Townball: Uniquely Minnesota

[Seth Stohs]

FSN is showing a series this summer called Townball: Uniquely Minnesota. I watched the first episode and it was fantastic. 

 

Maybe it's just cuz I'm a Cobber (Concordia Moorhead) from Perham, but I thought it was fantastic. Many of the people interviewed on the show were either Cobbers of Yellowjackets (Chris Coste, Matt Bergstrom, Beau Wilmer, Bucky Burgau, the Stigman family)... and I remember playing townball at many of those fields shown.

 

So I thought I would start a Forum thread on Townball. Here we can talk about two things:

 

1.) The FSN series episodes, and

2.) Your history with townball,teams played for, etc. 

 

 

Here is my playing town ball history:

 

Age 12-13, I played for a 35 and Older team in the old Countryside League. My dad did some catching. I batted third and played shortstop most weeks. 

 

14-16: I played for the Corliss Wildcats. We played in the state tournament in 1990. I was 15 and played third base. Loved this team. It was a country ballpark about 7 miles outside of Perham. It was in a cornfield. Literally. There was a snow fence in the outfield and then chain link around the rest. Dirt/gravel infield... but it was fun. A bunch of my friends played there too. 

 

1991-1997 - I played for the Perham Pirates. Last 2+ years of high school, college summers and one year after I moved up to Warroad, but it was just too much travel every weekend and I couldn't get to week night game. It was fun. A lot more serious. College guys from the various teams. We basically got families at games, except on the 4th of July. We had a huge fireworks display after our annual game against Wolf Lake, and there would be 1500-2000 people there. It was awesome. We hosted the state tournament in 1995, which was fun to be a part of. Would have been great if we would he played in it. But we played in the 1996 and 1997 tournaments. That was so fun. That 1996 teams made it to the final weekend. I remember that I batted 9th on that team and hit over .400. Really was fun. 

 

And I haven't played since... It should be incredibly pure. It should be the most fun experience. But it can also be highly political and I saw a lot of that too, which is too bad.

 

Anyway, share your townball stories and experiences, or discuss your thoughts on the FSN show as well. Hopefully this can be a fun discussion. 

 

[Sarah]

I watched the first episode and thought it was well done too - I liked their page on Facebook so hopefully that will alert me to future episodes. Also for anyone interested in town ball, the book "Town Ball Parks of Minnesota" by Todd Mueller is a great read. So many fun places to visit!