Tag: baseball

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Love for the Game

By Mel Antonen

The Canova Gang plays under the lights at the ballpark in Canova. Photo by Christian Begeman.

As a kid in Hamlin County, Burt Tulson was marked for baseball success. He belted rocks with a bat, took batting practice at the granary and played night games under the only yard light on the family farm.

He chased foul balls for a nickel at Lake Norden Lakers games and in school he wrote an essay about how he wanted to be in the big leagues and build baseball fields.

Tulson wasn’t one of the handful of South Dakota-born big-leaguers, but in a state where town-team baseball is the closest thing to a common religion, Tulson has been a deacon of the diamond.

We are in South Dakota’s 82nd season of amateur baseball, and Tulson, 67, has been a manager almost half of those seasons. He’s in his 40th year of running the Lake Norden Lakers, and that makes him the dean of managers in the state.

Tulson has good company. Of approximately 75 managers, he is one of five with 30 years of experience leading an amateur baseball team.

The Canova Gang’s Dave Gassman and Kirk Sorensen of the Vermillion Red Sox are each in their 37th seasons. Paul Martin of the Akron (Iowa) Rebels and Fred Obermeier of Clark are each at 33. The Dell Rapids Mudcats’ Jim Wilber, who also managed Redfield and his hometown Miller, is at 31.

“Managers are the most important ingredient we have in keeping amateur baseball alive,” says Dale Weber of Salem, president of the South Dakota Amateur Baseball Association.”The average fan has no idea how much work a manager does outside the white lines.”

A manager does more than write lineups an hour before the game. They oversee the team finances, and sometimes foot the bill for expenses out of their own pocket. They buy equipment and uniforms, schedule games and organize ticket-takers, concession stand operators, umpires and announcers. Managers are groundskeepers — mowing, chopping weeds and preparing the field — and they fix everything from drinking fountains to bathroom light sockets.

“We have this notion that our ball fields should look like Yankee Stadium,” Wilber says.

The morning after a game there’s ballpark cleanup and calling newspapers and radio stations with game highlights.

Overall, town-team baseball is doing well, but there is a slow decline in teams, and that’s related, in part, to the difficulty in finding managers, says Herb Sundall of Kennebec, the association’s secretary-treasurer:”It’s not that there isn’t enough players or money. It’s that managers are hard to find.”

So, why do managers manage? Managers on the three-decades list don’t like attention and quickly credit spouses, children and townspeople for the success of a program. But managing gets in their blood, and they love it because of the competition, camaraderie and community. And, they don’t want to see baseball fade away.

Gassman says retirement isn’t an option.”Baseball is all we have left in Canova. I’m a die-hard. I’m not going to let baseball die as long as I am around.”

Except for Obermeier, who never played baseball, each manager followed a familiar path: They finished daily chores quickly so they could play baseball. They joined youth leagues, played American Legion and were drafted to play on the town team. After a couple of decades, they were handed keys to the equipment shed.

The Fireballing Manager

Dave Gassman’s dad, Bernard, was a manager in Epiphany. As a kid, Gassman tagged along and chased foul balls for a nickel and then spent his money on ice-cold pop at the concession stand, a taste that he’ll never forget.

Dave Gassman is interviewed after his team won the state championship in 2009.

Today Gassman, a farmer who owns the Canova Service Center, follows in his dad’s footsteps in Canova, his 37th season. He also managed one year in Scotland, the year he earned four state tournament wins as a pitcher and Scotland beat Renner 7-5 for the Class B title. Gassman has managed for so long, players might not remember that he was a pitcher, arguably the best in state history, with 376 wins and 5,595 strikeouts, both state records.

In 1966, as a Legion player, he pitched five innings of relief for Canova against Aberdeen in a state tournament semifinal game, allowing the Gang to use ace Lee Goldammer in the championship. Goldammer tossed a one-hitter in a 3-1 win against Woonsocket, giving Canova its first state title.

It was the first of four titles for Gassman. In addition to Scotland, the Gang won in 1979 and again in 2009 when Gassman got to share the experience with his son, Garrett, a left-handed batting catcher.

This year, in addition to Garrett, there are three other Gassmans on the team, including Dave’s nephews, Tucker and Gavin, all who either pitch or play infield.

Scout in Disguise

Burt Tulson and his sister, Pauline, had four places to play ball on the farm between Bryant and Lake Norden.

Burt Tulson.

They played with a plastic bat and ball on the front lawn. The second field had a granary as a backstop so they could hit balls toward the road. The third field was big enough for a game with the neighbors and the fourth was under the yard light, where players had to keep the ball inside the base paths or it was an out.

“That game taught us how to bunt,” Tulson says.”We had to play that game because there was only one yard light on the farm. I learned a level swing and bat control. It was like using a hammer. If you swing too hard, you miss the nail. It was important to be in control.”

His parents, Glenn and Fern, brought him to Lakers games in the late 1950s. He wore Lakers blue for the first time in 1966.

