by Tesha M. Wiedemann
Playing ball has been a favorite pastime in Isanti County for decades, not just because men and women like the sport itself, but because of the “connections and stories that you take with you,” remarked Tom Koplitz, former Cambridge-Isanti Redbirds manager. “It’s not the strikeouts and home runs. It’s the people that keep it alive.”
Koplitz is passionate about town team baseball. He grew up attending games with his father, who grew up attending games with his father. Koplitz’s grandfather attended 40 consecutive state tournaments, earning the distinction in the Minnesota Hall of Fame as Minnesota Baseball’s Greatest Fan. His father attended close to 30 consecutive games. “From as far back as I can remember, I watched town team baseball and wanted to play town team baseball,” Koplitz said.
Koplitz remembers attending state tournaments that lasted two straight weeks. They are now played on three consecutive weekends.
Redbirds
Koplitz, like many town team baseball players, played college baseball while attending Augsburg University. In the 70s, he played town team ball in Savage, Minn., a team which at that time was the second best team in the state, he remembers. The best team was Prior Lake. After living for a few years in New York, Koplitz moved back to Minnesota, to Cambridge.
He noticed an ad in the Community Education bulletin advertising for ball players. The contact person was Jeff Anlauf at the Union 76 station in Cambridge. Koplitz, who didn’t know anyone in Cambridge, decided to stop by for more information. “At that time, I had long hair and a beard,” he remembers. “Jeff said, ‘you can play for me if you get your hair cut’.” So began a friendship that still lasts today. Koplitz joined the Redbirds team (at that time the Cambridge Redbirds), and played from 1976 to 1991, managing the team from mid-1981 to 1989. Anlauf managed the team from 1976 to 1981, and played until 1991. “It’s not uncommon for people in town team baseball to play for 20 years or more,” noted Koplitz.
The Redbirds are in the Eastern Minny League, which is listed in the amateur baseball archives as the original league in Minnesota and the oldest continuously running league. And the Redbirds, a team since the 1920s, are one of the oldest teams in the league. Other early Eastern Minny teams were Grandy, Mora, Princeton, Rush City, Ogilvie, Braham, Isanti and Hinckley.
The Redbirds won the Eastern Minny championship in 1926, 1927 and 1938, but didn’t play another state tournament game until 1982. Since then, they’ve played at the state tourney in 1985 and 1991.
In the 20s, Cambridge was known as one of the best baseball towns in the state, according to local historians Marilyn McGriff and Vernon E. Bergstrom. From there, the team declined and finally folded in the early 70s. Jeff Anlauf resurrected the team in 1976, but it still struggled due to a lack of players. “We were always looking to neighboring communities to find players,” stated Koplitz. However, the players could live no further than 15 miles from the ball field, which at that time was the field at the corner of Fern and Fifth Street in Cambridge (now called the Adolph Larson Field). “Between 1976 and 198l it was absolutely terrible. We were also forfeiting games and scraping for players,” Koplitz said.
The most players the team ever had was 16, and usually lingered around 12. “There were times when we had to carry injured players onto the field [in order to maintain the required nine players],” Anlauf noted.
The team began to improve, however, and in 1982 won the region tournament and made it to the state tournament. What should have been a highlight in the lives of Redbird players turned into a disaster. Three of the Redbird players, Dick Humphrey, Mark Solberg and Lowell Schweigert were also Cambridge High School football coaches. The annual CHS versus Anoka, Brainard and Cretin scrimmage was scheduled for the same morning as the Redbird state tournament game, Koplitz recalls. Here the team was at the pinnacle of amateur baseball in Cambridge, the Redbirds Fan Club had packed the stands, and the team was short its catcher (Humphrey), its left fielder (Solberg) and its short-stop (Schweigert). However, because of the practice of drafting three players from other teams for the state tourney, the Redbirds were able to avoid forfeiting. “The football coaches ran from the car to the field,” Koplitz recalls, but it was too late. The Redbirds were smoked by Jordan, one of the top teams in the state for 75 years.
“1985 was the greatest year in Redbird history,” Koplitz commented. This time, the night before the state tournament the entire team stayed at team member Ken Bergwald’s parent’s home in Red Wing and practiced. The next day, they played the number one team in the state, Waseca, and beat them 3-2 in the opening round. “We beat them by playing a better game. Jeff pitched the whole game – his best pitching ever. We had a flawless defense, and timely hitting. That’s how you win baseball games,” Koplitz said. The team lost its second round game to Harmel, 7-3.
