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Handouts The 2012 SABR convention (June 27-July 1) will feature a tour of former Twin Cities ballpark sites (Athletic Park, a block away from the convention hotel, and a bus tour to Nicollet Park in Minneapolis, Lexington Park and The Pillbox in St. Paul, and Metropolitan Stadium in suburban Bloomington). Here are links to handouts with information on these and other ballparks:
SABR 42 By Stew ThornleyHoly Cow! Do we have a great event coming up in 2012. SABR 42 will be back in Minneapolis, 24 years after a convention that is still remembered fondly by those who attended. The Halsey Hall Chapter of SABR will be hosting the event (and, in case you weren't aware, Halsey Hall was using Holy Cow! as his trademark expression long before those imitators in St. Louis and New York), and the chapter has been busy for many years planning for a great time.
Other events:
The Twin Cities has a lot of other attractions, including:
Summer in Minnesota is usually pleasant, and the weather can't be any hotter than it was in 1988. But the convention will be. You betcha. Additional Updates
Additional Updates: The 2012 Society for American Baseball Research 42nd annual convention will be at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Minneapolis next summer, starting Wednesday, June 27, 2011 and ending on either Saturday, June 30 or Sunday, July 1. Here is an update: The Halsey Hall Chapter has had a committee in place since before the it even became official that the convention would be in Minneapolis. The members include Jerry Janzen (overseeing financial issues), Art Mugalian (in charge of apparel, goody bag, selection of all-region team, leader of ballpark sites tour), Dan Levitt (editor of the convention publication), Kevin Hennessy (liaison with Twins, on-site hotel liaison during the convention), Rich Arpi (lining up a night at the St. Paul Saints game), Brenda Himrich (organizer of the historic bus trip for a trolley ride and Lakewood Cemetery tour), and Howard Luloff (on-site volunteer coordinator). Any SABR members willing to help during the convention may contact Howard (952-922-5036). Howard will be supervising the greeters, registration helpers, and moderators during the convention. We will also need some drivers for a Wednesday night event in St. Paul (and drivers need not be SABR members; however, to be a part of the local convention group, you will have to be a SABR member and registered for the convention). The group will attend the Twins-Royals game on Friday night. A trip to a St. Paul Saints game will be offered Saturday night. Also planned for the convention:
Deb Jayne from the SABR office will be coming to Minneapolis the weekend prior to Thanksgiving and will be at the meeting of the local convention committee on November 20. Stew Thornley
This is the first in a series of weekly updates on SABR 42 (June 27 to July 1 at the Minneapolis Marriott City Center) that will contain some fun fact about the area you’ll be visiting. This week’s fun fact is that the world’s alleged largest ball of twine is in Darwin, about 60 miles west of Minneapolis. (Don’t worry. The facts will get even funner.) The convention update includes a summary of events, such as a tour of the Minneapolis library, tour of the Metrodome and walking tour of downtown Minneapolis, authors event, and First Timers reception (even for those of you who aren’t First Timers) on Wednesday; a Target Field tour, ballparks slide show, panel on women in baseball, trivia preliminaries, Fan Graphs event, and trip to the baseball exhibit at the Minnesota African American Museum on Thursday; an executives panel, awards lunch, and Royals-Twins ballgame on Friday; a ballpark run (to the Metrodome and back or, for those who can handle more, to the Mary Tyler Moore house and back), players panel, tour of former ballpark sites, official scorers panel, trivia semi-finals and finals, and one-man show about Branch Rickey on Saturday; and more but we haven’t figured out what yet on Sunday. (My mom might be there to see the players panel, and, if she is, say “Happy Birthday” to her.) Mixed in amid all this will be the usual research presentations, committee meetings, vendors room, memorabilia room, poster presentations, copious drinking with some people even staying up after 11 p.m., and an array of folks wearing baseball caps and bermuda shorts with black socks. (A note to you hound dogs: don’t put the moves on our Halsey Hall Chapter president, Brenda Himrich; she’s married to a very grouchy guy.) The convention site also includes links to a one-page handout and longer booklet with pictures and information on the former ballpark sites. So far Bob “Rocky” Johnson has committed to the Saturday players panel. Rocky grew up in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina, an affluent burb where the well-mannered high-school students, when their team is trailing, chant, “That’s all right, that’s okay, you will work for us someday!” Rocky played with several teams during an 11-year career in the majors from 1960 to 1970. He once had six straight pinch hits, led his league in pinch hits three times, and finished his career with a pinch-hitting batting average of .272 and an overall batting average of .272. He wonders how rare that is, and I’m sure someone from our group will be able to tell him. Rocky also hit the first home run in D. C. Stadium in front of JFK, LBJ, and OLF. (OLF is Orville L. Freeman, a former Minnesota governor and, at the time, Secretary of Agriculture. A building named after him, the Orville L. Freeman Building, now occupies the site of the Pillbox, which is on the ballpark tour. I also work