Resources
Chapter Baseball Display Now Up at Brookdale Library
A display on the diverse history of baseball in Minnesota debuted April 1 and will remain through May at the Brookdale Library. A project of the chapter’s Research Committee and headed by Brenda Himrich, the display includes a whole plethora-load of books written by chapter members. In conjunction with this, Bob Tholkes and Brent Peterson will present on new Hall of Famer Bud Fowler and the season he spent in Stillwater. It will be at Brookdale Library (6125 Shingle Creek Parkway, Brooklyn Center) on Monday, May 9 at 6:30 and will give people the chance to view the display. For more information, contact Dave Lande or Gene Gomes.
Look for a feature story about Bud Fowler by Curt Brown in the May 8 Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Research Committee members are Brenda Himrich, Sarah Johnson, Dan Levitt, Ed Wehling, Doug Skipper, Stew Thornley, Rich Arpi, Dave Lande, Anders Koskinen, Hans Van Slooten, Gene Gomes, Mike Haupert, Hans Van Slooten, Gene Gomes, and Bob Tholkes.
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Metropolitan Stadium Book Published
Metropolitan Stadium: Memorable Games at Minnesota’s Diamond on the Prairie is finished and available free in electronic form to SABR members and/or for a nominal price for a print copy.
The authors in the book are Rich Arpi, Nathan Bierma, Tom Brown, Rick Bush, Ralph Caola, Alan Cohen, Richard Cuicchi, Greg Erion, T. S. Flynn, Brian Frank, Gordon Gattie, Steve Ginader, Gene Gomes, Bruce Harris, Tom Hawthorn, Paul Hofmann, Mike Huber, Sarah Johnson, Norm King, Dave Lande, Len Levin, Dan Levitt, Mike Lynch, Jim McKernon, Tom Merrick, Dave Mona, Chad Moody, Bill Nowlin, Joe O’Connell, Tim Otto, J. G. Preston, Carl Riechers, Joel Rippel, Bill Schneider, Peter Seidel, Andrew Sharp, Doug Skipper, Steve Smith, Mark S. Sternman, Bob Tholkes, Stew Thornley, Bob Webster, Steve West, Gregory H. Wolf, Bob Wood, Brian Wright, and Dana Yost.
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KARE Sports Director Reggie Wilson to Speak at April 30 Chapter Meeting
The Halsey Hall Chapter spring meeting will be Saturday, April 30 with Reggie Wilson, the new sports director at KARE-TV, as the featured speaker. The meeting will be at the usual spot, Faith Mennonite Church, 2720 E. 22nd Street in south Minneapolis. Registration is $10 and includes lunch and refreshments.
The schedule:
8:30—Registration and social time
9:00—Opening ceremonies
9:30—Brenda Himrich, 2017 Pool D World Baseball Classic at Estadio de Béisbol Charros de Jalisco, Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico
10:00—Break
10:15—Dan Levitt, Sign Stealing Before Video: Was It Legal?
10:45—Break
11:00—Pete Gorton, The Donaldson Network
11:50—Break
Noon—Lunch, business meeting, and door prizes
1:00—Featured speaker Reggie Wilson
2:30—Baseball lore quiz
3:15—Adjournment and general debauchery
Those who can’t make it are invited to view the proceedings on Facebook Live by going to the SABR Halsey Hall Chapter Facebook page.
At the business meeting, the chapter will elect three members to a two-year term on the board of directors. Anyone interested in being a candidate may contact Gene Gomes, gggomes1@me.com. More information on offices and committees for our chapter is at Halsey Hall Chapter Procedures. Three members have agreed to run for the board, and their candidate statements are below. Nominations will also be taken from the floor at the business meeting.
Candidate Statements
Jerry Janzen
I have served as your Treasurer since 2009 and am willing to continue in that capacity.
