball is hit. A player must have good speed in the field and on the bases. At the plate, in a fraction of a second he must determine whether the pitch is a ball or strike. When it’s in the strike zone he must hit a round ball blazing toward him at 90 miles per hour, with a round bat, consistently, and in pressure situations. Hand-and-eye coordination must be better than in any other sport.
Baseball is the only sport where a man fails seven of ten times and is considered a fine hitter. If he averages only two hits in ten at bats, he’s out of the game. That one hit spells the difference between success and failure. To top it all, a professional baseball athlete plays almost every day for six solid months. To stay consistently productive over that stretch is awesome.
Every man who carries on a love affair with baseball is first introduced to the game in so many different ways. All the above accounts for my worship of the game.
The first time I opened the square box containing a tissue-wrapped baseball, the fragrance of horsehide became a small that to this day causes me to close my eyes in reflective wonderment. Here was a brilliant white leather-bound ball with red stitching declaring in print that it was the Official Baseball of the American League and it included a replica signature of the AL president. I believe it was William Harridge.
I thrilled as the blurred spheroid shot toward home plate, past the swinging bat of a would-be hitter for a third strike. In that confidence-shattering moment, the embarrassed batter returned head down to the bench only to reappear two innings later, send the ball into a high arc and watch it disappear over the wall to a tumultuous cheer.
I’m glad that in my lifetime I’ve seen Mantle, Williams, DiMaggio, Ford, Aaron, Koufax, Bench, Drysdale, Mays, Wills, Rose, Killebrew, Fernando, Tony Gwynn, the Griffeys, Puckett, Nolan Ryan, and Jackie and Frank and Brooks Robinson.
Baseball. No clock ends the late rally or rushes a strategy.
Baseball. Forever connected with warm summer evenings, the wafted smells of freshly mown grass, coffee percolating in the stadium underbelly, popcorn machines, hot dogs and sausages.
Baseball. The roar of the crowd on a soft Summer night in rural America. The clouds of dust raised in the gravel parking lots by cars filled with families frantic for the game.
Baseball. The calm at dawn in the deserted litter-strewn ballpark broken only by birds feasting on peanut shells, discarded hot dog buns and popcorn.
Baseball. Synonymous with the travails of life. At this writing I’m in the sixth inning, and while life many have a lead on my, I’m fully expecting that its lessons will help bring a suspenseful and wondrous eight-or ninth inning rally.
Since, we never beat life, just gaining a chance at extra innings is a wonderful thought.