in the OLF Building in my day job. The lobby area of the building is temporarily closed because a wall panel from the third floor fell off and landed in the lobby last Saturday, sort of a similar problem that we occasionally have with the bridges in our state.) Rocky is featured in the SABR book, Minnesotans in Baseball, and you can read all about him at: http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/5b8d84d0 Stay tuned next week for information about the world’s largest fake fish in Minnesota or something else. StewThose of you flying to SABR 42 in Minneapolis (Wednesday, June 27 to Sunday, June 1) will have a rare chance to see what was a hot tourist attraction a few years ago even though it’s now losing a bit of its luster: the toilet stall in which Idaho senator Larry “Wide Stance” Craig was arrested in 2007 for toe-tapping a guy in an adjacent stall when his two-step was interpreted as a mating call (with the toe-tapee being an undercover cop on a stakeout--now there’s a guy with an interesting office). I guess I should amend that brief opening sentence to “Some of you” instead of “Those of you” because some others of you could risk arrest by visting this since it’s in an area for males only. The site became a major attraction for a while with visitors asking airport employees where it all went down. You don’t have to ask because I’ll tell you (we’re very service-oriented at the Halsey Hall Chapter). It happened in the men’s room in the main concourse of the airport, the concourse with all the shops and food courts and the most luxurious restrooms, which even have a few of those no-touch sinks that actually turn on when you wave your hands in front of the sensor long enough. RoadsideAmerica.com claims that Larry was in the second stall from the right, although a Google image shows it as the far right stall, so, to be safe, you should take a picture of both. With this business out of the way, you’ll be set to head downtown for the convention, which is open to everyone regardless of gender, unlike the Craig Throne. Get on the light-rail at the airport (you may have to ask someone how to get to that although there are more signs pointing people to light rail than there are to the Craig site) and head for Minneapolis. If you go the wrong direction, you’ll end up at this overbloated shopping center. You can get off there if you want to see the plaque marking the spot of home plate of Met Stadium, which is in the amusement park area in the center of the shopping center. There is another seat worth seeing, the one supposedly marking the spot of Harmon Killebrew’s second-deck home run off Lew Burdette on June 3, 1967 (which, coincidentally, was also the same day of the birth of my now-dead dog, Chip, who was not named after Chipper Jones). Unfortunately, the seat marking this site doesn’t resemble the bench seat that Harmon hit (they might as well just have thrown up a toilet seat), and I’m sure it’s not the exact spot; they just attached this cheesy stadium seat on a wall in a convenient spot. But it’s still worth checking out. You can also see all this if you take the Ballparks Site tour on Saturday. If you get on the light rail in the correct direction, you’ll be in downtown Minneapolis within a half-hour. You’ll see the Metrodome and two stops beyond that, get off at Nicollet Mall. You’ll be at 5th Street. Walk up the mall (which will have a farmers’ market going on Thursday) two blocks to 7th, turn right, and you’ll be at the Marriott City Center in another block and a half. We plan to have some greeters there to direct SABR conventioneers (and our greeters are trained to be able to pick out the SABR members from other visitors) to the hotel registration on 5th floor and the convention registration area on the 4th floor. In SABR 42 Update and Shameless Promotion I, I gave a complete rundown of events and noted that Bob “Rocky” Johnson has agreed to be on the Saturday morning player panel (which is not at the same time as the ballpark site tour, so people can do both). Another former player has agreed to be on the panel, although it’s tentative since he has to check his Fox Sports North announcing schedule. Tim Laudner is a local lad who played for the Twins in the 1980s. He was born in Iowa and grew up in Brooklyn Center, a Minneapolis suburb. He pitched in high school and took the Park Center Pirates to the state tournament before switching to the outfield and catcher in college at Missouri. He came up with the Twins late in the 1981 season and homered in his first game (and his second game). He played with the Twins through 1989 before retiring during spring training in 1990. He was the starting catcher on the 1987 championship team and made the All-Star team in 1988. His BioProject bio is at: http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/029f1c74 More next week. Stew Last week air travelers got all they needed to know about what to see and how to get to SABR 42 (June 27-July 1 at the Minneapolis City Center Marriott). This week the train folks will learn how to get to the action. Unlike the airport, there are no historic sites in the train depot (I’m told there is no credence to the rumor that Kim Kardashian slapped Kris Humphries in the depot’s women’s room). The Amtrak station is in the midway area of St. Paul, a suburb of Minneapolis. You’ll come out on Transfer Road and walk a half-block to your right to get to University Avenue. There is a lot of construction for a new light-rail station there. Unfortunately, this line won’t be open for another two years, so you’ll have to take the bus, which will stop one block to the west at Vandalia. Take the 16 bus. The fare is $1.75 (exact amount