The 1985 Redbird team included Jeff Anlauf, Jim Amsden, Brian Hogie, Lowell Schweigert, Joe Hanzlik (of St. Francis), Karl Johnson (of Forest Lake), Lyle Erickson, Mark Colbaugh, Ken Bergwall, Steve Olson, Todd Burnquist, Tom Koplitz, Dick Humphrey, Kevin Dahl, Kurt Koester, Tyler Treichel, DuWayne Dahl (of Rush City) and Barry Thomas.
“We were a good team for about 10 years,” Anlauf said. The team practiced a couple times a week and played 45-50 games a season, typically a single on a week night and a double header on the weekend.
The Rush City Eagles were the arch rivals of the Redbirds between the late 70s and the early 80s. Koplitz remembers that the teams would often beat the other in order to advance to the state tournament. In the early 80s, Rush City drafted three of the Redbird players for their state tournament game. “They got to the state quarter finals on the strength of the Redbirds,” Koplitz said. In the Redbirds 1982 bid for the state tournament championship, they drafted Rush City catcher Larry Schlagel. Another Rush City catcher, Andy Solaka, was legendary, Koplitz remembers.
One of the games which sticks out most in Jeff Anlauf’s memories is a game against Rush City which lasted 16 innings. “I pitched the whole 16 innings,” Anlauf said. “We were 15-12 in the top of the 16th, but ended up losing 15-16.”
Another of Anlauf’s fondest memories is holding Jim Eisenreich to a double at bat at a game in St. Cloud. Most of Eisenreich’s hits were home runs, he explained. Eisenreich was a major league baseball player who was playing in the amateur league for awhile before his terrets syndrome was properly diagnosed and controlled. He went on to play professionally for the Minnesota Twins and the Kansas City Royals; he finished his career playing with the Florida Marlins when they won the World Series.
The Redbirds have gone from being the town team of Cambridge, to both Cambridge and Isanti, to most recently, just Isanti. Koplitz still mourns the fact that the Redbirds moved from Cambridge. But when the Redbirds’ request for lights on the field was denied, the Redbirds moved to Isanti, building a premier field there. A year later, lights were installed on the Cambridge field. Anlauf, Kurt Koester, Dick Humphrey, Ken Halvorson and Clancy Lebeau were instrumental in building the new field in Isanti, which is one of the best in the state.
Most recently the Redbird team has again had trouble finding players, and was defunct in 2000. It lived again in 2001, though, with Steve Allen as manager.
Adolph Larson
One of the most legendary players ever to play Redbird fastpitch is Adolph Larson. Although Larson passed away in 1999, his fast-pitch is still remembered. At that time, the Redbirds played at the fairgrounds in Cambridge, which were located where Econofoods is now. Larson managed and played for the Redbirds for over 18 years, and still offered his advice for Anlauf and Koplitz during their management of the team.
When the Redbirds achieved the status of Eastern Minny League champs in 1938, Larson was manager of the team, Rube Olson was promoter and Rube Chell was coach. The teamsrooster included: “Popeye” Fjeldheim, Narum Moody, Baldy Nelson, Dean Loren, Earl Hetrick, Bugs Bergwald, Rus Wallberg, Nig Triechel, Doug Morell, Archie Bergstrom, Ralph Southerland, Pinky Dahlin, Ken Belknap, Don Sundberg and Morrie Holm.
Larson also played for and was secretary-treasurer for the Grandy Indians. In fact, whenever a team around the state needed a pitcher, they called up Larson. There were six trains a day passing through Cambridge at that time, and Larson would board one to travel to the cities to pitch, notes his daughter Suzie (Larson) Walters. At one point, Larson left the area to play minor league ball in Missouri. He was brought back by a letter which Grandy postmaster Lilian was elected to write. “We will all be looking for you and we feel that once you get back in the line-up, no one can stop the Grandy Indians,” she wrote in May of 1934. “It looks like a good baseball season for Grandy. Strong line-up, good league, and good support. We’re all pretty much excited about our baseball here at Grandy and we don’t like to see our Indians going into battle without ‘Big Brave’ Larson, so the players and fans have chipped together to raise money to get you back here again.” In 1935, Adolph was paid $15 a game. Frank Fust, a catcher, was paid $13.
