Minnesota townball is 100 years old — and there's nothing else like it

The changes in our sports universe have become relentless and close to instantaneous. As a concept, "tradition" has less value than a fourth-down throw under the sticks late in a playoff game.

Today, college trustees can throw 100 years of athletic affiliations overboard on a 10-minute Zoom connection. In the process, they will rubber-stamp backstabbing from college administrators that might have given pause to Bernie Madoff.

The Gophers' dream for decades was to play a West Coast power in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day. Now, the hope will be to avoid Southern California and Oregon on the Big Ten schedule, in order to keep playing patsies such as Northwestern and Nebraska.

All things have changed in sports. Don't believe me?

They are going to have breakdancing in the 2024 Paris Olympics.

I rest my case, and do so with an outside chance to still be around later in this decade, when the anything-for-another-billion NFL approves each team being allowed one Artificial Intelligence Humanoid on the field at all times.

Of course, there are exceptions to all rules — and we have that in Minnesota, with the unique summer pastime referred to as "townball."

Tournament classifications have undergone changes (including this year) and metal bats were allowed for a quarter-century before being disallowed in 2001, but at its soul, townball has stayed the same: men of many ages risking their jobs and often their marriages to keep playing baseball.

Joe Kelly was a righthanded pitcher from New Jersey. He was introduced to Minnesota when pitching in the 1947 and 1948 seasons for the St. Cloud Rox.

The Rox were a Class C affiliate of the New York Giants in the eight-team Northern League. Kelly came to St. Cloud as a 20-year-old. He was 7-7 in both seasons, with ERAs of 4.57 and 5.02.

"His manager was Charlie Fox, who wound up managing the Giants in San Francisco years later," his son, Tom Kelly, said. "They made some friends, I guess, and that's how he ended up pitching in western Minnesota for Chokio's town team for two summers.

"What was told to me was he worked at a gas station in Chokio as a job, and then he pitched when it was his turn. He said if you pitched a good game, you would walk around the fence holding your hat, and people might throw in money — usually coins — for a little bonus."

"I've been to Chokio once or twice," Kelly said. "There was a family out there, the Nelsons, who were great to my parents. We lived with them."

The "we" including the baby boy for a few weeks — a Minnesota native, thanks to townball.

The end of World War II and returning military veterans put the nation in a mood for entertainment. In a huge percentage of Minnesota hamlets, such as Chokio, that included a baseball team.

Brian "Bookie" Larson and Armand Peterson, the outstanding historians of amateur baseball, support the theory there were 799 amateur teams in this state in 1950.

Paid players started arriving in big numbers at the end of the war. The biggest spending is said to have taken place from 1947 through 1953.

Sad Sam Jones, an outstanding big-leaguer to be, pitched for Austin. And Moose Skowron hit for Austin.

On and on … great names came to play in our towns, even small ones on the prairie.

No more famous paid player for me than Hy Vandenberg, a Chicago Cubs pitcher who wound up in Springfield in the summer of 1947. He had a Triple-A offer but there was more money to be made in Western Minny.

Vandenberg is so well-known for me due to the tales told by late friend and colleague Mike Augustin, a Springfield lad.

According to Augie, Hy had a very dramatic manner of taunting an opponent after a strikeout. It involved a handkerchief and a body part.

Can't recall the outcome.

Richard and the Giants also had Hilton Smith in 1949: a Hall of Fame pitcher and Kansas City Monarchs star, but with an ailing arm by then. The next year, an ace pitcher was Al Worthington, from the University of Alabama.

I don't know what "Red" Worthington got paid in Fulda, but he did wind up marrying my cousin Shirley, the best-lookin' young lady in Fulda, according to several neutral observers.

They remain married, 70-plus years later, and living in Birmingham, Ala.

This is what killed pay-to-play townball in Minnesota: Teams in the powerful Southern Minny and Western Minny leagues were already losing thousands, and then TV came to the prairie starting in 1953-54.

As much as Fulda disliked Slayton, and Springfield disliked New Ulm, and Austin disliked Albert Lea, what that rascal Fred Mertz had up his sleeve to challenge Lucy could not be missed.

Plus, once you had the TV, it was free.

The first state amateur tournament was held in 1924 at Lexington Park in St. Paul. League presidents had met in mid-August and agreed to send their champions to a tournament.

The eight-team tourney started on Oct. 2 and, on the first day, there was an example set that would carry forth for the next century.

Rochester defeated Marble 4-1 in the quarterfinals. Quickly, the losers appealed, claiming that Rochester had two ineligible players. The protest was upheld.

There was a state board of directors established for amateur baseball in 1925 and generations of the board have been hearing protests and hunting down ineligible players since.

"There are two things that make Minnesota amateur baseball unique: the number of teams, and also the 'radius' rule," Bookie Larson said. "Other states have attempted to do it our way, by having rosters based on players within a reasonable distance of your town, but those states always go back to allowing players to come from anywhere."

The radius rule is currently 30 miles "as the crow flies" from a ballpark to a player's legal address. And there are wonderful tales through the decades as to what constituted a legal address.