needed; you can use two one-dollar bills but won’t get change) and $2.00 during rush hour (6-9 a.m. and 3-6:30 p.m. weekdays). After you enter Minneapolis, you’ll go by the University of Minnesota and the football stadium and Williams Arena, where the basketball team plays, and, after dodging more light-rail construction, will eventually cross the Mississippi River and come through downtown Minneapolis on 4th Street. Get off at Nicollet Mall and walk up the mall to 7th. Turn right before you get to the Mary Tyler Moore statue and walk a block or so to the hotel. Easy peasy. Those with some extra time but no car can take the bus to some of the city’s top lakes. Catch a 17 bus (anything but 17A) at Nicollet Mall. The bus will cut over to Hennepin Avenue on 24th Street, turn again on Lagoon Avenue, merge with Lake Street, and go between Lake Calhoun (on the left) and Lake of the Isles (on the right). You can get off anywhere if you want to walk around, but stay on the bus to the west end of Calhoun if you want to get a bike. There is a Nice Ride station on the south side of Lake Street just to the west of W. Calhoun Boulevard (and across the street from the Calhoun Beach Club, which, as the former home of WTCN-TV, used to have the Saturday night television wrestling matches with Verne Gagne, Mad Dog Vachon, Baron Von Raschke, George “Scrap Iron” Gadaski, Dr. X, Pretty Boy Larry Hennig, Handsome Harley Race, Rene Goulet, and The Man Who Made Milwaukee Famous, The Crusher, back in the days when fake wrestling was more genuine). Information on bike rental rates and other locations is at https://www.niceridemn.org. Remember, it’s Nice Ride, not Cool Ride, and though they are pretty nice to ride, the bikes aren’t too snazzy if you’re hoping to impress people (and we know how concerned SABR members are about looking cool). However, if you can still find one of those Mr. Microphones that were advertised on late-night TV a few years or decades ago, then, when you ride by the volleyball area on the southwest side of Lake Calhoun, you can announce, “Hey there, good lookin’, We’ll be back to pick you up later.” Lake Calhoun is about 3 miles around as is Lake Harriet, which is to the southeast, and Lake of the Isles is a little less than that. There are bike paths around all the lakes and a bike trail from Lake of the Isles to Calhoun. To get from Calhoun to Harriet, you will have to cross a street and then take a little cramped bike trail. They’re all really nice. There are big boards with maps of the lakes around everywhere, and, if you’re really up for riding, you can include a circuit of Cedar Lake (which supposedly has a nude beach although I’ve never been able to find it) to the west of Lake of the Isles. If you go west from Lake of the Isles on 21st Streeet to Kenwood Boulevard, you’ll see the house was used in the Mary Tyler Moore Show until the owner, fed up with people breaking in every time the house’s address was put in the newspaper, hung out an “Impeach Nixon” sign when CBS showed up to film exterior shots for the next season. Another side trip, a few blocks east on 36th Street from Lake Calhoun, will take you to Lakewood Cemetery. Lakewood and Wrigley Field are my two favorite places on the planet, and my wife and fellow SABR member, Brenda Himrich, and I have a plot there (Section 34, Row 3B, Grave 3). Although we’re not yet in it, our marker has our names on it, and we were able to pose by it for our holiday card photo in 2003 (http://stewthornley.net/holidaynewsletters#2003). It’s only about 1 x 2 feet because it’s a cremation plot (you’d have to tamp down pretty hard to get a whole body in there), but it’s the only lakeside property we own so we’re kind of proud of it. Please stop by and say hi. There aren’t any Hall of Famers in Lakewood Cemetery, but there are a lot of baseball players, including Spencer Harris, Buzz Arlett, Elmer Foster, Mike Kelley, Bobby Marshall, Sherry Robertson, Paul Giel, and Dick Siebert. Next to former Twins owner Carl Pohlad are Paul and Sheila Wellstone and their daughter, Marcia Markuson, who were killed in a plane crash in 2002 when Paul Wellstone was campaigning for re-election to the U. S. Senate. Another former senator, and vice president, Hubert Humphrey, is buried at the other end of Lakewood Cemetery, which also has more dead Minnesota governors than any other cemetery. Tiny Tim is inside Lakewood’s mausoleum, and so is my grandma. Regardless of the people there, Lakewood is really scenic with some interesting markers and monuments, and the Byzantine Chapel, where we had my dad’s funeral 25 years ago, is worth a visit. I think Lakewood is a big reason I like cemeteries in general so much. I’ll have copies of maps of Lakewood at the convention. Bring your GPS unit because I’ll try to include coordinates for the graves on the map we’ll give out. Back at the hotel, all sorts of stuff will be going on, and we now have David Vincent, Gregg Wong, and one of the future Lakewood Cemetery occupants confirmed for the official scorers panel on Saturday afternoon, and Diamondbacks official scorer Rodney Johnson will be on it if he can get away from the Arizona League and make it to the convention. Also, Roy Smalley has agreed to be on the Saturday morning player panel, along with Bob “Rocky” Johnson and, tentatively, Tim Laudner. Roy III was the son of Roy Jr., who played with the Cubs and other teams (as well as for his brother-in-law, Gene Mauch, with the Minneapolis Millers) and nephew of Gene Mauch. Roy III played on two championship teams at the University of Southern California and signed with the Texas Rangers, having been picked first in the 1974 amateur draft. He came to the Minnesota