Tink Larson, the Waseca baseball man, had not taken his 1999 Honda Goldwing 1500 for a ride this spring. The Waseca Braves had a night game on June 9, and Larson decided there was time on Friday afternoon to take a 50-mile ride to Northwood, Iowa, to see a friend.
"I was on the way back on Highway 65 and came up over a viaduct, with a sharp turn to the left,'' Larson said. "I look down at my speedometer and saw I was getting close to the gravel. Next thing, I was in loose gravel, lost it and flew off backwards.''
He landed fiercely on his tailbone. Added all up, Tink had 14 broken ribs; breaks of the sternum, collarbone and left shoulder; and a collapsed lung.
"After landing on my tailbone, I remember my head snapping back and hitting the pavement very hard,'' Larson said. "I was wearing a helmet. If not, I would be dead.''
Tink had no head injury. He will be at Mercy Hospital in Mason City, Iowa, for another week as he continues rehab.
Larson is 75. He came to Waseca as a coach and teacher in 1967. This is the 50th year that he has been coaching or promoting baseball, and usually both, in Waseca.
"This is the longest I've gone without being at a game in a baseball season since … I have no idea when,'' he said.
Larson and Waseca were much in the news April 6, 2016, when the grandstand and other areas of the town's magnificent ballpark — Tink Larson Field — burned because of an arson that still has not been solved.