As a player, Tulson was a pitcher, but he injured his right shoulder in a motorcycle accident and moved to first base. He was a line-drive hitter with a lifetime average of .362 and 60 home runs. Tulson and business partner Frank Andrews, a longtime volunteer ticket-taker, were the contractors who built the amateur baseball Hall of Fame in Lake Norden.

He started managing the team in 1976 and earned his 700th career win in 2012. He’s managed the Lakers in 28 of their 39 state tournament appearances.

Tulson’s an accomplished manager, but one night, during the late 1990s, he used an off-the-wall scouting trip to see if he could break the Lakers’ late-season slump. A few days before a game in Huron, Tulson told his team he would be gone and that pitcher Paul Raasch would manage.

A smattering of fans attended, including one sitting alone at the top of the grandstand in Huron. The fan had enormous hair and wore a trench coat with big shades — a bit odd considering it was 90 degrees and muggy.

The Lakers’ players recognized the fan as Tulson, who was trying to watch his team from a different perspective.

During warm-ups at the Lakers’ next game, Tulson was asking about the Huron game, as if he wasn’t there. The players played along, but eventually they cracked and told him they knew where he was.

“It was hilarious,” Raasch said.”We played pretty good the rest of the year. We won the district and a couple games in the state tourney.”

Baseball and Healing

Kirk Sorensen, who farms west of Vermillion, has been a Red Sox fan his entire life. As a kid, he’d visit his grandma, Jessie Jensen, on summer Sundays and walk six blocks to see a game. He chased foul balls and hung numbers on the scoreboard.

Kirk Sorensen guided the Vermillion Red Sox to state championships in 2003, 2004 and 2006.

He was a catcher with speed, but an elbow injury moved him to first base. His resume includes a six-hit game and a season where he had 11 triples.

Sorensen, who also plays bass guitar in a country band, is the only manager to win state titles in Class A and B.

At times, baseball was therapeutic for Sorensen. When his first wife, Teresa, died in June of 1997, he thought about quitting as a manager. Then, a week after her funeral, he was at home as the Red Sox were playing. He decided to go to the game.

“It was a beautiful evening, so I put on my uniform and went to the game,” he says.”It allowed me to forget for a few minutes. The support of the baseball community meant everything to me. It got me through a tough time. It was so good. I’ll never forget it.”

The Bizarre Champs

Paul Martin grew up on a farm and played high school baseball in Westfield, Iowa. The year after his graduation, he formed a baseball team because he didn’t want to play fast-pitch softball.

Paul Martin.

He had a choice to play in a league in northwest Iowa or join South Dakota’s association. (Akron is just across the Big Sioux River, 18 miles east of Vermillion. Larchwood, Iowa, Wynot, Neb. and Crofton, Neb., are the three other out-of-state teams that play in South Dakota’s association.)

Starting a team from scratch isn’t easy. For several years, Martin, a former catcher, paid expenses himself and recruited players minutes before games.”There were times we had to pull dads out of the crowd to complete a lineup,” he says.”It took about 15 years to get going.”

These days, things are easier. There are plenty of players and Akron has a wonderful field.

The Rebels started in the early 1980s and have had their share of history-making moments.

In a 2008 game vs. Elk Point, they turned two around-the-horn triple plays — from third to second to first — meaning the Rebels had a feat that’s only been accomplished once in thousands of Major League games.

But the Rebels’ defining moment came in 2005, when they won a district title against Larchwood in bizarre fashion to make their first state tournament.

Larchwood was beating the Rebels 13-4 when rain stopped the game. The delay lasted two days because of wet grounds and other conflicts. When the game resumed, the Rebels rallied and won 17-16.

“It was an insane celebration because so many times, we were just one game away from going,” Martin says.”I’ll never forget it. We had a big dog pile of players on the mound.”

Rush of Memories

Fred Obermeier, who grew up raising Black Angus on a ranch near Clark, started a baseball team, too. He didn’t grow up playing baseball, but he loved the sport, and he was umpiring games as a sophomore in high school.

Clark’s Fred Obermeier (in blue) started a team from scratch.

In the spring of 1983, a group of players asked if he’d manage a baseball team, and the Clark Cubs were born.

Eventually, the team’s nickname became the Traders, in honor of Obermeier’s cousin, Chess, who trades corn options on the Chicago Board of Trade and supports the team with checks from the Windy City.”If we need uniforms or anything like that, he always helps,” Obermeier says.

As a manager, Obermeier played only when there weren’t enough players.”I didn’t have any talent,” he says.”I have been in two games and gotten one at-bat. I struck out. But, I love the game.”

There were good and bad times. In 1995, they went winless. In 1985, Claremont beat Clark 9-2 in the Class B title game. That game is stamped in Obermeier’s mind forever.

“I was nervous because I had not been to that level before and I was pretty new,” Obermeier says.”It was nerve-wracking.”

