Old-Fashioned Town Ball Is Flourishing in Minnesota

Most baseball fans are familiar with historian Jacques Barzun’s famous 1954 quotation, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball,” but they may not know the rest of the sentence: “…the rules and realities of the game—and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.”1 If you really want to see some town ball games, Minnesota is the place to be!

The Minnesota Baseball Association (MBA) celebrated the 100th edition of its amateur state tournament in 2023. Since its humble origins in 1924, the tournament has not missed a beat. It has survived the Great Depression, wars, and epidemics without missing a single year! The MBA sanctioned 273 teams in 2023, divided into three classes—Class A (32 teams); Class B (30 teams); and Class C (211 teams).2 Eligibility rules are quite simple. Class A includes teams that have a single player living within an area bounded by the interstate highways surrounding the Twin Cities. This was a decision made in 1987 to address concerns of rural towns who felt it unfair to compete against teams near Minneapolis and St. Paul who could recruit players from this large population center.

Class B and C teams are restricted to players who reside within a radius of 30 miles from the ballpark address. An objective points system separates Class B and C teams based on three categories: Population (1 point per 1,000); player points for experience after high school (1 to 5 points ranging from community college to professional); and success points for the team’s finishing places in the past five state tournaments.3 League and regional playoffs qualified 80 teams for the 2023 tournament, held on three weekends, August 18–20, August 25–27, and September 1–4. Dassel (2020 population: 1,472), Delano (6,484), Litchfield (6,624), and Waconia (13,033) were selected to host the tournament.

There are a lot of great local fields in Minnesota, and towns continually improve their playing fields and spectator facilities to become eligible to host a state tournament. For example, Dassel had been a co-host for the 2005 tournament, but spent $150,000 to prepare for the 2016 tournament: $20,000 for a new concession stand; $30,000 for outfield drainage tile; $60,000 for storage and a new seating area along the left-field foul line; $30,000 for a new scoreboard; and $10,000 to blacktop the ballpark road. Dassel obtained a bank loan to finance the improvements and made initial payments of $60,000 with profit from concessions and advertising and $50,000 from private donations. The balance was paid off in yearly installments.4 The city of Delano (pop. 6,484) made similar improvements.5

A town’s small population is not a barrier to hosting a state tournament. An active fanbase and a supportive community are all it takes—plus a lot of hard work by volunteers! Thirty-five cities have cohosted at least one tournament since 2000.6 Six of them have populations less than 1,000, with Miesville (2020 population: 138) and Milroy (259) being the smallest. Competition to co-host a tournament is tough—winners are determined based on formal presentations made to the MBA Board, as well as field trips to inspect the facilities. Generally, a new applicant starts by bidding to host a regional tournament to demonstrate its readiness.

Our earliest evidence of baseball in Minnesota goes back to an 1857 newspaper from Nininger City, a short-lived steamboat landing on the Mississippi River just north of the current city of Hastings. A short note on page three told of a meeting to form a Base Ball Club.7 The article suggested the club could eventually compete with neighboring towns, but we do not know if it ever played such a game. Most early clubs got together to exercise and play intramural games. Clubs started to play challenge games with other towns after the Civil War, and by the 1870s we find towns around the state beginning to form teams to play against other towns.

Primitive roads between towns made travel difficult. They were simply leveled native soil running through cleared land, and, as historian Arthur J. Larsen put it, “Rain made roads almost impassable mud blockades from spring through June.”8 Even on good roads, travel by horse and buggy to a town 15 miles away could take at least three hours. Nevertheless, baseball games became popular social occasions on Sundays and holidays. Many of the games matched two local teams composed of inexperienced men playing for fun. Typical was a game in New Ulm in 1899, in which the Leans beat the Fats, 27–20. Afterward, the Fats complained that the Leans had been practicing, “which was against the rules.”9

Railroads were the only way to travel more than 15 or 20 miles for a game. In 1870, there were only 1,092 miles of rail in the state, but there were 3,151 in 1880, and 6,943 by 1900.10 As early as 1867, the Winona and St. Peter Railroad offered a half-fare ticket to patrons to make the 50-mile trip from Winona to Rochester to attend a baseball game.11