The late and outstanding Joe Driscoll had added the Red Wing Aces to his resume of town teams. I was standing next to him on the rise above Red Wing's magnificent ballyard and asked what his address was to be eligible to play for the Aces.

Joe gave me a 30-second stare that read "don't ask such a personal question," and then pointed at the pay phone next to the concession stand.

The Webster Sox, former patsies, now a power, found that out this summer when the manager — not registered as a player — took an at-bat in an umpired exhibition game. The Sox were "turned in" by someone and the State Board tossed Webster from the playoff field.

Tyler Jendro was 26 when he pitched Sobieski through its upset run to the Class C title in 2014. The Class C tournament is a 48-team tournament, with first-round byes for the 16 regional champions.

Sobieski wasn't one of those, so the Skis won one game the first weekend, one more the second weekend, and then had to win four games — one Friday, two Sunday and one Labor Day — to claim their first championship.

Jendro was the winning pitcher in all six games. He had complete games in his four starts, including a no-hitter vs. New Market in the quarterfinals. He also pitched 5⅔ innings of relief in two games started by Kyle Petershick.

He gave up one run in a tournament-record 41⅔ innings. He also had the winning RBI in three Sobieski victories.

"I got T-boned by a 16-year-old driver who wasn't paying attention and it shattered the wrist on my throwing arm in 2015," Jendro said. "The doctors locked it in place for a few months and I only missed pitching in the season opener.

"Eventually, I was back to 95 percent of what I'd been. We had a good run to the final in 2018, and I pitched quite a few innings. Finally, in 2021, I had a few arm issues and retired."

And? "Mitch Leidner called me up last year," Jendro said. "Our wives are both from Little Falls and best friends. Mitch has that football competitiveness. He wanted to keep competing in some team sport.

"He said, 'Let's play baseball for Royalton.' So that's what we did in 2022."

And? "I don't think Mitch had played baseball since the eighth grade," said Jendro, with a laugh. "Those curveballs were tough for him."

"My first retirement lasted five months," Jendro said. "This time I probably mean it."

Jack Akin was raised and played baseball in Texas, then was transferred to the Twin Cities by his employer, Union Carbide. He was a lefthanded-hitting first baseman and hooked up with the Miesville Mudhens throughout the 1980s.

"I was 6-foot-4 and 225, and I looked anorexic compared to quite a few of the Dundas Dukes," Akin said.

The Dukes had Buddha, and Big Lew Olson and brother Jay, and Bill Nelson, a sturdy pitcher. They wore bright orange uniforms that only emphasized their XXXLs.

The Mudhens arrived for a Cannon Valley League game and Dundas was redoing what was then a modest excuse for a grandstand. All the previous benches were piled up.

"Boys, what did you try and do … have a team picture?"

Akin was on the phone from his home in the Colorado mountains. We laughed again at the one-liner that has been repeated for four decades. We then talked about this incredible rivalry — Mudhens vs. Dukes — that has lived for nearly a half-century.

The Mudhens were runners-up in 1968. The true start of the annual regular-season and regional battles was in the mid-70s, coinciding to a degree with the arrival in Dundas of Nelson, previously a standout pitcher at Augsburg and part of the Dick's Place juggernaut from Columbia Heights.

Nelson was an ace pitcher, but also would became a manager, an organizer, a recruiter and admittedly the townball equivalent of a Vikings fan that enjoys Packers defeat.

"The rivalry was strong enough for years that I was happy when Miesville lost to anyone," Nelson said.

"Billy … he was extra intense about the rivalry," Johnson said. "We won a four-team regional to go to the state tournament in 1978 and wanted to draft him as a pitcher. He turned us down, so we took three other Dukes, had a great time and won our first state title."

Miesville has added six more state titles to '78: 1989-92-95, 2007-16-17. The Mudhens also have four runners-up finishes. Dundas has five titles: 1982-88-98-99 and 2015. The Dukes also have finished second eight times, with the most recent in 2019.

When third baseman Aaron Erickson was the MVP for the champion Dukes in 1998, his eligibility was well-established, but his job had taken him to the Los Angeles area. Thus, all summer, he was flying in on a Thursday night redeye, and then flying back on the latest possible flight to L.A. on Sunday night.

Johnson did offer this reminder: "When you talk about great rivalries, you have to put Red Wing right in there with Dundas for many years. The Aces had outstanding teams and they won three state titles."

Legend has it, former Cannon Valley players gather at Dan's Bar and Grill in New Trier on a night near Christmas and retell their tales. Here's one:

"A few times in the past, we'd gone across the street, gotten into the ballpark and raided the refrigerator for beer.

"Jack Ruhr — greatest guy ever, our ballpark's named for him — ran the business operation and he didn't want us stealing any more beer. That night, there was a thick chain wrapped twice around the refrigerator, with a big padlock holding it together.

"Akin had just gotten a top-of-the-line metal bat. He got that bat out of his car, put it inside those chains, next to the lock, and twisted and yanked and popped it.

"Next time he saw Jack Ruhr, Akin says, 'Jack … I hit the ball so hard the other night, I bent this bat. Can you get me a new one?' "

Beer long has been the thirst-quencher for townballers and their fans — and not ones containing fizz or tasting like fruit.