Twins in 1976 along with Mike Cubbage, Bill Singer, and Jim Gideon in a trade for Bert Blyleven and Danny Thompson. Roy hit 24 home runs in 1979 and was on the All-Star team. He was traded to New York in 1982 and, a little over a month later, came back to the Metrodome and struck out into a triple play against the Twins. Roy came back to the Twins in 1985 and finished his major league career in the World Series in 1987, which the Twins won. There’s a lot more, but I don’t want you to get too excited in one update. More next week. Stew Drink a lot of water when you’re in Minneapolis this summer for SABR 42 (June 27 to July 1 at the Minneapolis City Center Marriott). It’s good stuff. And don’t buy bottled water. It’s much trendier these days to get a reusable bottle, fill it from the tap, and carry that around. For SABR members on the cutting edge, trendy is important. Fiji bottles are out. Tap water is in. Remember that and live it. A few years ago Fiji tried to tried to diss Cleveland and its water. Cleveland responded by testing its tap water and comparing it to Fiji. It found that Fiji bottled water had 6.3 parts per billion of arsenic in it. Cleveland’s was arsenic-free. And so it is with Minneapolis’s water. In recent years, Minnesota has ranked number-one in compliance with U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s drinking-water standards through the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. Minneapolis gets its water from the Mississippi River a few miles upstream from downtown and runs it through a sophisticated treatment process, which now involves membrane filtration. On a baseball note, the Twins and Target Field conserve city water as they recycle rain water that falls on the field and lower grandstand and reuse it for irrigation and the cleaning of the stands. When the new ballpark opened, the Twins decided to use the high-profile nature of Target Field to promote other good things, such as sustainablity. They chose water as the focus of sustainability because this is the Land of 10,000 Lakes (not to mention a lot of good water under the ground, too). The rainwater and irrigation water within the collection area percolates through Target Field’s underground drainage system and travels through a 12-foot-diameter culvert, which runs under the warning track in the outfield, to a wet well beyond the outfield fence in left-center field. There it goes through an ultra-filtration system. This system is so innovative that Alexandra Cousteau (Jacques’s granddaughter) included Target Field on her International Blue Planet’s 100-day, 1,450-mile expedition in 2010. The link below will take you to a story about Target Field’s water system and includes a couple pictures of Cousteau, who is pretty hot (Alexandra, not Jacques): http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/water/com/waterline/featurestories/targetfield.html In last week’s update, I included information on baseball graves worth visiting at Lakewood Cemetery. Lakewood has an interesting water history of its own. Read about it here: http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/water/com/waterline/featurestories/lakewood.html The story doesn’t contain photos of any hot people, just dead ones (and one live one who really isn’t too hot). For those going to Lakewood Cemetery, I have put a couple more links on our Halsey Hall Chapter convention site with a list of baseball graves and a map of Lakewood Cemetery with the sites of the graves marked: http://halseyhall.org/National_Convention.html The list of graves also include longitude and latitude, so if you bring a GPS unit, you’ll be able to find them easily. The convention page also has links to a one-pager and a booklet with information and pictures of former ballparks in the Twin Cities. Some of these will be included in the Ballparks Sites bus tour on Saturday. More on that next week. Stew
SABR 42 (June 27 to July 1 at the Minneapolis City Center Marriott) will include a three-hour tour led by Art Mugalian, who, unlike Gilligan and the Skipper, will guarantee at least a 70 percent chance of getting everyone back safely. The Saturday tour will go to former ballpark sites in the Twin Cities. On Thursday will be a slide show of these and other local ballparks, a warmup for those going on the tour and an edifying experience for those who aren’t. Also, there are pdfs of a one-page fact sheet and booklet on these ballparks at the Halsey Hall Chapter convention site: http://halseyhall.org/National_Convention.html The bus trip will not start with Athletic Park, used by the Minneapolis Millers from 1889 to 1896, since it is only a block from the Marriott and anyone can walk over and see it on her own. This bandbox, where Perry Werden hit 36 of his 45 home runs in 1895, is now occupied by Butler Square, a former warehouse converted into trendy businesses and the Alley Sports Tavern, formerly Smalley’s ‘87 Club. This is a good place for dinner or lunch. Be sure and roam around and see big pictures on the wall of Minneapolis from a long time ago. One picture is of Athletic Park. The bus will first go to a Wells Fargo bank, off Nicollet Avenue and Lake Street, which was the site of Nicollet Park from 1896 to 1955. Joe Hauser hit 50 of his 69 home runs there in 1933. Ted Williams played for the Millers in 1938 and won the first American Association triple crown that year (although some revisionist historians have attempted to anoint a couple other crown recipients by retroactively adjusting the minimum qualifications needed to lead the league in batting average). Willie Mays, Ray Dandridge, Rube Waddell, Roger Bresnahan, Hoyt Wilhelm, and Monte Irvin also played for