But while managers say the sting of losing big games never goes away, the hurt softens. The runner-up trophy stands on a shelf in Obermeier’s home, a snapshot of what amateur baseball is all about.

“Every time I look at that trophy, it brings back a lot of good memories,” Obermeier says.

Patience is the Key

Jim Wilber, who brokers farm land in Sioux Falls but grew up in Miller working in his dad’s feed and seed business, is in his 15th season as a manager for the Dell Rapids Mudcats, but his resume also includes 15 state tournaments for Miller and Redfield. He was a right-handed pitcher who also played all four infield positions.

Jim Wilber’s Dell Rapids Mudcats share the spotlight with Dell Rapids PBR, but the Mudcats finished on top in 2008.

Wilber’s state title was a long time coming.

The Mudcats beat Wynot for the championship in 2008, something they weren’t sure would ever come. After losing twice to cross-town rival Dell Rapids PBR in the state finals, the Mudcats blew an 11-6 lead in the eighth inning, only to come back and win 15-13.

“The lasting image was a strange combination of relief and euphoria,” Wilber says.”The Mudcats weren’t blessed with the best of luck during the final weekends of previous state tourneys. When Wynot rallied, the mood of our team was, ëHere we go again.”’

Wilber says the passion for baseball is unique:”It is the same in the Pony Hills, James Valley or Corn Belt League. Hometown pride has a lot to do with it. Attendance isn’t great at every home game, but the community keeps track of how their town team is doing. And playing in the state tournament is just plain fun.”

About the Author: Mel Antonen is a Lake Norden native. He is a pre-game co-host for MASN-TV, which covers the Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles, does baseball analysis on Sirius XM radio and writes for SI.com. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Lisa, and son, Emmett.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2013 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Of Birds and Baseball

By Roger Holtzmann

In the spring a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of … baseball! So said my school friend Steve in an oration about green grass and sunshine, about hope in the heart of every fan and the glories of the greatest game of all.

Of all the mysteries of the universe, none is more opaque to me than the workings of my own mind. I can’t remember phone numbers, addresses or names, but I do recall that line from 40 years ago. Why is that?

Perhaps it was the trauma associated with that day. I was in my freshman speech class at St. Mary High School. We were giving our first speeches of the term, which for me was the first speech of my life. Most of my mental effort was assigned to the task of bladder control, yet somehow, through the fog, I heard Steve speak. He used gestures. He didn’t read from his note cards. He spoke naturally. He paused for effect. His voice went up and down.

Sister Patricia rained praise down upon him — she may have called his speech the greatest oration since the Gettysburg Address — then it was my turn. My delivery was robotic, but it was Oscar-worthy compared to the content: five droning minutes on the geography of North Dakota. Where did I get such a ridiculous idea? By the end there were doubtless classmates praying for the sweet release of death. I slunk back to my chair.

Sometime later I happened to come across an old Sports Illustrated, where I found Steve’s speech word for word.

What a coincidence! I presented him with this startling information and he replied,”So what? That’s where I get all my speeches.” Sister Patricia wasn’t a regular reader of Sports Illustrated, apparently, and I was no snitch, so his secret remained a secret. Until now, at least.

I remember the words of Steve’s bit of plagiarism, but the message was utterly lost on me. I don’t get baseball. Never have and probably never will. Baseball has all the drama and excitement of watching one of those long irrigation setups snake across a cornfield: at the end of the day there’s evidence of movement, but most of the time it appears stationary. If it weren’t for the rule that requires players to spit at least 15 times per inning there would be no action at all.

There was a moment in time when I connected with baseball. It was the summer after we moved into our house, and I was digging out the basement by hand. I felt like one of the peasants who built the Great Wall of China. Fill two five-gallon buckets with dirt. Haul them up the stairs. Dump. Return. Repeat four billion times. I’d work for hours every evening, yet the task never seemed any closer to completion. There was always more dirt to move.

For some electromagnetic reason my little portable radio only got one station, which happened to broadcast Minnesota Twins games. I soon discovered a connection between baseball and my work: time seemingly stood still in both.

“Shicklegruber checks the runner at first. Here’s the pitch. Fastball. Fouled off. Count remains 3 and 2. Snottsdork has been hitting .287 in the last 17 games, after hitting .286 in the previous 23. In his career he’s .291 against right-handers and .283 against southpaws.”

“He likes those right-handers.”

“Sure does. He’s had two home runs in those 17 games. Shicklegruber tosses it to first. Finklestein gets back. Snottsdork hit only one homer after the All-Star break last year so he’s ahead of his pace. Both of them, oddly enough, came during games delayed by rain. Against the Sox and Brewers.”

“He likes those rain delays.”

“You bet. Maybe we should pray for rain.”

“Maybe we should.”

“Finklestein takes a step. Shicklegruber winds up. Here’s the pitch. Foul over the visitor’s dugout. Count remains 3 and 2.”