At one point Grandy pitcher Ole Ledin was lured away to pitch for Cambridge. The North Star headline read, “Ole Ledin to oppose Larson here Sunday.” Next week’s headline read, “Ledin hurls an 8-2 victory.” The article, written by sports writer John Kerr, began, “It was a great battle between these two chucklers, but it was Ledin’s day.” A few weeks later, Larson and Ledin were again pitted against each other in a “much ballyhoed” game, but this time it was Larson who held Cambridge scoreless for three innings.
Roy Eliason
Roy Eliason, age 97, was also a hired pitcher for the Eastern Minny League. He pitched for Cambridge occasionally. “Cambridge had a lot of good ball players,” Eliason recalls. “Rube Chell was one of the best pitchers.” Eliason remembers playing on the Cambridge team against the House of David, “America’s greatest travelling baseball show.” All the House of David players had long hair. One player “caught the ball in his hind pocket,” Eliason commented. “That man could do anything with a baseball.”
Just prior to the formation of the Eastern Minny League, Eliason hurled for Braham. In the 1920s, Eliason pitched the world’s longest home run. According to local historian Marilyn McGriff’s book “Isanti County Collage”, Eliason was pitching for Braham against Ogilvie. “Roy explains it this way,” McGriff wrote. “‘The ballpark was where the Super Valu is, along the railroad tracks. And Ben Hanson was the guy who hit the ball. He played first base for Ogilvie. He hit a two-bagger and it bounced on the hard ground and then right into a boxcar. And the train was going north – to Duluth.’ The rest is history…” In one game, Eliason remembers striking out 29 men. “You’re working hard then,” he said.
Dalbo snatched Eliason away from the Braham team in 1925 with the promise of higher pay: $25 a game plus $1.50 for each strike-out. The Dalbo team was managed by Reuben Bloomgren. McGriff writes about one game Eliason pitched for Dalbo against a St. Paul team who called the Dalbo players “hayseeds”. The St. Paul team, which included former Dalbo player Alphy Hedien, had won 17 straight games, but Eliason struck out 18 men, and Dalbo won the game.
While pitching semi-pro ball in North Dakota in the mid-1920s, Eliason earned $75 a game. But, after he threw his arm out and couldn’t pitch anymore, he returned to Isanti County. Mora drafted Eliason for their 1927 state championship game as a batter, and according to McGriff, he helped win the 10-inning game against St. James with a final score of 1-0.
Eliason’s last baseball game was played in 1971. He tore his achilles heal while playing an Old Timer’s League game, and that was the end of his long career. But he still loves to talk about baseball, and in 1994 he threw the first ball in Princeton for the first playoff game of the Eastern Minny League championship.
Other contemporaries of Eliason were Victor Larson, Les Anderson, Oscar Johnson, Charley Krona (known as “Big Windy”), Fritz Nehring, Paul Studt, Wilfred Stake, Sterling Lund, Marvin Bloom, Ole Londin, Clarence Stoneburg, Herb Bunker, Orville Tobeck, Andy Fortin, Ken Peterson, Ferdy Berg, and Joe Lindgren. At that time, every town around had a baseball team: Spring Lake, Elm Park, Walbo, Dalbo, Braham, Zimmerman, Dale, Weber, Athens, Pine Brook, Maple Ridge, Cambridge, Isanti, Wyanett, Karmel, Crown and Nowthen. The teams were defunct during World War 2, and many did not regroup following the war.
Also, many baseball teams were replaced by softball teams.
Isanti teams
Seventy-nine year old Marv Bartz of Isanti played baseball and softball in Cambridge and Isanti practically every day of the week during his heyday. Adolph Larson was his mother’s cousin and he knew him well. “He was good,” Bartz stated. “He played baseball to win. He was fun to play for.” Bartz also managed the Cambridge Redbirds team for a couple years in the 50s. “We didn’t win any championships, but we had fun,” Bartz said. “We came out of the service and didn’t have any money. We made our entertainment. We enjoyed baseball.” Bartz played third base.
Isanti had two softball teams, the Blues and the Greens. Bartz played on the Blues. There was a “good rivalry” between the two teams, he remembers. “Although one team wasn’t better than the other, we figured we were, but we argued more on the tavern than in the field,” he said with a laugh. The ball park then was just north of Main Street (near the current Isanti Community Center) and drew big crowds for the twice-weekly games. “[The crowd] was four/five people deep watching the ball game,” Bartz said. Donations from businesses provided money for uniforms. Bartz stopped playing in the early 60s.