the Millers at Nicollet Park. The final game at Nicollet Park, in September 1955, was the seventh game of the Junior World Series between Minneapolis and Rochester. The Millers won, closing Nicollet in style with their first Junior World Series championship. A plaque, funded by former players and fans before the clowns in suits at the bank tried to hijack the project in 1983, is outside the bank, directly under the path of one of Joe Hauser’s home runs. The bus will head for St. Paul and will get on to I-94 via a ramp that will be underneath the site of an 1884 ballpark, used by Minneapolis in the Northwestern League. You will be able to read about this ballpark in an outstanding article by Kristin Anderson and Chris Kimball that will be in the convention publication. You won’t be able to get out on the freeway ramp to take pictures, though. The bus will head to Lexington Parkway, passing Snelling Avenue. You won’t see it but to the north of the freeway on Snelling is Macalester College, whose 1906 baseball team was coached by Dick Nutt. Beyond that is the former site of Midway Stadium, where the St. Paul Saints played from 1957 to 1960. The St. Paul folks hoped this would also be the stadium for an incoming major league team, but that never happened, so for the next 20 years it was used for other events, such as Eddie Feigner and the King and His Court and All-Star wrestling matches. It was here in August 1967 that the nefarious Dr. X put a foreign object in his mask (seen by everyone in the place except the referee) and headbutted the Crusher, knocking him out and causing him to be pinned. The site of Midway Stadium is on the east side of Snelling. It was torn down in the 1980s and replaced by a new ballpark, originally known as Municipal Stadium, on the other side of Snelling. The name was changed to Midway Stadium after the 1993 season, which was the first season for a new St. Paul Saints team. On Lexington Parkway is a TCF Bank, and it has a plaza marking the site of Lexington Park, used by the Saints from 1897 to 1956. The plaza includes a marker donated by the Halsey Hall SABR Chapter, which raised money from former players and fans and had it erected in 1994 on the side of a liquor store. When the liquor store was torn down, the erection moved to the site of the new bank, which is just beyond where the left-field fence was. The bus will go down University, passing Dale Street. Dale and University used to be a war zone, with a noted nudie theater on one side the street and the Belmont, a strip joint, on the other. (I once got a beer bottle stuck on my finger at the Belmont.) Behind the nudie theater was a ballpark used by the Western League team that started in 1895. This ballpark was known as the Dale and Aurora Grounds and also Comiskey Park, named after the team owner, who moved the Saints to Chicago after the 1899 season. The bus will stop by the Minnesota Department of Health (where I am the paid flak for the state’s drinking water program) and the site of the Downtown Ballpark, also known as the Pillbox. The Saints used this from 1903 to 1909, going back to Lexington Park only on Sundays. The St. Paul Colored Gophers also played here and hosted a series in 1909 billed as the “world’s colored championship” in which they beat the Leland Giants of Chicago. The final stop will be a shopping center in a southern suburb. Within this center was Metropolitan Stadium, where the Millers played from 1956 to 1960 and the Minnesota Twins played from 1981 to 1981. The Met hosted the All-Star Game and World Series in 1965. There is a bronze home plate supposedly marking the exact spot of the ballpark, although there is nothing to mark the spot where a drunk fan, now a reserved and dignified SABR member, climbed the foul pole and held up a game between the Twins and White Sox before 45,000 fans in June 1977. People can return to the hotel on the bus or hang around and shop and take the light rail back to Minneapolis. Meanwhile, there will be lots of fun going on at the hotel, including presentations by those who brought memorabilia. Twins curator Clyde Doepner will have all sorts of fascinating stuff, including Washington Senators scorebooks from 1954 to 1960 that he recently found. Clyde will definitely show you the scoresheets for the game in which Harmon Killebrew debuted and the one in which he made his first appearance at the plate. It’s wild stuff. Don’t miss it. Stew This Week in SABR beat me to some of the latest poop on the convention (June 27-July 1 at the Minneapolis City Center Marriott) as I’ve dealt with scoring three typically long Red Sox games and a Timberwolves game that was untypically short, which was nice because I’ve been dealing with a 102 temperature, but I can still provide some new stuff. Tony Oliva has become a definite maybe for our players panel. He was American League Rookie of the Year in 1964 and led the league in batting average his first two full seasons in the majors and led again in 1971. He was having his best season ever in 1971, but he also suffered a bad knee injury in Oakland in June that year and never was the same player after that. This Week in SABR mentioned that we will have special tours of Target Field with curator Clyde Doepner showing SABR members things that most tour-goers don’t get to see. Not mentioned was the Metrodome tour for early arrivers on Wednesday afternoon. Though never charming, the Metrodome has been one of the most functional buildings ever in Minneapolis, and Twins fans have some fond memories of the place, especially with two world titles won there. It’s also the home to the Minnesota Vikings (a football team threatening to move if they don’t get a new