David Karpinski
I’m a lifelong baseball fan and attended my first major-league game in 1953 (Milwaukee Braves). My baseball blog (BaseballRoundtable.com) recently celebrated its tenth anniversary—and is consistently ranked among the top 50 baseball blogs nationwide (Feedspot rankings). I have taken in MLB games at 29 stadiums (three of those, of course, here in Minnesota); minor-league games in more than two dozen ballparks; and a handful of college ballparks. I have been a SABR member for seven years and am also a member of the Baseball Reliquary and the Negro League Baseball Museum. I would be proud to serve on the Halsey Hall Chapter Board.
Bob Tholkes
- SABR member since 1978
- Several previous terms on the board, including president
- Coordinated 1988 SABR convention in Minneapolis
- Several articles published in SABR publications
- Several presentations at Halsey Hall Chapter meetings and 19th Century Committee conferences
- Past candidate for SABR Vice-President
- Operated Quicksteps Vintage Base Ball Club 1994-2013.
- Member of SABR 19th Century, Biographical, and Origins committees
- Coordinated 2019 19th Century Committee meeting in Minneapolis
- Can regularly attend board meetings
Jim Cox will again lead a drawing for door prizes, which include contributions from Brenda Himrich, Dave Lande, and Rich Arpi.
Other Events
We have reserved a block of tickets to see Emma Charlesworth-Seiler umpire in Beloit on Saturday night, August 13. To be part of the action, send $11 for each ticket you want to Stew Thornley, 1082 Lovell Avenue, Roseville 55113. Be sure and include your email address since your electronic tickets will be transferred to you that way.
The Fred Souba Hot Stove Saturday Morning, an informal breakfast gathering for the purpose of talking baseball, will at Bunny’s Northeast, 34 13th Ave NE, Minneapolis 55413 (behind the keg warehouse of the old Grain Belt Brewery), 612-545-5659 on Saturday, May 14 at 9:00 a.m.
The next Research Committee meeting will be Monday, May 16.
The book club will meet at Barnes & Noble in Har Mar Mall at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 11 and discuss The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife by Brad Balukjian.
Brent Heutmaker has organized a list of all the book selections since the book club started in August 2002: Halsey Hall Book Club Selections
Howard Luloff is organizing a chapter trip for a Northwoods League game on Saturday, June 18. The 6:05 p.m. game will be the Mankato MoonDogs versus the St. Cloud Rox at Joe Faber Field in St. Cloud. As usual, Howard will try to line up pre-game activities at the ballpark with possible guest speakers from the Rox. In addition, members may want to come a little earlier to tour the Minnesota Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame at the city convention center if it is open again by then. (It has been closed to the public during the pandemic.)
If you haven’t had enough baseball yet, you could join Jim Cox and Corky Gaskell for a nooner in Rochester Tuesday, June 28. The Rochester Honkers will host the Bismarck Larks in a Northwoods League game at 12:05 p.m. The trek will include a visit to Moonlight Graham’s grave (before or after the game) and possibly a trip to the brewery (also before or after the game). If you are interested, contact Jim, jcox321@hotmail.com.
The New York Giants Preservation Society has been having mostly weekly Zoom events every Thursday at 6 p.m. Central Time, some of which are by Halsey Hall Chapter members. One such member will team with Dan VanDeMortel on June 2 for A Foremost Part In the Work of Relieving Distress: The Week New York, the Giants, and the Yankees Offered a Lifeline to The Titanic’s Survivors. On August 4, Tom Flynn will talk about his great-great uncle, Tom Sheehan, a longtime member of the Giants as a scout and manager. To get notifications of these meetings, contact Gary Mintz, giantsguru@gmail.com.
Keep up to date with chapter activities on social media:
SABR Halsey Hall Chapter Facebook page
Halsey Hall Chapter Twitter page
Please visit both pages, and, if you haven’t yet, “Like” the Facebook page and “Follow” the Twitter page and set your notifications to be alerted to new posts.
