SPORTS TIME MACHINE

In the early 1950s, every golfer had a chance to beat Ben Hogan

Rob Beer — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 14:55:00 GMT

Seventy-five years ago, amateur golfers would have wished for a chance to play golf with Ben Hogan. That doesn’t mean in 1952 they couldn’t beat him.

Hogan, one of the best players in history, helped sponsor “Ben Hogan Day” along with Life Magazine as part of National Golf Day on May 31 that year.

For a dollar, they could match scorecards against Hogan, the two-time defending U.S. Open champion. Hogan would be playing the Northwood Club in Dallas, the site of the upcoming 1952 U.S. Open, while golfers from around the country would be playing their private or municipal courses.

But there’s a catch.

Amateur players would be able to use their golf handicap to adjust their final score. Those with established handicaps would subtract that number from their 18-hole total. For those who didn’t have handicaps, the Callaway system was used.

Using Callaway, a golfer shooting 75 or less would get no deduction. A score of 76-80 would allow for the worst hole to be subtracted, while those shooting 81-85 would be able to take off their worst hole plus half of the next worst hole score rounded up.

Golfers who shot lower or netted a better score than Hogan would receive medals saying, “I beat Ben Hogan.”

Proceeds from the $1 entry were split between the United Defense Fund and the National Golf Fund. U.S. military stationed around the world were eligible to enter, too.

The May 29, 1952 edition of the Fargo Forum previews "Beat Ben Hogan Day." Newspapers.com. Click on image for link to original story.

“The one golfer I have the greatest respect for is the weekend golfer,” Hogan said. “He is a man who shoots in the 80s, 90s and 100s, but is always in there trying, whenever he can spare the time.”

It proved to be a popular event in the Upper Midwest. Women were encouraged to play too — albeit the following day — and use their full handicap plus an additional five strokes.

The flat-cap wearing Hogan expected to beat about one-third of the field.

For the event, Hogan toured the 6,811-yard Northwood Club in 71, the course par. With temperatures in the high 80s, the champion golfer played in three hours with 1,500 fans following him around the course.

How many would win medals?

Nearly 44,000 players out of approximately 300,000 entrants across the country netted a better score.

Ten golfers in Fargo-Moorhead beat Hogan, the Fargo Forum reported. In the Twin Cities, 86 players beat Hogan, according to the Minneapolis Tribune. In Duluth, nine players had winning scores and three won in Albert Lea, the Albert Lea Tribune said.

Five-handicapper Jim Werre shot a 70 for a 65 net at Fargo Country Club. The lone female winner in Fargo-Moorhead was Nonie Haefer, whose 68 net at Edgewood was plenty to defeat Hogan.

Other F-M winners were Leo Kossick Sr. 77 (66), John Wooledge 72 (67), S.M. Houkom 90 (67), Marvin Doherty 81 (67), Onward Berget 87 (68), Bill Swanston Jr. 77 (69) and Manny Marget 105 (69).

In Duluth, John Berglund of Ridgeview Country Club had a 97 with his 30 handicap for a 67. Also at Ridgeview, West Neustle had a 69, Bill Schuster 70, Bob Magie Jr. 69, Bert Payne 69, Earl Mitchell 68, Charlie Bell 68 and Jack Irvin 68.

At Northland Country Club, Davis Bradley had a 70, the only golfer of 32 at the course to beat Hogan’s score.

The Minneapolis Tribune said 16 metro-area courses reported scores for 1,059 total entrants. Peggy Dulleck was the only woman to beat Hogan, scoring a 66 net after subtracting her handicap from her 108 total.

Even Joe Coria, who would win the Minnesota State Open for a seventh time later in 1952, earned a medal with a 67 gross. Bill Waryan, the 1950 (and later 1957) state open winner, had a 69 gross.

In 1953, Julius Boros, the winner of the 1952 U.S. Open, challenged all golfers to beat him in a similar event. When Hogan won the open again in 1953, the third and final event took place. He shot a 64, making it a difficult score to beat.

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As newspapers preserve their history, how are you preserving yours?

Rob Beer — Thu, 29 May 2025 15:05:00 GMT

After several months of writing the “Sports Time Machine,” it’s been incredible to turn through the archives of our company newspapers with the ease of a mouse click.