That kind of blather went on through innumerable trips up the steps and down into the depths of statistical hell, yet the count always remained 3 and 2. Nothing could be worse than this, I thought. Then I went to an actual game. There’s nothing like watching nine men spit and scratch themselves for hours on end to make you miss discourses on batting averages for rain-delayed games. Along about the fifth inning or so it occurred to me that baseball might in fact be an elaborate plot to sell beer: if you drink enough the game can be quite interesting.

You may well wonder why I’m bothering to write about baseball when I am so obviously not a fan. Every May, the Sioux Falls Canaries come to Yankton and play an exhibition against the Sioux City Explorers. The two teams played at a cold and blustery Riverside Park on Monday night, with the Explorers winning by the bloated score of 21-11.

Several years ago, the Canaries decided to change their name to the Fighting Pheasants. Don’t get me wrong. I like pheasants. They’re South Dakota’s official state bird, as you may have heard, and we could do a whole lot worse. Take Minnesota, whose citizens inexplicably chose to honor the Common Loon, a creature so goofy looking it proves God has a sense of humor.

Canaries and Cardinals, Orioles and Pheasants, are all fine choices as a team mascot. It was the”fighting” part that seemed a little odd. Certain words just don’t sound right together. To wit: Fleet Footed Sloths, or Battling Bunny Rabbits. This name did not strike fear into opponents’ hearts.

Nor cause a young man’s fancy….

Editor’s Note: This column is revised from the May/June 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. The Fighting Pheasants once again became the Sioux Falls Canaries prior to the 2013 season, and they remain the Canaries today.

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Generosity at the Ballpark

By John Andrews

We attended Saturday afternoon’s session of the South Dakota Amateur Baseball Tournament at Cadwell Park in Mitchell. Not only did we enjoy two fantastic baseball games — Lake Norden topped Wessington Springs 8-3, and Crofton outlasted Corsica-Stickney 3-2 — but we were treated to a lesson in how generous South Dakotans can be when others are in need.

Between games, the Amateur Baseball Association auctioned a bat to benefit the Wessington Springs Tornado Relief Fund. On June 18, a twister with winds topping 125 miles per hour tore through the heart of Wessington Springs, destroying over 40 homes and 10 businesses. No one was killed, but the cleanup and recovery in the Jerauld County town will take months to complete.

The sleek, black bat was particularly special because it was designed by Wessington Springs native Sam Holman and is used by more than 120 Major League Baseball players. The Sam Bat, as it’s known, is made from hard maple and was designed to be a more durable alternative to ash bats. Holman, who lives near Ottawa, Canada, began testing prototypes made from different woods nearly 20 years ago after a scout for the Colorado Rockies lamented that their players were breaking far too many bats made from ash. Holman settled on Rock Maple, one of the hardest woods in the world.

So as players and fans prepared for the second game of the afternoon, local auctioneer Lanning Edwards opened the bidding. Hands went up from all corners of the ballpark, but it was Wessington Springs Owls player Austin Olson who submitted the winning bid of $1,050.

That would have been a tremendous boon to the relief fund, but Olson re-donated the bat for a second auction. Edwards again opened the bidding. This time the bat brought another $1,000. But the winner followed Olson’s lead and returned the bat again. The third auction brought $500, but again the winner told Edwards to keep going. The fourth and final auction collected $400. The Sam Bat went to Kaelynn Culver of Alpena, a graduate of Wessington Springs High School. She told the Mitchell Daily Republic that her best friend lost her house in the Wessington Springs tornado.

Even though the Owls lost their game that afternoon, the citizens of Wessington Springs went home with $2,950 to help rebuild their town. That’s more important than a ball game any day.

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Pitching To Bill Prunty

Editor’s Note: The South Dakota State Amateur Baseball tournament begins Wednesday at Cadwell Park in Mitchell. Perhaps because of baseball’s long history, no other sport seems to have such rich stories and legends. One of the most famous involves Bill Prunty and the home run he hit in the dark to give Claremont the state championship in 1938. But that’s not the only tale about the South Dakota baseball legend. This story is revised from an article former ballplayer Jim Wittenhagen wrote for the July/August 2004 issue of South Dakota Magazine.

By Jim Wittenhagen

Behind every uniform or bat in the South Dakota Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame in Lake Norden, there’s a story. Behind the ball Bill Prunty smacked into the darkening sky over Aberdeen one summer night in 1938, there is a legend.

The state championship game between Aberdeen and Claremont was in extra innings, the score tied 4-4. The field had no lights, and umpire Tommy Collins declared that if nobody scored, the game would be replayed the next day. The count was three balls and two strikes on the Claremont slugger. With the crack of Prunty’s bat, everybody knew the game was over, and Claremont had won. The ball wasn’t found until morning light.