Also:
Regular Events
Video Archives of Past Events
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A Quiz
Gene Gomes has blessed the monthly Research Committee meeting with a stimulating quiz. He allowed a guest quizzer to submit questions for the April meeting, and they are repeated here. This is an open-book quiz; on- and off-line reference materials are allows. (John Gregory took a pre-test and got them all correct. If John can do that, so can you.)
- Who is the 1970s Cubs first baseman who is the son of a noted television game-show host?
- He was an infielder for parts of four seasons with the Cincinnati Reds and Boston Red Sox in the 1920s although he was often used as a pinch-runner. He had a 23-game hitting streak with the Minneapolis Millers in 1925.
- Who is the former White Sox-Twins-Tigers outfielder who later became a Kansas City Royals coach who changed his number from 18 to 81 to allow Ben Zobrist to wear 18 in exchange for a weed whacker?
- This Cup of Coffee player was in one game for Cleveland, August 29, 1917, played third base, and made outs in both his plate appearances. His nickname was Dutch. According to his granddaughter, Dutch played against Babe Ruth during his youth, chose his wife over a continued baseball career, and died at an Old Timer Event at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore in 1959.
- Who is the award for the champions of the Cape Cod League named after?
- What two pitchers were traded for one another in a 2011 deal between the Seattle Mariners and Detroit Tigers?
- Where was Federal League pitcher John McGraw (birth name Roy Hoar) born?
- An inductee in the St. Cloud State Hall of Fame and the Minnesota Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame, this legend has a field in St. Cloud named after him. The field is the home of the St. Cloud Technical and Community College Cyclones. The field is next to Joe Faber Field, where the Halsey Hall Chapter will be attending a Northwoods League game in June.
- His major-league career was brief but encompassed two full seasons with Brooklyn in the 1920s in which he had a 112 OPS+ in 246 games. He appeared in two baseball movies, Death on the Diamond and Alibi Ike.
- Who was the baseball coach at Macalester College in St. Paul in 1906?
- A Union Association star, this lefty won 23 games for Cincinnati in 1884 while pitching nearly 330 innings. He also led the league in triples.
- This Cleveland shortstop made the first unassisted triple play in major-league history.
- Mainly a middle infielder in the majors, he was a first baseman for Charley Comiskey in St. Paul in the first two years of Lexington Park. He put up impressive numbers in the National League for many years and had a big season as a teammate of the above noted player with Cincinnati in the Union Association. He is credited with scouting and signing Amos Rusie.
- He was the opening-day starter for the New York Giants in their final season in the original Polo Grounds in 1888, the year the Giants won the National League pennant and World’s Series. He had a nickname attributed to many pitchers, especially those who struck out a lot of batters, one of whom was teammate Ed Crane. Together, they were known as the Cannonball Duo.
- A long minor-league career was mixed with two games with Matanzas in Cuba and two games in the majors, with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1910 when he got two hits, including a double, in four times up.
- A southpaw, he lost 15 games in the Piedmont League, pitching for Richmond and Portsmouth in 1953. He also played a bit of second base, with results that were little better. He may have done better during a couple of seasons with Brandon in the Manitoba-Dakota League.
- Who was the noted sports editor for the Cleveland Plain Dealer who, after his death in 1969, was posthumously honored with the J. G. Taylor Spink Award? For many years the Cleveland team not yet known as the Guardians had an award in his name that was given to the team’s most underrated player.
- This pitcher racked up huge win totals with Buffalo in the 1880s and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1965.
- The manager and owner of the Homestead Grays was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2006 along with 16 others from the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues.
- The owner of the Boston National League team, he brought Babe Ruth back to Boston.
- This outfielder spent four years in the National League in the late 1930s and then a couple seasons with the Chicago White Sox toward the end of World War II. In between he had some productive seasons for the Hollywood Stars. He reportedly called himself the ugliest man in baseball.