Forum Communications has dedicated itself to preserving its newspapers, some going all the way back to the late 1800s with our first microfilm rolls. And yes, you can have access too through Newspapers.com.

There’s a magnet on my family’s refrigerator that I bought at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., years ago. It reads: “Journalism is the first rough draft of history,” a quote by Philip Graham, the former publisher of The Washington Post. Graham was born in Terry, South Dakota, and was the husband of Katharine Graham, who eventually took over the paper and was influential during its Watergate reporting.

Newspapers and other media are the world’s thread to its past. The internet just needed to catch up.

We no longer have to load and listen to the whirling spindles of microfilm in the office or a library; the ability to search our archives is an amazing accomplishment.

Anyone searching our newspapers — more and more titles are being added monthly — will notice a trend. More photographs. Early newspapers were most likely to use some kind of sketch for illustration. Cartoons were popular too.

As newspaper photography increased, so did the size of the photos. Larger photographs became the norm in the 1980s. Color photographs began to appear more frequently in the 1990s, along with a plethora of photo illustrations and graphics.

Those of us in our 50s or older have lived through quite an array of methods of music delivery. Radio, 8-track, cassette, CDs, MP3s and streaming. Photography is much the same, from film to digital cameras to cell phone images that serve most needs.

Our company has used a variety of image storage methods, from cross-referenced negatives in the film era to storing our archives on our website platforms.

As for your family, it may vary. Do you still favor printing your digital photos and displaying them in albums? Do you share your photos electronically? Do you spend some time and create online albums for easy reference? Do you hope your Facebook account with your thousands of photos will be active long after you live?

A few years ago, I was listening to a radio show where the hosts discussed the storage needs of today’s technology. When families passed down grandma’s photo album, it was a sight to see. There could be a wrinkled and slightly faded photograph of her in 1935 next to her family’s new car.

Tomorrow, you might be sharing a 2 terabyte file with your grown-up children containing the 385,871 photos along with random screenshots of bills, grocery lists and documents.

Then, look ahead 50 more years, will your children add to your collection? Will they be paying $25 per month or more for online storage? Will they hand down 4 terabytes to their children to find that photo of your 2012 fishing excursion?

I take photos for my job, and it's become second nature to take hundreds of photos of my kids’ activities. Rare is the event I’m not shooting or videotaping one of my sons' events.

I’ve been told by another family member to live in the moment and enjoy their youth without the extra lens.

Someday.

In fact, when my oldest son played in the Red River Amateur golf tournament last year, I offered to be his caddie. He turned me down. He wanted the photographs (surely to post on the 'Gram instead) and a video or two for that TikTok platform.

I obliged, but please keep your tee shot to the right on hole No. 2, kid.

We hear a lot about retirement planning, but are there digital planning classes available?

Sign me up.

Believe me, we do our share of printing our cell phone masterpieces and sliding them behind a sheet of plastic. Those are still the best.

But as we talk about preserving our history, the question is, how are you preserving yours?

Share your comments below. I’d love to hear your digital plans.

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Hot laps to history, Donny Schatz recalls first race as a 15-year-old at Red River Valley Speedway

Rob Beer — Thu, 22 May 2025 14:55:00 GMT

WEST FARGO — On a chilly 50-degree night on the last day of April in 1993, Red River Valley Speedway public address announcer, the great Rod Miller, enthusiastically told an interning reporter that 15-year-old Donny Schatz would be running sprint cars for the first time at the track.

Thirty-two years later, this same reporter wanted to clarify something. So now I had to ask, was that Schatz’s first race?

“Actually, we went to two race tracks in Missouri,” Schatz told the Sports Time Machine. “My first laps competitively. The first track was in Sedelia, Missouri, it’s a big half mile, and just because we could go race in early April. Jefferson City and Sedalia were my first competitive laps.”

Today, Schatz ranks among the greatest in the history of sprint car racing. His 316 World of Outlaws wins are third behind retired drivers Steve Kinser (690) and Sammy Swindell (394). From his roots in Minot, North Dakota, and now in Fargo, the 47-year-old driver remains on the circuit with no thoughts of backing off the throttle.

