Ken Staples died on Monday at 87. I found David Anderson's latest literary effort in the Star Tribune mail at the same time. This was the common thread: guys who grew up in St. Paul with a love of baseball.
Staples was a 1946 graduate at Humboldt High School on St. Paul's West Side. Anderson was a ball field rat at Arlington Playground on the East Side.
Kenny was an outstanding athlete and fiery coach. He coached baseball and hockey in Robbinsdale (first Robbinsdale High, then Cooper). I got to know him as a kid reporter at the St. Cloud Times, when Kenny was managing the St. Cloud Rox in the short-season Northern League for the Twins.
My less-than-demanding boss, Mike Augustin, and I would slap together the Times sports section by 9 a.m., then have breakfast most every summer morning with Kenny (when the Rox were in town).
The highlight would be Kenny going to the pay phone for his daily call to Twins farm director George Brophy. Soon, you could hear George bellowing through the phone that he wasn't going to sign some 22-year-old former Gopher to play second base in a rookie league; that the 18-year-old draft choice that Kenny insisted "couldn't play dead in a cowboy movie'' was going to continue to play.
Staples did win enough arguments with Brophy to take three straight Northern League pennants with the Rox.
I became aware of David Anderson one Saturday morning late in 1984, when opening my mail at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Inside, there were a few copies of "Quotations from Chairman Calvin.''
Anderson had compiled what he described as the "Collected Wit and Wisdom of Calvin Griffith, former Minnesota Twins President and Chairman of the Board.''