Bill Prunty was known to take less orthodox routes to victory. I grew up in Carthage, where Bill later lived and started summer baseball. I was 11 or 12 and the batboy when Carthage played Ramona to see who would go to the state tournament in Watertown. When I handed Bill the bat, he told me,”If he throws a pitch inside, I’m going to get hit.” The third pitch was inside, and Bill turned sideways and the ball hit his elbow. The hit batsman won the game and we were off to the state tournament.

We played six games at state. I got $2 per game for meals, but Bill paid for them. Then Harvey Grapes hit a home run and was awarded five gallons of ice cream from the old Langenfeld Dairy. With ice cream and all that loot, I was the happiest kid in the state.

A few years later, in the 1950s, I was on a pretty good Legion team, and Bill arranged for us to play his team that had won the state tournament. I was pitching, and Bill was at bat. Of course I wanted to strike him out in the worst way, and I was throwing as hard as I could. I lost control and hurled one right at his head. It appeared to hit his bat, but he collapsed.

I ran to the batter’s box, scared to death I’d hurt him. He looked up at me with his baseball grin and said,”If my wife wasn’t in the stands I would have laid there and kicked my legs a couple of times.”

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Yankton: An Athletic Village

By Bernie Hunhoff

The Cincinnati Reds gained a lot of fans in Brookings and Yankton last week when they smartly drafted Yankton’s hometown hero and SDSU star Layne Somsen in the Major League baseball draft. We might still watch a Twins game or two, but surely Joe Mauer will understand that many of us had hot dogs and popcorn while we watched young Layne strike out batters at Riverside Ball Park.”

And now we’re watching the NBA draft, set for next week, to see what sort of cap we’ll be wearing in the winter because we’re rooting for another local kid — 7-footer Colton Iverson.

One can only imagine the amount of work put forth by Layne and Colton as they reached this stage in their respective athletic careers. And most of the credit goes to them as individuals. But it takes a village to raise an athlete. Their parents and grandparents and siblings, their coaches from T-ball to Division One, teachers and neighbors and anyone else who gave them a cheer or threw them a ball can share in these summer triumphs.

The accomplishments for Layne and Colton are especially sweet because both suffered adversity along the path. Layne had a near-career-ending arm injury, but recovered from Tommy John surgery to lead the South Dakota State Jackrabbits to the NCAA tournament.

Colton started his college career at the University of Minnesota, but it was a frustrating few years with the Gophers. He bravely packed his bags and re-located at Colorado State University, only to become First Team All Conference.

There are no guarantees in life and even fewer in professional sports. Nobody knows what will happen next for these two fine young men. But they are already winners, and all of Yankton can be proud of how they’ve represented Yankton, the little village by the river.

So back to the Reds. Where is Cincinnati? Isn’t that where Johnny Bench played? What is a Red?

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Nobody Yelled ‘Kill the Umpire!’

By Colin Kapitan

An impressive sight on the baseball diamond, umpire Amanda Clement commanded respect from the players.

One of the most fascinating sports figures ever to cross the South Dakota scene … or for that matter, the American scene, was Amanda Clement, a lady baseball umpire at the turn of the 20th century. It was not a time when women were encouraged into sports, so the sensationalist newspapermen of the early 1900s had a field day with her exploits. She became a legend in her own time.

The Amanda Clement story began in Hudson, South Dakota, a small town on the Big Sioux River near the Iowa border. She was born March 20, 1888. Her father died at an early age, leaving her and brother Hank to be raised by their mother, Harriet Clement. Harriet was no softy, having been one of the first female settlers in the town of Eden in Dakota Territory a few years earlier.

The Clement house was next to the Hudson ballpark, and it was natural for the children to spend idle time with a baseball. Amanda was attracted to the game but, because of her gender, was relegated mostly to umpire duty. While she never advanced in ability enough to play first base on the town’s semi-pro team (as some writers reported), Amanda did possess enough skill as not to embarrass herself when a shortage of players forced the boys to let her play.

Amanda, or Mandy as she was called, got her first taste of umpiring for pay at the age of 16. She and her mother had traveled across the Big Sioux River to watch her brother, Hank, pitch for Renville against Hawarden. Two local lodge teams were scheduled for a preliminary game and when the umpire failed to show on time, Mandy was drafted from the crowd. Time for the main event arrived and still there was no umpire. The players had been significantly impressed by Amanda’s work in the first game and begged her to umpire their game — with pay, of course. It took more persuading of mother than daughter, but finally Mrs. Clement relented and allowed Amanda to take to the field. That Renville-Hawarden game of 1904 is the first record of a woman umpiring a baseball game for money.

A couple of interjections seem appropriate at this time so readers might appreciate the magnitude of Amanda Clement’s feats. First, in those days just one umpire was used. He (or she) stood behind the pitcher, not only calling all the balls and strikes but also the plays at all four bases. Second, in the early 1900s there were no radios, no movies, few cars and little entertainment of any type. Baseball was the game of the day. You either played or watched. It was a time when the only thing ERA meant was Earned Run Average.