The World of Outlaws returns to the Red River Valley with dates at River Cities Speedway in Grand Forks on May 30 and West Fargo on May 31.

Breakout Info

Dropping out of college “Was it the right decision? I don’t know if you can look back and say there was right or wrong about it. It doesn’t work out for everyone but it worked out for me. It was tricky and it was hard to navigate, but as I get older I wish I had more education for some of the business side of stuff, but it is what it is.” - Donny Schatz

A champion go-kart racer who received his regular driver's permit at 14 and license at 15, it all started when Schatz took some hot laps in Todd Mack’s sprint car at River Cities Speedway in the fall of 1992. That winter, Donny, along with his sprint car racing father, Danny, began to build a car.

Schatz said those two races in Missouri had limited fields and everyone raced the feature, but it was the experience he needed before the 1993 opener at the then half-mile RRVS track.

“To me, at that young age when I showed up at Red River Valley Speedway, it was very intimidating,” Schatz recalled. “Red River Valley Speedway had a massive crowd for a Friday night. They had 5,000 people on a Friday night so it was really a great stage and you look back on it and say, “Man, those were obviously the prime days in sprint car racing.’

“I didn’t know any of the guys I raced against. To me, they were all superheroes. I was just trying to make my way and fit in.”

Schatz did, winning his first heat ahead of veteran driver Mike Sitzmann and finishing sixth in the feature.

“Age has nothing to do with that guy,” Sitzmann said after claiming the feature. “He runs a really straight line.”

It was that trust he needed from his peers while handling a 900-horsepower sprint car that can exceed 100 mph, sometimes with cars within inches on all four sides and countersteering in the corners that makes it a spectacle.

An image from the May 1, 1993 edition of The Forum with the story of Donny Schatz's first race at Red River Valley Speedway. Newspapers.com. Click on image for link to original story.

As veteran sprint car driver Chuck Swenson of Watertown, South Dakota, said after that 1993 race, “If I was 15 years old, I’d be scared.”

Schatz wasn’t. Even in front of 5,600 fans on that opening night.

“The people don’t bother me, it’s the speeds and the quicker reactions you have to have,” Schatz said following his RRVS debut. “It makes you nervous every once in a while, but once I get into the car and get strapped down, I settle down.”

A few weeks later, The Forum printed T-shirts with Schatz’s first race on the front. Racing was enjoying its prime, and Schatz was loving every minute of it.

The physical aspect would come, saying after his first race he would need to improve his strength and endurance behind the wheel. The athleticism was there. He was named the most improved player at the University of North Dakota hockey school in 1987 and continued — though as he says with limited success — to play high school hockey in Minot until he graduated in 1995.

“I was not a very big guy,” recalled Schatz. “I was young and wasn’t fully developed. Sprint cars are man-handling machines, and I really wasn’t fit enough for it, but the fitness side of it is really mental toughness, but there’s a huge physical side to it too.”

Two weeks before the World of Outlaws would make its 1993 stop in West Fargo, Schatz wrecked his car. “We saved the motor and me,” he said at the time.

Schatz went on to win the Wissota Sprint Car rookie of the year award in 1993. By 1994, as Schatz put it, his father continued his encouragement even while opening up the Petro Stopping Center in Fargo. Money was tight, Schatz recalls, but Danny, who died in 2022 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, helped his son’s team secure funding to set up a World of Outlaws run.

In 1994, he won the national Wissota championships.

Schatz had seven World of Outlaws starts in 1995 and 24 in 1996. He admits trying to finish high school and dreaming of his first victory on the big circuit were both vying for his attention.

“But my father and my mother (Diane) were pretty adamant that schooling is very important and you need to do it because you’re not going to get anywhere in life and I firmly believe that,” Schatz said.

He attended college for a year or so but dropped out, persuading his parents to believe he could make a living driving sprint cars on the Outlaws circuit.

An image from the Oct. 18, 2007 edition of The Forum with the news of Donny Schatz joining Tony Stewart's racing team. Newspapers.com. Click on image for link to original story.

“Was it the right decision?” Schatz asked himself. “I don’t know if you can look back and say there was right or wrong about it. It doesn’t work out for everyone, but it worked out for me. It was tricky and it was hard to navigate, but as I get older, I wish I had more education for some of the business side of stuff, but it is what it is.”

