Zenith City: Stories from Duluth

Baseball Days

i was a good enough baseball player in my youth to get a tryout with the Duluth Dukes in . At that time the Dukes played in the Class C Northern League as a farm team of the Chicago White Sox. I don’t think the Dukes management thought I might actually make the team, but they probably figured it was a good public relations gesture to occasionally extend a one-day look-see to a local kid. I batted left-handed, and I was not without credentials: cocaptain of the Central High School team during my senior year and a batting average of . for two straight seasons. Although I had trouble hitting curveballs from southpaw pitchers, I faced lefties only once or twice a season, and I thought with more exposure, I’d learn to hit them nearly as well as I did right-handed pitchers. My other weakness was throwing. I showed minimal arm strength and accuracy from my favorite position, third base, and in high school and American Legion competition, our first baseman, Dave Baker, snatched my sometimes errant throws, keeping errors to a minimum. But all this is hindsight. At the time I thought I might impress the team enough to at least send me to class D, perhaps in Holden, Nebraska, where I might hone my skills and be promoted to the Dukes in a year or two. While my hitting would usually top our high school and legion teams, my most noteworthy diamond achievement occurred in a midget league game (teams with boys aged twelve to fourteen) when I made an unassisted double play from right field. It drew attention because outfielders seldom if ever get that opportunity. In actuality, it wasn’t all that remarkable. With a runner on first base, the batter hit a soft fly ball to shallow right field. At the crack of the bat, the runner took off for second. I dashed in and caught the ball just baseball days 118 baseball Days | 119 beyond the infield grass and noticed the runner was nearly at second base. I continued running, beating him by a stride back to first for the double play. On the bench our coach chastised me for not throwing the ball to the first baseman, who was calling for it, and the runner would have been out by several yards. “You wanted to be a big shot, hey?” he said. I guess I did. during the late s, White Sox teams were built around speed and defense. They didn’t hit many homeruns but bunted, stole bases, slapped the ball around, had good pitching, and won a lot of games. When I arrived at Wade Stadium, Dukes manager Joe Hauser greeted me. Hauser had enjoyed several decent major league seasons , but was better known as a minor league slugger who hit sixtynine homeruns for the Minneapolis Millers in . Hauser was accompanied by another former big-league player, now a White Sox scout, Johnny Mostil, who had been the only major league center fielder ever to catch a fly ball in foul territory. Both men were old-time baseball lifers, now in their late fifties or early sixties. They had me run a half dozen wind sprints, then put me out in left center field to shag fly balls. Each man had two baseballs. Mostil struck the first one toward the left field foul line. “Get after it, son,” he hollered, and I did, grabbing it on the fourth or fifth bounce. As I was throwing it back toward him, Hauser smacked another toward dead center field. “Whatcha’ waitin’ for?” Mostil shouted. “After it, sonny.” The men repeated this regimen over and over, each hitting a ball well beyond my reach and urging me to “get after it.” An eternity of agony. Within minutes I tasted blood and my lungs burned. Then Mostil hit one back toward the scoreboard and on rubbery legs I began another chase. I saw and felt the cinder warning track before the wall, but coordination vanished and I could not stop or even muster strength to raise my arms for protection against the inevitable, imminent collision. 120 | baseball Days Crumpled on the ground, wounded and gasping, I heard Mostil’s voice. “You gotta get those if you want to play in the big leagues, son.” End of tryout and professional baseball dreams. well, not quite. During the  Northern League...