“She is death on balls and strikes,” one reporter wrote.

Every town and hamlet had a team. Games were played between neighboring towns and spectator interest ran high. From April to October, Saturday and Sunday afternoon was set aside for baseball. As the action heated up and local pride grew, the need arose for better players. Thus was born semi-professionalism. Better players from larger towns like Sioux Falls and Sioux City were hired. Money was needed to pay the players, money was obtained from paying spectators, and thus a good attraction was needed to get more spectators.

Amanda Clement as a baseball umpire was an immediate hit. Not only was she good, but baseball promoters quickly realized that a good looking young lady calling balls and strikes might enhance the paying public. Soon every baseball team in the area was vying for her services. She was billed as the “World Champion Woman Umpire,” a fact that was somewhat true since she was surely the only one.

The next few years found Amanda Clement umpiring throughout the five-state area of North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska in the summer and going to school the remainder of the year. She attended Yankton Academy for two years, Yankton College for two years and graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1909 with a degree in physical education. Baseball earnings paid her way through school. Amanda would work 50 or so baseball games a summer, with fees ranging from $15 to $25. She was the first person contacted to umpire a game of any importance.

Amanda Clement was an impressive sight on the baseball diamond. Standing 5′ 10″ with her full-length blue skirt, black necktie, white blouse with UMPS stenciled across the front and peaked cap, she was described as an “inspiring sight” and ”more than just a pretty face” by local newspapers. “She is death on balls and strikes,” one reporter wrote.

Amanda was dubbed “the heartless arbitrator…”

A no-nonsense Congregationalist, she often lodged with local ministers when working away from home. She refused to umpire on Sundays and once left a game after two innings because a player swore. But that kind of confrontation was rare.

A longtime friend, Janet Mills, recalled that Amanda always marveled at the players’ politeness. Instead of saying “Kill the Umpire” they said, “Beg your pardon, Miss Umpire, but wasn’t that one a bit high?”

Her fame as a baseball umpiress spread far and wide. Newspapermen from the East championed her. She was said to have umpired professional ball, even the big leagues were said to be seeking her. Part of the myth! One writer for the Boston Post claimed in a story that she had turned down over 60 proposals for marriage, received while umpiring baseball games. Amanda was dubbed the “heartless arbitrator” by that writer.

Adding to the Amanda Clement legend was her own athletic ability. At Yankton College, she was the star athlete of her day in such sports as basketball, track and field, and tennis. Various news reports had her setting world records in the shot put, the hurdles and the dashes in addition to being the best tennis player in America. All more of the myth! Amanda was also credited with the world record for a female throwing a baseball — 279 feet. This is fact.

Following graduation from college, Amanda gave up the life of an umpire. Once in awhile she was coaxed out of retirement for a special game of sorts. However, she did not give up her love for athletics. While teaching at Yankton College, the University of Wyoming and Jamestown, N.D., Amanda remained a strong sports supporter. She helped coach, she organized sports teams and she continued to referee high school basketball, something she started while attending Yankton College. Perhaps she was the first lady basketball referee, too!

As Amanda Clement advanced in years, her amazing story didn’t diminish. Following her years in education, Amanda managed YWCAs in LaCrosse, Wis., and Keokuk, Iowa. While living in LaCrosse, she pulled a drowning man from the Mississippi River.

After Amanda returned to Hudson to care for her sick mother in 1929, she still found time to be city assessor, justice of the peace, police matron, drug store clerk and typesetter for the local newspaper. Also, she worked to get a swimming pool built and she coached kids’ teams of all types. Following the death of her mother, Amanda moved to Sioux Falls in 1934. She was involved in social work and welfare until her retirement in 1966.

Amanda Clement never married. Instead, she devoted her live to enriching the lives of others and bringing enjoyment to them. She never lost her love of baseball, and rarely missed a game on the radio or television. Amanda became a follower of the Minnesota Twins, rooting for them and, no doubt, for the umps, until her death in 1971.

Amanda has been recognized in the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N. Y., as well as the Women’s Sports Hall of Fame and the Women’s Sports Foundation in San Francisco. Her exploits were also chronicled in Sports Illustrated. She was inducted into the S.D. Sports Hall of Fame in 1982, only the second female so honored and the first baseball umpire. Children can learn about Clement’s accomplishments in Umpire in a Skirt: The Amanda Clement Story, a book by Yankton author Marilyn Kratz.

Editor’s Note: Author Colin Kapitan is a well-known South Dakota sports official and a veteran freelance sportswriter. This story is revised from the July 1985 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To subscribe, call 800-456-5117.


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Gorillas, Honkers and Beetdiggers

A fierce fiberglass ape welcomes fans to Gregory’s football field.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2001 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.


Unless a small town is blessed with a tornado or some other natural disaster, its residents are pretty much resigned to the fact that they’ll never see their community on the evening news. That’s why high school sports are so important in South Dakota — they’re an opportunity for small towns to get statewide recognition without having to experience death and destruction.