With additional help from Dick Bellerud and his family, along with Trace Walker at Blue Beacon, the Schatz No. 15 team was setting course for WoO in 1997. That season, he earned three top-five and 22 top-10 finishes in 82 starts.

He won his first WoO feature race in 1998. He peaked in 2015 when he won 31 times.

He’s had opportunities to move up. In the early 2000s, a minor league ARCA program had his attention — momentarily at least — for a possible NASCAR career. His reasoning was sound. He didn’t want to move to North Carolina, he didn’t want to invest more money for fewer races, and he had, in his mind, a lot of dominating years ahead of him in a sprint car.

Eighteen years ago, he joined Tony Stewart’s racing team. In 2021, he drove in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series event at Knoxville, Iowa. That was a one-time deal.

Today, Schatz is a 10-time season champion, second only to Kinser. In his own words, his career has been nothing short of remarkable.

While his wins since 2018 have dropped into the single digits, he feels fortunate to never miss a race due to injury. Yes, he’s had concussions, but the cars have become safer, too. He’s still driving the same frame since 2000.

When Schatz began racing, especially on that cold night in West Fargo in 1993, Kinser was “The King.” For years now, Schatz has been the face of the Outlaws.

“I’ve never really looked at it that way,” he said. “It was something I never signed up for, but I think that longevity run — and throw a little bit of winning in there — you find yourself naturally there. I’ve been the constant. I take great pride in that, and obviously, you’re not going to make everybody happy, nor is that the goal in life. There is no such thing, but I’m very appreciative of that.”

He's sprinted thousands of miles from that chilly night in West Fargo.

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High school state golf champions recall switch to metal woods

Rob Beer — Thu, 15 May 2025 19:00:00 GMT

FARGO — It was the spring of 1988 when a high school teammate of mine pulled a metal club from his golf bag.

“You’ll never hit that straight,” was my reaction at the time.

It had a stupid sound, but he hit it straight. Repeatedly.

The Sports Time Machine sought to find out the first state high school winners in the Dakotas and Minnesota who won a state championship for the first time using a metal driver, a quest that brought back plenty of memories for those players.

While the STM did not exactly find out who — though we got close — by contacting a mix of players. Some were early adopters of metals while others didn’t convert for a few years.

Matt Mayer of Fargo Shanley, winner of the 1988 North Dakota Class A tournament in a playoff, was one of those early adopters, using metals as long as he can remember.

On the Minnesota side, Jeff Nielsen of Grand Rapids won the state 1988 Class AA tournament as a sophomore, but said he can’t exactly remember what was in his bag, but believes he was still playing woods.

“Right when the metals came out, the head was no bigger than the wood,” said Nielsen, who went to play in the NHL. “You didn’t have the bigger sweet spot.”

As for the girls, 1986 and 1988 winner Krista Reuterfelt of Coon Rapids won with a wood, converting to a metal when she was a freshman at the University of Minnesota.

“You needed to hit it in the sweet spot,” she said of woods. “Now you can rip at it without the huge penalty of hitting on the toe!”

Three-time (86-88) Class A winner Liza LaBelle of Breck believes she used a wood driver until she got her hands on a Callaway Big Bertha in the early 1990s. Laura Bleyhl of Elk River won the Class AA meet in 1989, but she couldn’t recall what was in her bag at the time.

In North Dakota, then-junior Sara Evens of Grafton played a TaylorMade metal when she repeated as the girls Class A champion in 1987. It was an interesting season for Evens, who won an appeal after the North Dakota High �� Activities Association suspended her because she had played in a national golf tournament after the fall high school season began.

Sheila Mikkelson of Grand Forks Red River played a 5-metal during her victory in 1988.

The first metal drivers, made by TaylorMade, were introduced in 1979. Ron Streck was the first PGA Tour winner to win with a metal when he captured the 1981 Houston Open.

Early metals were about the same size of their predecessors, gaining clubface size with late-90s models such as the Biggest Big Bertha at 290cc. Today, models such as the new TaylorMade Qi35 driver, have the maximum 460cc faces allowed by the United States Golf Association.

As one of my friends once said, a coffee can on a stick.