- He played only two games in the National League in 1883 because he sucked, but he did slightly better with two teams in the Union Association the next year. According to baseball-reference.com Bullpen, one person called him “arguably the single worst major-league ballplayer ever.”
- Bonus Question: How many home runs did Joe Hauser hit for the Minneapolis Millers in 1933, setting a professional record that was later tied by Bob Crues and eventually broken by Joe Bauman, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds?
Answers below
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New Members
The Halsey Hall Chapter welcomes Neal Karlen and Jason Ernst.
Know a potential member? Here are resources for getting that person happily involved in SABR:
Membership application
Get more out of your membership experience by checking out SABR Member Benefit Spotlight Series.
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The Last Cullum Column
Dick Cullum was a sportswriter in the Twin Cities for more than 55 years. He retired from the Minneapolis Tribune in 1976 and continued to write a Thursday column. His last one appeared April 15, 1982. Dick had a stroke two days later and died 15 days after that. Here are his final words in print:
Here is the Met Stadium scoreboard before a May 13, 1970 featuring a matchup between Jim Palmer and Jim Kaat (a game won by the Twins 5-4 in 10 innings). As Cullum noted, all of the out-of-town games, including a 4-0 Mets win over the Cubs that afternoon and the starting pitchers for other games, are constantly on the board, as are the lineups for both teams—Don Buford, Mark Belanger, Frank Robinson, John “Boog” Powell, Paul Blair, Brooks Robinson, Dave Johnson, Andy Etchebarren and Cesar Tovar, Rod Carew, Tony Oliva, Harmon Killebrew, Rich Reese, Jim Holt, Leo Cardenas, Paul Ratliff (as I’m sure you all know). And this information remained for the entire game, never being usurped by inane graphics accompanied by insufferable cacaphony. What a novel concept.
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Cow Chips
On April 8 Sarah Johnson became the sixth woman to be an official scorer in the history of the major leagues. She worked Opening Day for the Twins. Three other women worked openers—Kara Blackstone for Arizona on April 7, Jillian Geib (who also was an official scorer last year) for Colorado on April 8, and Alie Irving for San Francisco on April 8 in a game that started 22 minutes after the Twins-Mariners game. Prior to this the only women serving as official scorers in the majors were E. G. Green for Chicago in the 1800s, Susan Fornoff for Oakland/San Francisco from 1990 to 1992, and Marie-Claude Pelland-Marcotte for Toronto in 2015-2016.
Sarah also was the official scorer for the St. Paul Saints’ home opener April 12, and the next night was the scorer for a no-hitter. In addition to official scoring, Sarah is the Balls Outs Strikes Spotter (BOSS) and field-timing coordinator (FTC) for Major League Baseball for Twins games. Other SABR members who have duties in the press box at Twins games include Brenda Himrich (FTC), Al Strauss (BOSS and FTC), and Jeff Lehtinen, who is a datacaster for GameDay.
Paul Spyhalski will be presenting on the integration in the Southern Minny League with a focus on Birmingham Black Baron connections at the Jerry Malloy Conference in Birmingham in June. He will also give a talk on the Southern Minny League from 1954 to 1957 at the Hormel Historic Home in Austin at 6:00 p.m. on May 9.
Mark Johnson is moving and downsizing, meaning that some of his 1,100+ baseball books are looking for a good home. If you are interested in obtaining some of them, contact Mark, Baseballbooks@comcast.net, 952-831-1153.
Terry Bohn has written about Bob Blewett for the SABR BioProject.
Jim McKernon has written about Ralph Capron.