Because towns identify with their teams, the powers who decide such things often look to graceful, powerful animals for mascots. Bears. Bobcats. Golden Eagles. But there are those who take the road less traveled, mascot-wise, and opt for…something else. Which is how the Gregory Gorillas, Turton Frogs, Claremont Honkers, Waverly Woodchucks, Bruce Bees and Provo Rattlers came to be.

Others forego the animal kingdom for dashing role models. Knights. Cavaliers. For those who want a little outlaw in their mascots, however, we have the Sioux Valley Cossacks, Ethan Rustlers and Bristol Pirates. Other communities choose to honor less romantic figures. The Keystone Dynamiters, Armour Packers and Newell Irrigators, for example. Two schools even found inspiration in the sugar beet fields, which yielded the Vale Beetdiggers and Nisland Beettoppers.

Then there are those officials who truly went where no man had gone before, like the ones who settled on the Irene Maroons. (No doubt to the team’s relief, they later became the Cardinals.) Lastly, we salute the too-clever-for-their-own-good group, which would certainly include whoever came up with the Quinn Tuplets.

One South Dakotan, Jerry Miller, has been collecting sports stories for a long time — he started cutting basketball pictures out of the newspaper when he was still in grade school. His list of state schools and their sports team nicknames grew out of that hobby.

One of the more unusual state names belongs to the Sturgis Scoopers, which most people assume has something to do with mining. Not so, according to Miller. Back when nearby Fort Meade was a frontier fort, the soldiers would make their way into town, where they were often relieved of their pay by dance hall girls and card sharks. The local term for those folks was “scoopers” — they scooped the money out of the soldiers’ pockets. Hence the name honoring these previously ignored citizens.

“My favorite is Monroe,” said Miller.”They were the Canaries to begin with. Then just after the turn of the century a lot of Dutch people moved into the area, so they became the Monroe Wooden-Shoed Canaries.”

When ESPN had a program on unusual sports team names, Miller submitted the Monroe mascot to its producer.”They thought I made it up,” laughed Miller.”They wanted to know what I’d been drinking!”

There will be no Wooden-Shoed Canaries in this year’s matches. Monroe’s school is long closed, and for reasons unclear, no other has taken up the name. Likewise, no Beetdiggers or Beettoppers will take the court. Such names will live on only in the memories of”guys as goofy as I am,” laughed Miller.

When longtime Yankton sportswriter Hod Nielsen wrote a column about Miller and the sports team names he’d collected, it prompted a tongue-in-cheek follow-up story about new and improved names.

How about an athletic team known as the Allen Wrenches? Who would want to meet the Blunt Instruments on a football field? Could any athlete hold his head high if he was a member of the Custer Puddings or Lemmon Aides? Imagine the time announcers would have if the Florence Nightingales, Garretson Keillors, Gregory Pecks and Clark Kents were thrown together for a tournament.

What about the Irene Good Knights? Marion Ettes? Wall Papers? Emery Boards? Faith Healers? Last but not least, can you imagine having to face the Webster Dictionaries on the field of athletic battle? Consternation would almost certainly ensue if they prevailed.

“We hasten to assure anyone who might take offence that there is none intended,” said Nielsen of his efforts.”It’s just that, in the middle of a cold winter, the mind wanders.”

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Keeping Time

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2011 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.


Guidance from a legendary wrestling coach helped turn Daktronics into the world’s leading scoreboard builder.

Al Kurtenbach and Duane Sander were electrical engineering teachers at SDSU when they founded Daktronics in 1968 as a medical device manufacturer. They built other projects, like an electronic voting system for state legislatures, but the fate of the business was sealed when Kurtenbach met Warren Williamson for coffee.

Williamson, an SDSU coach, was involved with college wrestling nationally. He told Kurtenbach the scoreboards used for national tournaments were too big and didn’t display pertinent information. Kurtenbach and Sander developed a prototype and used it during a meet at SDSU in 1970. Other coaches liked it so they built 17, and with help from Williamson the new boards were used in the national wrestling tournaments that year.

Those were the first of thousands of scoreboards the Brookings company has built over 40 years. As of 2011, Daktronics had equipment in 26 of 30 Major League Baseball parks, 29 of 31 NFL stadiums and 20 of 29 NBA arenas. Early scoreboards used simple incandescent lamps, but today’s huge, colorful boards are illuminated by thousands of tiny light emitting diodes, or LEDs. They convert energy to light more efficiently and don’t have a filament, so instead of burning out they gradually grow dimmer.

Much of Daktronics’ business is sports related, but the company also designs computer software, billboards and the signs along South Dakota interstates displaying road conditions and Amber Alerts.

