More Glory Days

 

Is there a sport where more statistics are gathered and analyzed than in the game of baseball? Take this one for example: The rarest baseball feat was posted when Fernando Tatis, Sr., a playerfor the St. Louis Cardinals hit two grand slam homers in the same inning in 1999 against the L. A. Dodgers. A number of players have hit two grand slams in the same game but never the same inning.

Baseball has inspired several songs such as John Fogerty’s “Centerfield.” Fogerty wrote and sings it. As a young California kid where no major league teams had yet located, he dreamed of being a centerfielder. After all, his hero San Francisco native Joe DiMaggio played centerfield for the Yankees. He said he also found inspiration from his frustration at watching a favorite team losing on TV and imagining himself a rookie on the bench jumping up and shouting, “Put me in coach, put me in!” The song is such a baseball standard that another statistic lists when Fogerty in 2010 became the first and only musician honored by baseball’s hall of fame.

Turning our attention to the local baseball scene we find some information about Cy Pieh at pinstripealley.com, a New York Yankee history site. Two things about him caught people’s attention. One was his natural talent. The other was the odd way he acted which caused him to suffer the butt of jokes. His frustrated wife told him to “Stop making a fool of yourself, everybody thinks I married a dunce.” Pieh is buried in the Enderlin cemetery.

Lynn “Line Drive” Nelson signed to play baseball with the Fargo-Moorhead Twins independent team in 1925. Upon arriving a boxer known as the Fargo Express, Billy Petrolle, spotted him and talked him into training for the ring, too. Lynn’s manager would not approve of his wish to box.

They agreed on a solution where Nelson would don a mask and be billed simply as the Masked Marvel. Middleweight Lynn Nelson recorded 21 early knockouts in 21 professional bouts. After a standout season in 1925 with the F-M Twins, Nelson caught the attention of a scout from the Kansas City Blues of the American Association. During his pro career, he tallied a record of 33 wins and 42 losses with 29 complete games, two shutouts, and 255 strikeouts.

Terry Bohn’s research and writing about amateur baseball in North Dakota deserves a closer look. I ordered from Amazon two books he authored. I’ll borrow from, especially “Lots More Fun That Way: The First 30 Years of Amateur Baseball in North Dakota.” He expands beyond the thirty year mark a bit when he includes some late as 2013 accomplishments.

He liberally sprinkles Enderlin teams and players throughout his narrative. He tells us Johnny Janz threw a perfect game against Tuttle in the quarter-final of the 1955 state tournament. The team’s thirteen-year-old pitcher named Ray Henkel beat Cooperstown in 1932, but doesn’t say if  he pitched the whole fourteen-inning game. 

Dr. Hendrickson died in 1948 and Pete Redmond guided the Indies to success.The reason for the team’s success throughout the years has been analyzed by many, but the fact that resources were gathered to hire coaches plays strongly. For instance, standout player/coaches

like Johnny Janz, Owen Wallace, and Pete Redmond made for a positive influence on young players.  

Another reason for success recognizes the strong core of good players that stayed together. Adding to these three are John Utke, Wes Peterson, John Foss, Oakley Larson, and Ralph Graalum. The third reason Bohn states for success includes the field lights that permitted long days of play.

Bohn scoured various sources to discover that Janz in 1955 and Jerry Jerdee in 1956 pitched state tournament no-hitters. John Foss in 1955 hit two home runs in one tournament. A dozen team members have been inducted into the North Dakota Sports Hall of Fame in the amateur baseball section: Redmond, Utke, Janz, Wallace, Wes Peterson, Larson, Foss, Abbie Peterson, Haskins, Halverson, Adair, and Bratland.

A section in Bohn’s book includes other information that proved educational for me such as in one chapter “The Influence of McLeod.” The familiar name of Joe Milton enters the picture for

being a strong promoter of the sport and leading that team to the state tournament in 1948. Dale Sveum played in the major leagues for twelve seasons. John Olerud was an American League batting champion and a two-time all star. Two good pitchers, Gerald Ankerfelt and Clayton Johnson, received a thumbs-up mention.

I taught at the Wahpeton Indian School for a long spell where the name Woody Keeble is held in high regard. This wartime hero won many commendation medals including the Medal of Honor

posthumously for his bravery in the Korean War. He used his strong and accurate pitching arm to hurl grenades with deadly accuracy. He had been recruited by the Chicago White Sox in 1941, but entered the Army when World War II broke out.

One other person whom I did work beside for many years in Wahpeton was Don Berg who receives mention in the book for his athleticism which Berg himself never spoke of. I only knew him as a middleweight golden glove boxer, but there was more. In the 1949 state baseball tournament Hettinger wanted to add Berg from the Ellendale team to their roster, but he ran intoa conflict. College classes had started in Ellendale where he was a star halfback on the football team.

Letters to the editor about the sporting scene in and around the area would be welcomed. More articles about it will appear as material presents itself. And as John Fogerty’s “Centerfield” opened this article, we’ll close with Bruce Springsteen singing “Glory days, well, they’ll pass you by…”