stadium). The Minnesota Timberwolves played their first season in the Metrodome in 1989-90. The Minnesota Gophers baseball team still plays lots of games there, along with a lot of other colleges and high schools, and the Gophers football team played there from 1982 to 2008. The Gophers lost their final game in the Metrodome 55-0 to Iowa, although the big news emerged a few days later. A woman from Iowa hooked up with a male-type, and they had sex in the toilet stall of one of the men’s rooms (there may have been alcohol involved). Many people were outraged that they used the handicapped-stall; after all, what if an amorous couple with disabilities had wanted to tear one off at the same time? They would have had to do it in a regular stall, which could be challenging. The sex story spent the week on the Star Tribune website’s list of most read and most e-mailed stories. It seemed an appropriate way for the football team to depart the Metrodome to go to a shiny new on-campus stadium, where they haven’t played any better. Marc Appleman and Vince Gennaro were in Minneapolis a week ago to meet with the local organizing committee, go through the hotel again, and meet with Twins president Dave St. Peter and marketing vice president Patrick Klinger. It was really productive. The Twins are doing whatever they can to help us have a great convention. Two-time executive of the year Terry Ryan will be on the general managers panel on Friday, June 29. Meanwhile, I’m sitting at Target Field in a rain delay between the Twins and Royals. I’m hoping the game won’t be banged since they’d probably make it up with a split doubleheader when the Royals are next in town, which is during our convention, and that might put a wrench in our plans (or a crimp or whatever it is). More later. Stew When I left you last week, I was dealing with a 100+ temperature, the Twins and Royals were on the verge of being postponed, Rocky was on the trail of Natasha and Boris and discovered Nell Fenwick tied to some railroad tracks, Bullwinkle was cruising the seamier side of Frostbite Falls trying to get some fake I. D. so he could get into a strip joint, and the Joker had Robin and Batman locked in the trunk of a 1959 Edsel. I’m happy to report that all has worked out well. OK, my 100+ temperature turned out to be pneumonia and the Twins and Royals got banged with the game rescheduled for the Saturday afternoon of our convention, which required us to do some monkeying with the schedule, but Bullwinkle scored his I. D. and is having a good time. So are Rocky and Nell. The dynamic duo, however, is still in the trunk of the Edsel. Before I get into convention news, let me tell you a little more about Minneapolis. Just a few blocks from our hotel is Nicollet Island, one of my favorite places. It’s in the Mississippi River, which separates downtown from southeast Minneapolis, which was once St. Anthony and is considered the birthplace of Minneapolis. The south side of the island is where the Nicollet Island Inn is, along with a park and pavilion. Most tourists spend their time here, but I recommend walking through the north end of the island, which is still residential despite an effort by the Minneapolis Park Board to take over the homes about 25 years ago. The neighborhood has changed a lot over 100 years. In the 1970s it was kind of Bohemian (in the sense of being socially unconventional). My cousin and his friends occupied some of the houses along with other hippie-types, including a woman with a burro. The city eventually evicted the burrow and the woman, because of the fight she put up, got evicted, too. The community had a big Fourth of July party on the Fourth of July every year with a croquet tournament in a big field. Each round of croquet took over an hour, and the four winners met for a final round and a prize of around $50, with the winner usually being determined by who was the least drunk by that time (although I won the prize one year even though I hardly qualified in the latter characteristic). Later, after my cousin moved out, the residents were able to buy the houses for a dollar as long as they fixed them up, having to adhere to architectural standards on the exterior. Others moved in, and it’s become a little gentrified, although it still has a Bohemian feel, minus the burro. De La Salle High School has been on the north end of the island for more than 100 years, generally mixing in well with the residents until a fight a few years ago, won by the high school, to put in a football field. Facing downtown from the island is a b. a. Grain Belt Beer sign, which has an historical designation. For a while, in the late 1980s and 1990s, the sign was restored and relit, but it’s been off for a long time now, which is too bad, because it is pretty awesome when lit up. The south end of the island has a small bridge that used to be the Broadway Avenue Bridge. It was floated downstream from Broadway Avenue and now makes a nice vehicle and pedestrian connection to the Main Street area. If you bring or rent a bike, the two sides of the river have some great bike paths. The bike path on the west (downtown) side will go past Target Field and take you to the lakes (Lake of the Isles, Calhoun, Harriet, Cedar Lake) I’ve mentioned in the past updates. The Hennepin Avenue Bridge connects downtown to the island. The new bridge, which replaced a steel-arch bridge that had been around more than 100 years, opened in 1989. It’s a suspension bridge, because the first two bridges on the site were suspension bridges when they became the first permanent crossings of the Mississippi River in the 1850s. Unfortunately, the new suspension bridge is kind of boxy. The channel it