By 1900, semipro teams—called “Independents” by newspapers to differentiate them from purely amateur teams—played barnstorming schedules and competed to be crowned the state or northwest champions. Two teams playing for a championship were chosen ad hoc by comparing overall records and records against common foes. Waseca, featuring three Black players from Chicago, beat Litchfield, 9–2, at St. Paul’s Lexington Park to claim the 1901 championship before a packed crowd of 9,270. The grandstand was full and fans “completely circled the diamond and the space in front of the [grand] stand was packed.”12 The Minnesota State Fair formed a State Fair Baseball Association in 1916, dividing teams into three classes based on population. Tournament teams were selected based on records against other association teams in games from June 20–August 27. Games were played during the State Fair on a field built on the infield of the half-mile racetrack.13 For unknown reasons, the tournament was not repeated.

By 1924 there were 124 teams from 17 leagues outside the Twin Cities regularly reporting their scores in area newspapers. In addition, Minneapolis had 32 teams and St. Paul had 42.14 St. Paul Dispatch editor Roy Dunlap and executive sports editor Lou McKenna decided to sponsor a state tournament and called a meeting on August 14 with interested league representatives. The result was the Pioneer Press and Dispatch Semipro State Tournament, held October 2–5 at Lexington Park.15 Seven leagues plus St. Paul sent their champions to the tournament. Minneapolis declined because the dates interfered with its own playoffs.

In 1925, the Association of Minnesota Amateur Baseball Leagues (AMABL) was formed and—now called the Minnesota Baseball Association—continues to govern league and state tournament play today. The Great Depression began in 1929, but did not slow the expansion of the AMABL. By 1933, the 10th year of the state tournament, there were 55 leagues and 386 teams registered in the organization—53 in Class AA (Minneapolis and St. Paul); 144 in Class A; and 189 in Class B.16 There were also 450 American Legion teams in the state in 1933.17 The state tournament had one class 1924–29, expanded to two classes in 1930, and to three classes in 1931, but went back to two classes in 1934.18 The bylaws were revised in 1936 to require all teams outside the Twin Cities to play in regional qualifying tournaments.19 The regional tournament requirement is still in place today.

By 1940, the AMABL was up to 452 teams.20 How could this happen in the depths of the Depression? One explanation is that it was cheap entertainment. Eugene McCarthy, future US senator and presidential candidate, played five years for Watkins (1940 population: 584) in the Great Soo League. “Most Sundays you’d get a fair home crowd, maybe as much as 400–500 people,” he told a writer for Life magazine. “It was during the Depression, and nobody had any money and there wasn’t anything to do.”21 The Great Soo really was country hardball. While watching a Detroit batter hand a discarded mask back to the St. Louis catcher in the 1968 World Series, McCarthy remarked, “I don’t believe in that sort of thing. It ruins the game. He should give that mask a kick and make the catcher walk after it.”22

 

In 1937, St. Paul’s J.J. Kohn team won the American Baseball Congress championship in Battle Creek, Michigan. The ABC had been formed in 1935 as an amateur alternative to the Denver Post and National Baseball Congress semipro tournaments. J.J. Kohn, the 1935 Class AA state champ, was a last-minute entrant when the 1937 champion Minneapolis Heinies could not round up enough players to make the trip. J.J. Kohn lost its first game to New York Ludwig Furniture, but then beat teams from Kentucky, Nebraska, Chicago, Oklahoma, Battle Creek, and Atlanta to win the double-elimination tournament.23

World War II reversed baseball growth for five years. By 1945 there were only 162 teams in the state. Nationally, minor league baseball fell from 306 teams in 1940 to 86 in 1945.24 But baseball rebounded quickly. The postwar economy boomed and people were excited to get back to normal. There was pent-up demand for consumer goods and towns freely spent money on civic improvements like roads and schools—and baseball fields. Towns all over the state raced each other to install lights. Six town ball fields had installed lights between 1935 and 1939, and the first night game at the state tournament was played in 1941. At least 35 towns added lights in 1947 and 1948.25 Down in southwestern Minnesota, a new league called itself the “First Night League” in 1949 because it claimed it was the first league to schedule all its games at night.26

Baseball was truly the national pastime in the postwar years. The NFL was second fiddle to college football, the NBA was in its infancy, and there were only four US teams in the NHL. In rural areas, movies were one of the few alternatives to baseball for entertainment spending. The MBA grew to 411 teams in 1946, an increase of 249, and reached its peak of 799 in 1950. Similarly, minor league teams rose to 314 in 1946 and peaked at 448 in 1949.27 There were only two classes in the Minnesota tournament in 1947, and MBA Bylaws had never prohibited teams from paying players. Class AA leagues permitted three outside players, while Class A Leagues permitted two. (Teams from Minneapolis, St. Paul, and the St. Paul Suburban League were designated AA because of population.)