Dean Boetcher also played for Isanti. He began playing town team ball in the late 1950s, first starting on the North Branch team then switching to Isanti’s Bob’s Tavern team. Boetcher has played baseball, slow-pitch softball and fast-pitch softball over the years. He remembers Bill Mobieck, number one pitcher for Harris in the 60s and 70s. Mobieck and Isanti pitcher Gordy Mindrup used to “battle a lot”.
Boetcher also remembers playing exhibition games against Eddie Feigner, a world-wide pitcher originally from a southern state. “He used to play any team that would play him. He had a four-man team: first base, pitcher, a man halfway between left field and infield, and a man in right field,” he said. “They’d take on anybody. Fiegner would pitch from second base. He’d pitch blindfolded.”
Boetcher still plays softball; he’s a member of the Old-Timers league in Cambridge.
Major league player
The area has produced one major league player: George “Rube” Walberg of Greeley (east of Braham). Walberg won national renown in 1929 when the Philidelphia Athletics won the World Series four games to one. According to “Braham Minnesota – 100 Years” compiled by Phyllis Londgren, “On Oct. 17, 1929, there was a front page article in the Braham Journal telling about how all of Braham and the surrounding area were glued to their radios to listen intently as Rube Walberg pitched for the Philadelphia Athletics in the fifth game of the World Series… Great credit [for the win] was given Rube by both Connie Mack, manager of the Athletics, and Joe McCarthy, manager of the Chisago Cubs. When Walberg relieved Ehmke in the fifth inning, Mack said, ‘Walberg never faltered but mowed the Cubs down like a reaper cutting ripe wheat. He allowed but two hits and made the win possible and struck out some of the Chisago starts like Hornsby with apparent ease.’”
Walberg was the son of Mrs. Anna Amrin of Greeley and the uncle of Braham’s Stan Walberg, who played on the Braham Pirates team in the 50s and 60s. S. Walberg was a member of the Pirates team which won the region championship in 1955 and took home the state championship in 1957 and 1963.
Braham Pirates
According to Londgren, the headline in Dana Marshall’s sports column in the September 19, 1957 Braham Journal read, “In succession, Verndale, Morris, Pipestone, Norwood bow to Braham.” Marshall wrote, “Braham scored their greatest baseball triumph last Sunday afternoon at Cold Springs as they defeated Norwood 3-1 for the Class B State Championship. The Braham Pirates thus became the first team from Region 1B and the Eastern Minny League to cop the state title.”
The 1957 Braham Pirates team included bat boy Robert Kelly, Virgil Johnson, Carl Hellzen, George Eng, Byron Holje, Swede Swenson, Don Holmquist, Harold Forsberg, Manager Art Johnson, Stanley Walberg, Ron Servin, Robert Winfield, Lyle Mortenson, Charles Erbstoesser, Sheldon Nascene, Rob Westerlund, Dave Ellens, Fred Brandt, Rich Hellzen, Vern Wahlstrom, Harold Werts, and Lenny Reese.
“We really had a pitching staff in 1957,” Harold Fosberg remembers. “Robert Westerlund was as good a pitcher as there ever was.” Braham also drafted two Hinckley pitchers (Lyle Mortenson and Fred Brandt) and a Rush City pitcher, (Virgil Johnson) for the state tournament.
Personally, for Sheldon Nascene the Pipestone championship game was a great one. He wasn’t the most outstanding hitter, but “I got two of three hits.”
In 1963, the Braham Pirates again won the state championship title, and the mythical state crown by beating both the Minnesota Class A champs and the Wisconsin Class B champs. According to the Sept. 19, 1963 Braham Journal article by Floyd Stroud, “The ‘never-say-die’ Braham Pirates (Class B State Champs) continued their championship march with an 8-7 win over the A. & B. Sporting Goods team from Minneapolis who were the Class A champions of 1963. The game which was played at Braham on Thursday night, Sept. 12, was played before a crowd of 606 fans and in weather much more fitted for hockey than baseball. The Pirates, in spite of the cold weather, made it too hot for the Berman (Sporting Goods) lads. Last Sunday, the Pirates engaged the Cushing (Wisconsin) team in a mythical interstate championship game, but after 10 innings of fine baseball, the game was called due to rain with the score tied at 3-3. The game was rescheduled for Tuesday night, but due to rain and wet grounds, the game was again postponed and rescheduled a second time. It will be played at Braham on Sunday, Sept. 22.”