The SABR Games Project has some new entries:
August 6, 1917: Eddie Plank Retires after Losing to Walter Johnson, 1-0 in 11 innings and April 12, 1922: Del Gainer and Rogers Hornsby Power Cardinals to Opening Day Romp over Pirates by Tom Merrick
April 3, 1982: Twins shut out Phillies in Exhibition to Open the Metrodome and March 11, 2017: Puerto Rico Stays Unbeaten with 9-4 Win over Host Mexico in World Baseball Classic by Stew Thornley
May 16, 1933: Senators Collect 27 Hits to Win Extra-inning Thriller over Cleveland by Doug Skipper
May 17, 1878: Bud Fowler Becomes the First Black Player in Organized Baseball by James Overmyer
Doug Skipper is the chair of the judges to select a recipient for the Larry Ritter Book Award, which will be announced in May.
Mean Gene Gomes celebrated the end of his year of being 69 by doing 70 push ups April 15.
The April 2022 edition of Keltner’s Hot Corner, the newsletter of the Ken Keltner Badger State Chapter is on-line:
Keltner’s Hot Corner, April 2022
For past Keltner’s Hot Corner newsletters:
Keltner’s Hot Corner
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Answers to A Quiz
1. Pete LaCock (son of Ralph Pierre LaCock Sr., aka Peter Marshall), 2. Boob Fowler, 3. Rusty Kuntz, 4. Ferd Eunick, 5. Arnold Mycock, 6. Doug Fister and Charlie Furbush, 7. Intercourse, Pennsylvania, 8. Dick Putz, 9. Dick Cox, 10. Dick Nutt, 11. Dick Burns, 12. Neal Ball, 13. Pebbly Jack Glasscock, 14. Cannonball Titcomb, 15. Harry Cheek, 16. Harry Butts, 17. Gordon Cobbledick, 18. Pud Galvin, 19. Cum Posey, 20. Judge Fuchs, 21. Johnny Dickshot, 22. Tony Suck, Bonus: 69.
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Calendar
April 24—Halsey Hall Chapter Board of Directors meeting, 6:00 p.m. For more information on attending, contact Gene Gomes.
April 30—Spring Chapter Meeting, 9:00 a.m., Faith Mennonite Church, Minneapolis. For more information, contact Howard Luloff, 952-922-5036.
May 9—Presentation on Bud Fowler, 6:30 p.m., Brookdale Library, Brooklyn Center.
May 14—Fred Souba Hot Stove League Saturday Morning, 9:00 a.m., Bunny’s Northeast.
May 16—Research Committee meeting, 7:00-9:00 p.m. via Zoom. For more information, contact Dave Lande or Gene Gomes.
June 11—Book Club, Barnes & Noble, Har Mar Mall, Roseville, 9:30 a.m., The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife by Brad Balukjian.
June 18—Mankato MoonDogs vs. St. Cloud Rox, Joe Faber Field, St. Cloud, 6:05 p.m. (with possible pre-game activities). For more information, contact Howard Luloff, 952-922-5036.
June 28—Bismarck Larks at Rochester Honkers, Mayo Field, 12:05 p.m. For more information, contact Jim Cox.
August 13—West Michigan Whitecaps at Beloit Sky Crap with Emma Charlesworth-Seiler umpiring. For more information, contact Stew Thornley.
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Board of Directors 2021-2022
President—Gene Gomes
Vice President—Stew Thornley
Secretary—Sarah Johnson
Treasurer—Jerry Janzen
Daniel Dorff
Dave Lande
John Swol
Events Committee Chair—Howard Luloff
Research Committee Co-Chairs—Dave Lande, Gene Gomes
Membership Committee Chair—Stew Thornley
The Holy Cow! Editor—Stew Thornley
Ass. Editors—Jerry Janzen and Brenda Himrich
Webmaster—John Gregory
Ass. Webmasters—Frank Kadwell, Hans Van Slooten, and Stew Thornley
Social Media Directors—Bob Komoroski, Facebook; Hans Van Slooten and Tom Flynn, Twitter
Halsey Hall Chapter Web Page
Past issues of The Holy Cow! are available on-line.
Chapter History
Chapter Procedures and By-Laws
Society for American Baseball Research
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Resources
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