Gready “Lefty” McKinnis, an Alabama native and veteran of the Negro Leagues, was voted MVP of the 1947 State Tournament. He was the first Black player in the State Tournament since 1928.28 The AMABL had no rule barring Black players, but its recommended bylaws for individual state leagues in the 1930s stated that “All colored players are barred.”29 That language disappeared by the late 1940s, and Minnesota teams began to recruit more Black players, but most were from out of state. Black population in Minnesota was only 14,022 in 1950, 0.47 percent of the state’s total.30

Class AA teams in the powerful Southern Minnesota and Western Minnesota leagues began to field all-salaried teams, and many Class A teams paid pitchers and catchers, and sometimes good hitters. Many teams started to protest the growing professionalism and threatened to withdraw from the MBA, forcing the organization to add a Class B in 1948 that permitted no salaries. The effect was immediate—339 of the 665 teams signed up for Class B the first year.31

Class AA peaked in 1950, with 81 teams playing in 10 leagues. Many towns with populations of 1,000 or less tried to play AA ball to show they could compete in Minnesota’s “major leagues.” An official of tiny Bird Island’s ill-fated season in the Class AA West Central League remarked, “We priced ourselves out of the business, but we sure had a good time doing it! Everyone enjoyed baseball.”32 Crowds flocked to state tournaments from 1946–1950, forcing officials to permit them to sit in front of outfield fences and up to left- and right-field foul lines for championship games.

Class AA teams recruited college players from around the country, and increasingly attracted minor league players who had given up on their dreams of playing in the majors. The minor leagues’ 448 teams in 1949 had about 9,000 players competing for 400 major league roster positions.

Bob Bartholomew, a St. Paul native, hit .348 in the Class C West Texas-New Mexico League in 1948 and was rewarded with an assignment to another Class C league in 1949. “There were 30 guys just like me in the Dodger organization,” he said, “just waiting for Duke Snider to break a leg.”33 In addition to the full-time job he was given, Bartholomew made more money playing three nights a week for three months in Minnesota than he did in six months in the lower minors. Sam Jones, Bill Skowron, Al Worthington, and Herb Score played in Minnesota before signing major league contracts, while men like Dick Siebert, Howie Schultz, Hy Vandenberg, Rudy York, and Hilton Smith played after retiring from pro baseball.

The glory days of Class AA were too good to last. Night games had made it possible for the top leagues to play three games a week. Revenue from the extra games fueled a race to hire former professional players from out of state, but many teams were spending $20,000 or more ($260,000 in 2023 dollars) in player salaries and smaller towns could no longer afford to compete.34 Minneapolis and St. Paul teams, as well as the St. Paul Suburban League, dropped down to Class A for economic reasons. There were only three AA leagues left in 1953, two in 1954, and one in 1957, the final year for the class. By 1960, the state was down to 499 teams, with 449 of them in Class B. A lot had changed. Three former AA champions—Fergus Falls (1950), Litchfield (1951), and Willmar (1952)—were now in Class B.35

Conventional wisdom placed the blame for the large drop in town ball teams on the arrival of the Minnesota Twins in 1961. However, the decline had already begun in 1951. Most likely the explanation is that a rapidly changing society was offering more entertainment options. Urbanization trends also contributed—55.4 percent of the state’s population lived in the sevencounty metropolitan area in 2020, compared to 35.8 percent in 1940.36 Television was the biggest factor. It is hard to exaggerate how rapidly TV grew. When St. Paul’s KSTP-TV went on the air on April 27, 1948, there were only 2,500 TV sets in the Twin Cities. By 1950 there were 88,500 sets.37 (We calculate that would be 26.2 percent of households based on the US Census data for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Standard Metropolitan Area.38) We have found no specific data beyond 1950 for Minnesota, but surveys based on census reports show the share of households with TV sets in the United States rose to 64.5 percent in 1955, and 87.1 percent in 1960.39