And today, players are hitting it longer than they ever imagined. The balls too have vastly improved from the balatas and wound balls of '80s.

Russ Nelson, the longtime Village Green Golf Course head professional in Moorhead, thought metals would be a fad because those early clubs didn’t always hold up to higher swing speeds.

“The problem was, the faces broke. The better players were a little reluctant,” Nelson said.

Nelson’s first metal was a Lynx Black Cat driver, similar to the one Fred Couples was playing on tour. Later, longtime instructor Dale Helm let Nelson swing his Biggest Big Bertha on Village’s 430-yard opening hole. Nelson cut the dogleg and drove the green. Impressed, nonetheless.

“I thought it was a fad in the late 70s when they were smashing the faces in, but once the faces didn’t cave in, I didn’t think it was a fad,” he said.

It’s golf and

anything

a player can do to improve is on the table.

For South Dakota girls, Kim Steffensen of Hamlin believes she had a metal by the time she completed her three straight state Class B tournament victories from 1986-88. For the record, she nearly had a fourth victory when she was tied for the lead going into the final hole.

“You know, when you’re kids, you’re willing to try anything,” said Steffensen, who coached golf at Oral Roberts and Middle Tennessee State before moving back to her home state, about her high school switch. “I really didn’t have any reservations. It was lighter and didn’t have that tinny sound.”

Marvin Bohnet, who coached at Hamlin from 1986-2006, coached Steffensen along with another three-peater who followed in Darla Christopherson.

“We really didn’t talk about clubs, it was just whatever the kids hit the best,” Bohnet told the Sports Time Machine.

Darin McAreavey of Elk Point won the South Dakota Class B tournament twice. His second victory in 1986 came using a custom metal club built by his club-making neighbor.

In 1987, Steve Bull of Clear Lake won with a persimmon driver. That same year, Brian Kortan of Yankton, now the head coach at Texas A&M, won the Class A tournament with a TaylorMade metal.

Judy Bornholdt of Princeton, Minnesota, used local clubmaker Rod Anderson to put a fairway metal in her bag when the Tigers won the 1989 Class AA team title.

The 1982 and 1983 South Dakota Class A winner Kris Tschetter of Sioux Falls Washington told the Sports Time Machine she didn’t play her first metal until she was on the LPGA Tour in 1988.

Pam Breit of Sioux Falls Washington had metals when she won the Class A tournament in ‘88.

“I had metal woods at the time with graphite shafts,” Breit said. “I can’t think of anybody who didn’t at that time who played a lot of golf.”

But access to retail clubs, especially in more rural communities, posed a challenge at the time.

“Austads, I’d go there as a kid, and that’s a 100-mile drive to Sioux Falls,” Steffensen said. “That was just like a warehouse building, it wasn’t like it is today.”

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The strides and struggles of North Dakota's first marathon

Rob Beer — Thu, 08 May 2025 18:55:00 GMT

GRAND FORKS — It was the little marathon that could, until it couldn’t.

But as it neared its 10-year anniversary, the North Dakota Marathon had a difficult time being recognized in its own community, even with front-page coverage in its daily newspaper. Five years later, as the number of runners dwindled, the marathon itself crossed its own finish line.

Running from 1972 to 1985, the North Dakota Marathon wasn’t a marathon to begin with, at least by distance. The brainchild of Eric T. Parker, a running enthusiast from East Grand Forks, Minnesota, he formed the first race in 1972 after running a 10-miler in Brainerd, Minnesota, and brought the idea back home.

Marathon running was just in its infancy around the region. A marathon in Brookings, South Dakota, was in its third year while Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth (1977) and the Manitoba Marathon (1979) were not even conceived yet.

Breakout Info

Did you know? Dick Beardsley finished second in the 1978 North Dakota Marathon. Four years later he famously finished second in the Boston Marathon.

In 1972, there were very few marathons in the U.S. to begin with, though the country was on the verge of a running boom with Frank Shorter winning a gold medal at the Olympics.

That year, the 10th-largest marathon, according to Runners World, was the Island Marathon in Portland, Oregon, with 173 participants. The 25th-largest marathon was at the Drake Relays in Iowa with 89 runners. Only the Boston Marathon had more than 1,000 runners at the time.