“After being postponed twice, it was finally played on the set date in Braham,” wrote Londgren. “Braham edged the Cushing team and won 1-0. Cushing was the Class B champs of the Badger State. So you can say that Braham actually won a mythical ‘triple crown’ in 1963.”
“[The 1963 state championship] was the highlight of my life, it really was,” Nascene, who now lives in Pine City, stated. His boss didn’t expect the Pirates to get far, Nascene recalls, and told Nascene he could have the days off for the tournament. “We just kept winning and winning,” Nascene said, and his boss kept giving him days off. Nascene had suffered a broken finger all season, but played so well at state that many people told him he should have been named Most Valuable Player.
1963 marked Nascene’s last season. Four children and a job that demanded travelling throughout the state didn’t leave time for the game he had started playing in 1951 when he was 15 years old. Yet he still remembers fondly that exciting time in his life when he would bundle up his four kids to travel to games all over the state. In 1963, his son Kevin Nascene was bat boy.
Nascene recalled one game in Mora during which the pitcher, a 6” 5’ man, put a baseball in Harold Fosberg’s ear and mouth. “Blood was squirting out,” he said. “I was the next batter. I struck out quick. It was scary.”
The Braham Pirates typically played two games a week and practiced a couple times a week. “It took a lot of time,” Fosberg stated. Their home field is now used by the Braham Area High School baseball team. Fosberg played for the Pirates from 1947 to 1958.
Fosberg remembers a game against Pine City in the 1950s. It was a league championship game. Braham was down 0-9 in the bottom of the ninth inning, but came back to make 10 runs to end the game. “People always remember that game,” Fosberg said. “They still talk about it around here in Braham.”
When the Pirates played Hinckley in 1957 at home there was quite a crowd. “I doubt there’s ever been a crowd at an athletic event that matched that one. The stands were full. People were lined up from the right field corner to the left field corner,” he stated. “There was a lot of interest in baseball in those days.”
The Pirates disbanded in the 1970s.
According to McGriff, “For the past 20 years baseball has been declining in Isanti County… The ‘grand old game’ has been replaced by its offspring, softball.” According to Duke Weisbrod of the Cambridge -Isanti Softball Association, slow-pitch men and women’s softball teams were formed in Isanti County in 1973. In 1989, the Cambridge-Isanti Softball Association was formed and in 1990 the softball complex next to the Isanti County Fairgrounds was built.
Recent softball championships
Braham players dominated slow-pitch softball in Isanti County from 1978 to 1984. The Braham Chalet Gold were state runner-ups in 1978. According to Bergstrom, “During the Gold’s heyday, Rick Nystrom of Braham was the county’s most outstanding player.”
The Cambridge Legion Auxiliary won District 6 championships in 1984 and 1986. “We were the only team in Isanti County to play Class A ball,” remarks team member Laurie Solle.
“The first time we went to districts we played six games in a row on a Sunday to win,” she said. That same year during the state championships, Solle hit a home run. “I wasn’t a good hitter, so that was a huge thrill for me.”
Although the team had a number of sponsors (and therefore different team names) between 1979 and 1997, core members were Solle, Karen Anderson, Shelley Benting, Debbie Hegquist, Lori Walberg, Joan Burke, Steph Carlson and Marsha Ledin (decendent of legendary baseball pitcher Ole Ledin). The women were and still are close friends. “We enjoyed our time together,” Solle said. “That’s what I think made us so good. We were also really dedicated.” The team practiced every Monday, played a game every Wednesday, and attended a tournament every other weekend. In 1997, the women named above made the decision to retire together.
In 1988, the women’s team Chappy’s won the District 6 championship, and in 1998 the Jailbirds garned both district and state championship titles. Isanti County men’s softball teams have also earned district titles, T ‘n T in 1986 and Lee’s Pro Shop in 1989.
Softball lagged in the early 90s but has picked up again in the past few years, according to Weisbrod. There are now 70 teams in the county with a dozen church teams. However, only one Eastern Minny baseball team remains: the Redbirds.
The tradition will go on
Tom Koplitz hopes to play with the Redbirds again. “I played town team baseball for five decades. I hope to make it six,” he said. “I’m sure my son Michael will play for the Redbirds after he graduates [from Cambridge-Isanti High School]. It’d be special to play with my son.
“I’d like to play one more inning.”
* This article appeared in the Isanti County Traveler published by the STAR newspaper.