Movie attendance was dropping rapidly in cities with TV stations in 1951, starting a wave of movie theater closings all over the country.40

The 1960s were a rough time for town ball. Many towns had to drop their teams for lack of players or financial support. By 1973, the tournament’s 50th year, the MBA roster was down to 287 teams.41 That appears to have been an inflection point. Since then, the number of teams has averaged 299 per year, with a range of 273 to 318.42

Minnesota is dotted with picturesque, well-manicured baseball fields. They are more than just places to play a game; they are sources of community pride. These are not limited to the 35 towns that have been co-hosts of the state tournament since 2000. Victoria, a rapidly growing outer-ring suburb southwest of Minneapolis (from 4,000 in 2000 to 11,775 today), is a good example. The Class B Victoria Vics have been a success on the field—with five state tournament berths in the last six years—but play on a field with few amenities for players and fans. Last fall, the team registered as a nonprofit and has kicked off a $2 million plan for a new covered grandstand and many other improvements.43

St. Patrick is on the other end of the spectrum. It’s an unincorporated spot located southwest of the metropolitan area, 40 miles from downtown Minneapolis. It consists solely of a few houses, a Catholic church, a tavern, and a baseball field. The St. Patrick Irish play good baseball and are regulars at the state tournament, but their field lacked lights, permanent seating, and ADA access, and had other shortcomings. They are in the midst of a three-phase, $750,000 GoFundMe capital campaign.44 LED lights were installed in 2022, and other improvements will be made as funds are available. Incidentally, the field is named after Father Leon Bonin, who championed building the field on church property in 1952.45 He figured it would be a great place for his flock to congregate.

Father Bonin had it right, and so do thousands of players and fans who enjoy Minnesota town ball every year.

ARMAND PETERSON is a retired engineer living in Maple Grove, Minnesota, and has been a SABR member since 2003. He has been hooked on baseball since he saw some older cousins play a town team game on a hardscrabble field in eastern South Dakota when he was nine years old. He has co-authored a book, Town Ball: The Glory Days of Minnesota Amateur Baseball, and in 2023, he wrote a commemorative booklet, The Early Years: Celebrating Minnesota Town Ball, 1857–1973, for the 100th anniversary of the Minnesota State Amateur Baseball Tournament.

BRIAN LARSON has been involved with Town Team baseball for 49 years. He has served as a league officer and region commissioner, and spent nine years on the state baseball board. Brian has done countless hours of research and has published three books (100 Years of Dassel Baseball, 65 Years of North Star Baseball, and 100 Years of the State Amateur Baseball). For the 2023 state tournament, Brian and Armand Peterson published a 52-page pictorial booklet on the tournament with a summary of the history of baseball in Minnesota.

 

Notes

1 Jacques Barzun, God’s Country and Mine (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1954), 159.

2 “MBA 2023 Teams,” compiled from Minnesota Baseball Association Web site, accessed June 2, 2023. Link no longer available.

3 Minnesota Baseball Association 2023 Handbook, 17–19, link no longer available, accessed January 2, 2024.

4 Brian Larson, “Dassel and Delano Field Improvement Investments,” unpublished, data obtained from team officials.

5 Delano, co-host for 1994, 1997, and 2013 tournaments, spent $120,000 for improvements for the 2019 tournament, including $20,000 for new seating areas, $30,000 for a new scoreboard, and $70,000 to place LED lights on existing towers. They obtained a loan from the city to finance the improvements, and paid back $55,000 from tournament profits and $40,000 from private donations. The city donated the $25,000 balance. Larson, “Dassel and Delano Field Improvement Investments,” unpublished, data obtained from team officials.

6 Armand Peterson, “State Tourney Hosts since 2000,” unpublished, compiled from MBA records.

7 “Nininger Base Ball Club,” Emigrant Aid Journal of Minnesota, August 1, 1857, 3.

8 Arthur J. Larsen, “The Country Roads of Minnesota,” in The Development of the Minnesota Road System (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1956), 287–329.

9 “A Red Hot Game,” Brown County Journal, July 15, 1899, 1.

