There were 80 teams with close to 1,600 players that were involved over three weekends in the 102nd Minnesota amateur baseball tournament that concluded on Labor Day. This added up to 77 games in three classes, a math problem that I figured out easily, thanks to the fine work of Sister Oliver many decades ago in the early years of grade school at St. Gabriel’s in Fulda, Minn.
There were two Fulda teams in those days, including the Giants that my father, Richard, managed for a time and always helped to organize. I was a 10-year-old when Richard and his best pal, Joe Miller, sat at the kitchen table early most mornings, helping to concoct the Giants’ last try at “fast” baseball — a place in the once-mighty Western Minny in the summer of 1956.
Sadly, every time a black-and-white TV was installed in the Fulda area, a potential baseball attendee had been lost to programming on KELO (Channel 11) out of Sioux Falls. Even a power-hitting third baseman from the Gophers that summer — Jack McCartan — was no match for “I Love Lucy” reruns.
Discussions overheard between Richard and my mother, the former Jane Cecelia McDonough from Waldorf, Minn., made it sound as if dear old dad was tossing away a bit more money on those Giants than a small-town undertaker could afford.
By then, I would guess the gentle scam that Richard pulled with another pal, Don Schwab, to help finance earlier Giants teams (including pitcher Al Worthington in 1950) had run its course. Several decades ago, well after my father’s death, Mr. Schwab — the lumberyard mogul — sat at his kitchen table and told me stories about his dealings with “Dickie.”
The best: “Dickie would have me write out a check for $500 to the Fulda Giants. Then, he would take it around to other business people and farmers with a baseball interest and say, ‘You don’t want that tight guy Schwab to donate more to baseball than you’re going to.’”
And then: “Dickie would bring back my check, we’d tear it up, and I’d write him out one for $200, and maybe less.”
If only Minnesota had pulltabs in bars those many decades ago, Richard would not have had the “Schwab” scam to confess to St. Gabe’s Father Hodapp, along with shooting an occasional hen pheasant and going well over the daily limit on mallards when the “northern flight” reached the hunting slough in early November.