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Baum’s Aberdeen Oz Was a Baseball Diamond

By Bernie Hunhoff

Editor’s Note: Some of the material in this story came from the Spring 2000 South Dakota History article”Wizard Behind the Plate: L. Frank Baum, the Hub City Nine, and Baseball on the Prairie” by Michael Patrick Hearn. This story is revised from its original appearance in the May/June 2001 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

Beside the immigrant drawn by free homestead land, the other”typical” settler on the Dakota frontier of 1888 was young, restless and looking to escape the maddening crowd back east. Lyman Frank Baum was the second type.

Baum found room to breathe in Aberdeen. He opened Baum’s Bazaar, and stocked it with the non-essentials of life: fancy goods, sporting equipment, toys and amateur photography supplies, among other novelties. With creative advertisements that hinted at his hitherto hidden literary talent, he pulled his customers in:

At Baum’s Bazaar you’ll find by far
The finest goods in town
The cheapest, too, as you’ll find true
If you’ll just step around

Baum believed Aberdeen would embrace such a business, for it was no one-horse prairie pothole. The Hub City was progressive — there were 20 hotels, a library, four restaurants and a half-dozen newspapers in town. Electric light service and telephones were available. With the addition of Baum’s store, Aberdeen had everything a civilized town might want or need.

Except a baseball team. An ardent”crank,” as baseball fans were then known, Baum felt the lack keenly. Less than a year after he arrived in Aberdeen, L. Frank Baum helped bring a group of local businessmen together to field a team. They were so impressed with his enthusiasm and ideas they made him secretary, responsible for the club’s day-to-day affairs. A subscription of 300 shares sold out quickly, and the Hub City Nine were on their way.

Baum’s Bazaar supplied uniforms and other equipment for the team. Players earned $50 a month plus room and board, and as a further incentive, one of the owners offered a box of cigars to the first man who hit the ball over the center field fence. After playing the likes of Groton, Redfield and Claremont, Baum managed to lure the St. Paul Indians to town for what promised to be the game of the season. The Milwaukee railroad ran three extra trains to bring fans to town. Admission was raised from 25 to 50 cents, but after some grumbling, the fans came anyway.

There was heavy rain the night before, but game day dawned bright and sunny. After playing the powerful Indians tight in the morning, losing only 2-1, the locals were thumped 17-3 in the afternoon. It hardly mattered.”(The contests) gave the public an opportunity to see what good ball playing is,” observed the Aberdeen Daily News philosophically, and just as importantly, the big gate had replenished the team’s treasury. Baseball’s future in Aberdeen seemed assured.

Hub City baseball booster L. Frank Baum.

There was only one fly in the ointment that glorious summer. At some of the games,”there was fully one-half as many people perched on the fence and on buildings and elevations surrounding as there were within the enclosure,” grumbled the Daily News. That was robbing the team of needed revenue, and while the paper implored fans to cease this”most detestable practice” in general, it took particular aim at Lester J. Ives, who owned a house near the new baseball park. It seems the enterprising Mr. Ives was selling seats on his roof for ten cents, so people could watch the games.

“The antics of this individual…have thoroughly disgusted the people without exception,” fumed the editor.”He is evidently a baseball crank — but of the hog species — without shame or self-respect.”

To counter Ives and his cheap seat”hoodlums” the ball club erected a high latticework on top of the existing fence, to obscure their view. Lester responded by putting high chairs on the ridge of the roof, which forced the management to string canvas atop the lattice. At one point the dispute got so intense that team manager Henry Marple ran a hose from the railroad roundhouse and threatened to turn it on the people engaged in their”sneaking game of looking over the fence. (If) the powerful stream [should] knock Ives & Co. from the rooftops and result in their death, over thirty of the stockholders, all business men, have guaranteed the management to stand by them and pay funeral expenses if required.”

Cooler heads, including Baum’s, prevailed before it came to that.”Mr. Ives is not so black as he has been painted,” Baum wrote following a blistering attack in the newspaper, and the whole affair was eventually settled amicably.

At least some of the displaced rooftop fans, presumably, made their way back as regular, paying customers, but not enough of them. Though the Hub City Nine was an unqualified success on the field — they reigned as the unofficial champions of North and South Dakota after defeating the best teams in both states — the club lost $1,000 that year despite the team secretary’s unstinting effort.”If we have a baseball team next year,” a disillusioned Baum said after the season,”I am of the opinion that someone else will have to do the work.”

Sadly, L. Frank Baum’s novelty store fared no better. After barely more than a year in business, it was given over to his creditors. Baum termed this a”temporary embarrassment,” but it was also fortuitous in that it turned him closer toward his true calling. He bought a newspaper, renamed it the Saturday Pioneer, and was on his way. Aberdeen liked his lively writing style, but Baum’s career as a newspaper owner was all too brief: the Pioneer died shortly after its first birthday. Health problems, coupled with the stress and worry of being a business owner, caused him to move on once again. Baum took a newspaper job in Chicago, and Aberdeen’s soon-to-be-famous crank never returned.