GAYLORD, MINN. — Arlington and Gaylord are separated by 8 miles on Hwy. 5. They share Sibley East High School with Green Isle. They also have shared host duties for the 86th state amateur baseball tournament over the past three weekends.
Arlington was experienced at this, holding the tournament in 1976 and then co-hosting with Hamburg in 1983 and with Hutchinson in 1994.
"Gaylord wasn't going to get a state tournament until we had a grandstand," Bill Walsh said. "We got that done in 2002."
The tab was $152,000 for the covered grandstand. The City of Gaylord threw in $20,000, and the rest came through fundraising. Two years later, the state baseball board awarded the 2009 Class B and C tournaments to Arlington and Gaylord.
This was a chance for Gaylord to show off some of the state's finest-manicured grass to fans of the town teams that would play 32 (or 33) games between Aug. 20 and Labor Day on Walsh Field.
Bill is the namesake, having started working on the Gaylord baseball field in 1966 and continuing through this 44th summer with daily shifts of eight to 10 hours in preparation for this state tournament.
Walsh said that his son, Randy, the athletic director at Sibley East, has taken much of the responsibility for the field in recent years. Perhaps, but there's no way Randy could be as wired up as his father about the reviews for the field conditions at Walsh Field.
"The whole goal with this infield is to keep the ball down," Bill said. "You spend all that time working the field to keep the bounces true. You don't want a player to go home and say, 'My state tournament ended because of a bad hop.'"