crosses is only about 600 feet, not long enough to justify a suspension bridge these days. Minneapolis has some nice bridges although none like the great suspension bridges you see out east (meaning New York, not St. Paul) because the river isn’t wide enough for them. However, the 35W bridge, a little downstream from downtown, was rebuilt after the collapse of the previous one in 2007 to have some nice features, and the blue lights on it are nice to see at night. In between, connecting the Main Street area to downtown, is the Stone Arch Bridge, where a former and current Halsey Hall SABR president got married in 1996. It’s now open for bikes and pedestrians, but it was once a railroad bridge, built by James J. Hill. Hill was known as the Empire Builder and also as one of the robber barons of his time and he was sort of an earlier version of Bernie Madoff. Along with J. P. Morgan, Hill got into a takeover battle of the Northern Pacific Railroad with Edward Harriman that ruined a lot of investors and nearly collapsed the stock market in 1901 in what was really nothing more than a case of wee-wee envy among grown men. On the downtown side of the Stone Arch Bridge is a lock and dam that drops 50 feet, the first in a series of locks and dams that allows navigation as the Mississippi drops a whole lot between Minneapolis and St. Louis. There is a visitor center there, and it’s worth seeing. As for the convention, things are coming together. Scott Fischthal and Neal Traven have done a great job of lining up research presentations, and a schedule of those presentations is now on the SABR website. Ron Coomer has agreed to be on the player panel. Ron grew up on the south side of Chicago as a Cubs fan, and he imitated Jack Brickhouse’s call (“Back, back, back, hey, hey!”) as he fungoed rocks across Central Avenue into Midway Airport. If he’s kidded about growing up in the nice part of the south side, he points out that he recently took his wife by his high school and was able to point out some prostitutes and a drug deal going down. Cooms hit some home runs for the Twins and a few other teams and was on the American League All-Star team in 1999. He now works as a commentator for Twins games on Fox Sports North. Tony Oliva is still a possibility although the rescheduled Twins-Royals game made that stickier, because he works out with the Twins and helps do some coaching before games. However, we’re hoping he may be excused from pre-game duties that day so he can join Coomer and Roy Smalley and Bob “Rocky” Johnson on the players panel. Our group of convention volunteers, headed by Howard Luloff, will stand out in special red convention shirts and be there to greet you and help you out in just about any way you want. Meanwhile, Batman and Robin finally escaped the Joker and are now in the clutches of the Catwoman, so they’re finally having a good time, too. So will you in Minneapolis this summer. Stew If you get a chance while in Minneapolis for SABR 42 (June 27-July 1 at the Minneapolis City Center Marriott), visit the main campus of the University of Minnesota. Depending on which bus you take or which bridge you cross on your Nice Bike, you’ll come up on the U from Washington Avenue or University Avenue. Off Washington Avenue is the main quad, the mall in front of Northrup Auditorium, which is surrounded by mostly old buildings. Beyond that is Stadium Village, which was called that even through the years that there was no stadium, after Memorial Stadium was knocked down in the early 1990s and before TCF Bank Stadium was built and opened in 2009. Williams Arena, the home of the basketball team, is in that area, too. Off University Avenue is another campus village, a four-square-block area known as Dinkytown. This used to be more quaint, with mostly independent stores, but it’s still a nice area to walk through. On the edge of Dinkytown, at the corner of 14th Avenue and 5th Street SE, is a building that used to be Marshall-University High School (the result of a merger between Marshall and University high schools in 1968). It’s a small-business/technology center, and you can stroll through the halls, the same halls once roamed by Walter Jocketty, who became a two-time Executive of the Year in Major League Baseball (one with the Cardinals, which, coincidentally, was the nickname of Marshall/Marshall-U). We’re kind of proud of him. Walter was from an athletic family, and his dad was a coach and teacher at Marshall-U, who had a weekly multiple-choice history test in which he had the students swap their papers to grade them. Some students were known to not swap them and just fill in the answers as Mr. Jocketty read them off. Some from the first hour were generous enough to even write down the answers on a scrap of paper and share them with the classes for the later hours. I did well in history that year. Walt was an all-around athlete and a pitcher on the baseball team, which was probably better than the baseball team when I was on it a few years later (and there may be a cause-and-effect relationship there). But we had fun. Our bus trips back were always raucous, despite the outcome, although that irked our coach, a nice guy who didn’t always get the respect he deserved. Once, after a 17-1 loss to Washburn that was followed by a ride home that included everyone on the right side of the bus snagging on a hitchhiker, the coach dismissed the cheerleaders (I don’t think they were among the snaggers) and kept us on there to chew us out. “It used to be you could tell if a team won or lost by looking at the players after a game,” he started with, and then used an unfortunate double-entendre that went over well with a bunch of high-school kids. “McFee, you