10 “Railroad Development in Minnesota, 1862–1956,” United States Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places, Section E, https://www.dot.state.mn.us/culturalresources/docs/rail/sectione.pdf, accessed April 3, 2022.

11 Winona Daily Republican, August 19, 1867.

12 “Waseca Wins Championship,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, August 12, 1901.

13 “State Fair Ball Diamond Claimed Best in Twin Cities,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, September 2, 1916, 18.

14 Peterson, “1924 Survey of Minnesota Town Teams,” unpublished, compiled from newspaper microfilm files at the Minnesota Historical Society.

15 “Champions of Six Loops to Play in Tourney,” Minneapolis Journal, August 15, 1924.

16 Peterson, “1933 Team Survey,” unpublished, compiled from newspapers.com and newspaper microfilm files at the Minnesota Historical Society.

17 “Ten State Teams, Pick of 450, Ready for Legion Title Plan,” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, August 6, 1933.

18 Larson, State Amateur Baseball Tournament Information Record Book (Self-published, 2024).

19 Association of Minnesota Amateur Baseball Leagues, Constitution, By-Laws and State Tournament Rules, Revised 1936.

20 Armand Peterson and Tom Tomashek, Town Ball: The Glory Days of Minnesota Amateur Baseball (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 128.

21 Loudon Wainwright, “Confessions of a Fair Country Ballplayer,” Life, October 18, 1968, 68.

22 Wainwright, 69.

23 “St. Paul Wins National Baseball Championship Here,” Battle Creek Enquirer and Evening News, September 27, 1937, 1.

24 Peterson, “Minor League and MBA Teams 1940–1960,” unpublished, compiled from Town Ball and The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, Second Edition, Lloyd Johnson and Miles Wolff, eds., (Durham, North Carolina: Baseball America, 1997).

25 “Early Town Ball Lights,” compiled from Millerbernd Manufacturing records and newspaper microfilm files at the Minnesota Historical Society.

26 “First Night League Will Play Games on Thursday and Sunday Nights,” Marshall Messenger, April 21, 1949.

27 Peterson, “Minor Leagues and MBA.”

28 Peterson, The Early Years: Celebrating Minnesota Town Ball, 1857–1973 (Winsted, Minnesota: GreaterMN Communications, 2023), 26.

29 Constitution, By-Laws and State Tournament Rules, Association of Minnesota Amateur Leagues, Revised 1936, 12.

30 US Census Bureau, “Number of Inhabitants: Minnesota” (1950 census), https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1950/population-volume-1/vol-01-26.pdf, accessed January 2, 2024.

31 Peterson and Tomashek, Town Ball, 128.

32 Peterson and Tomashek, 132.

33 Bob Bartholomew, interview by Armand Peterson, April 11, 2003.

34 Peterson and Tomashek, Town Ball, 71.

35 Larson, State Amateur Baseball Tournament Information Record Book.

36 “USA: Minnesota,” City Population, https://www.citypopulation.de/en/usa/minnesota/admin/; US Census Bureau, 1960 Minnesota, accessed July 15, 2023.

37 “Twin Cities Television Milestones,” Pavek Museum, https://web.archive.org/web/20220331232622/ http://www.pavekmuseum.org/tctvchron.html, accessed April 14, 2022.

38 Calculated from https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1950/housing-volume-1/36965082v1p4ch02.pdf, accessed March 16, 2024.

39 “Number of TV Households in America,” from American Century: https://web.archive.org/web/20230328140136/ https://omeka.wlu.edu/americancentury/items/show/111, accessed April 14, 2022.

40 Erik Barnouw, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 114.

41 Dave Kelly, “1973 Team Survey,” unpublished, compiled from newspaper microfilm files at the Minnesota Historical Society.

42 Larson and Peterson, “MBA Team Totals,” unpublished, compiled from MBA records and newspaper microfilm files at the Minnesota Historical Society.

43 Chuck Rupnow, “Vics Unveil Plan for Ballpark Grandstand,” Southwest News Media, October 26, 2023.

44 “Capital Campaign,” St. Patrick Athletic Association, https://www.stpatrickathletics.org/projects, accessed February 2, 2024.

45 Mike Sticha (Trustee, St. Patrick Catholic Church of Cedar Lake Township), telephone interview, February 22, 2024.