were making a lot of noise, and you pulled a couple of boners out there.” We all started shrieking and saying “Boner,” except for McFee, who tried to reason with the coach and say, “I only made one error.” “Yeah, but it was a boner!” yelled Jud Stein. We ended up laughing our coach off the bus. In the building you can also visit the first-floor restroom where I once heroically put out a fire in a wastebasket after racing out to the hall to get a fire extinguisher (which was only fair, because I had started the fire), and the place where two buddies and I threw a 9,000-match smokebomb (sort of an independent study science experiment) that cleared out the school on a cold January day. It was pretty cool seeing the fire department come out with these big fans, but I guess it looked a little suspicious when the three of us were the only ones outside wearing coats. Woodshop was another learning experience. We found that if you turned on the table saw and threw a wood chip on it, it would shoot off and possibly through a window if it wasn’t first intercepted by some unsuspecting student walking by at the time (I guess that’s why they made us wear safety glasses). Brian McCann and I once took the teacher’s paddle and sawed it off at the handle, probably the most productive woodworking project we did all semester. You can read about these things and more. Meanwhile, the rainout of the Twins-Royals game a couple weeks ago, resulting in a makeup game during SABR 42, caused a little consternation for us. We still hope Tony Oliva can be on our players panel, although he works out with the Twins and helps coach them before games, and the Twins now have a noon game on Saturday, right after the players panel, which will be from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Roy Smalley has confirmed that he will still be there as he worked with Fox Sports North to keep his schedule clear for that game. I think Ron Coomer, who also works with Fox Sports North, will still be able to make it, too. Frank Quilici will be the moderator of the panel. Frank played for the Twins from 1965 to 1970 and had two hits in one inning in the first game of the 1965 World Series. He coached the Twins in 1971 and 1972 although he played one game in 1971, an exhibition game against the Giants at Met Stadium in which Giants coach Ozzie Virgil also played. In July 1972 the Twins fired Bill Rigney and hired Quilici to manage the team. In Frank’s first game, Harmon Killebrew hit a two-run homer to beat a team from New York, delighting Frank and most of the fans there but disappointing a current and future miscreant in the crowd. Frank was fired after the 1975 season and became a broadcaster, working on the radio with Herb Carneal. He has always been popular in Minnesota and is a really engaging guy, so he should be a good moderator for the panel. More later. Stew SABR 42 Update and Shameless Promotion VIII-B Frank Quilici said that moderating the SABR players panel at the convention sounds like fun and, if not, he’ll make it fun. I’m sure it will be fun, and I’m sure Frank will make it more fun. When Frank hit the broadcast booth, he loved the Mike Cubbage Fan Club, which I was a part of. He’d join in when our group when up by the press box and sang our Mike Cubbage song (with no apologies to Conrad): “We love you, Cubby; Oh, yes, we do. We love you Cubby, we will be true. When you’re not playing, we BOO! Oh, Cubby, we love you.” It really sounded great after a few beers.
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When SABR last came here, the group saw a game at the Metrodome. Now the venue will be Target Field, on the other side of downtown Minneapolis.
A suburban attraction for many visitors is a shopping center known by several names, including MegaMall, Mall of America, Sprawl of America, and the shopping center on steroids. Baseball fans will appreciate that this was the site of Metropolitan Stadium, and we will have a tour of this and two other ballpark sites: Nicollet Park and Lexington Park. If it works, the tour will include Lakewood Cemetery and the gravesites of many baseball players and personalities as well as a great view of Lake Calhoun (see below). Those wanting to go to the megamall on their own can easily do so on the light rail.
The Mississippi River: The downtown side has the Mill City Museum, which highlights the citys history as a milling center. On the other side are restaurants and watering holes along historic Main Street. Either side of the river is great for a walk. You can cross the river on the Stone Arch Bridge (a former railroad bridge now used for bicycles and pedestrians also the site of a 1996 wedding between two SABR members) and come back on the suspension bridge, the site of the first permanent crossing of the Mississippi River. Along that route, stop off on Nicollet Island, one of the citys treasures.
The city's jewels: Lake Harriet, Lake Calhoun, Lake of the Isles, and Cedar Lake. The lakes, with trails for biking, running, and walking, are connected. A complete circuit is 12 miles although they can be enjoyed individually. The lakes arent far from downtown although probably a little too far to walk, but not to run. We have a member who has volunteered to organize a run, and others have volunteered to drive people down and around the lakes. Bike rentals are available, too (check out 
Art museums and theaters: The Guthrie Theater on the river, the Walker Art Center on the edge of downtown Minneapolis, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts are among the biggies. St. Paul has some notable attractions, as well, including the Minnesota History Center, the capitol, and Landmark Center.