The first North Dakota Marathon in 1972 was a 15-mile run, captured by Marv Kluvers of Litchville, North Dakota, with a time of 1 hour, 22 minutes and 56 seconds. Forty-two runners began the race, 29 finished. Moya Cooley of Grand Forks won the women's race — she was the only female runner — and beat 13 men who failed to complete the race.

Kluvers was a middle-distance runner at Dickinson State University at the time, and with a cousin and her husband attending the University of North Dakota, Kluvers came to Grand Forks to run the race.

“It was a good excuse to get away from the farm work for a weekend,” he told the Sports Time Machine.

It was a grassroots effort, to say the least.

An illustration by Earl Battle that appeared in the June 26, 1981 Grand Forks Herald about the first North Dakota Marathon in 1972. Newspapers.com. Click on image for link to original story.

“No, I didn’t coordinate anything with the police,” Parker said in a 1981 interview recalling the first race. “Man, it (the race) was chaotic. But before we started, I sort of asked the runners if they’d try to run on the sidewalks.”

Chaotic indeed, like a Burlington Northern train that stopped some runners in their tracks during the run. The only water stop was Parker’s mom offering a water hose along the way. “I figured there were enough gas stations and places along the way that the runners could stop to get a drink,” Parker said in 1981. Or the fact Parker, who also was running in the race, had to stop his run and hitch a ride to the finish line so he could help his race official Mark Paulsen record times.

“All he had was a stopwatch,” Parker recalled. “I hadn’t given him a clipboard, paper or pencil to record the times and finishers and the first two guys were already in.”

By 1973, the race expanded to 20 miles. By 1974, runners went the full 26.2-marathon distance and became the state's first official marathon.

In terms of numbers, the highwater mark was in 1978 when 386 runners competed in the full or half marathon. Jim Miller, a former Grand Forks Red River cross country runner who won the half marathon in 1976, won the full marathon for the second year in a row.

Miller’s record-breaking 2:26:58 time in 1978 beat second-year marathoner Dick Beardsley of Wayzata by almost five minutes.

Four years later, Beardsley went on to finish second in the Boston Marathon, losing to Alberto Salazar by just 2 seconds in the famous “Duel in the Sun” race. Miller, meanwhile, also made a mark in the marathon world in 2000 when he joined an elite group of runners to have sub three-hour marathon times in six different decades.

The winning North Dakota marathon time continued to drop. Tom Stambaugh (2:26:40 in 1981) and Paul LeBlanc (2:26:17 in 1984) held the men’s record until ultra-marathoner Tom Zimmerman of St. Cloud finished with 2:25:02 in the 1985 finale. In the women’s division, Therese Vogel threatened to go sub-three when she ran a 3:00:18 for the standing record in 1982.

While the names of Miller, Beardsley, Clint Chamberlin, Larry Seethaler, Jan Arenz and Debbie Kosmatka all have their foothold on the marathon’s history, so do Tom Devine Jr. and Joe Cleary, who ran the race every year. According to the Herald, Devine woke up just 10 minutes before the 1985 event but arrived at the starting line in time and finished ninth. His best finish over the course of the North Dakota Marathon was second place.

The downfall

The North Dakota Marathon had a difficult time gaining a foothold in its own community, despite admirable coverage throughout the years in its city’s newspaper. The telling sign of the marathon was in 1981 when a Grand Forks Chamber of Commerce spokesman was asked about the economic impact of the race.

“What marathon?” was the reply.

This was after three of the marathon’s largest fields, including the 292 runners who ran in either the full or half marathon in 1981.

Grand Forks Herald executive sports editor Eric Kinkopf did a comparison of three marathons in this June 7, 1981 story. Newspapers.com. Click on image for link to original story.

By 1982, the New York City Marathon had grown to 13,599 runners while Grandma’s in Duluth was the nation's seventh largest at 4,086. The budget for Grandma’s had grown to $50,000 for the 1981 race.

Meanwhile, the North Dakota Marathon crept along with a $2,800 budget in 1981. It was a hard sell to advertisers and some runners.

“When runners call long distance (the race has been advertised in some running magazines) and ask about the race, I tell them it’s not a great course,” said Cal Murdock, the North Dakota Marathon race director in 1981. “I don’t want somebody traveling here from Colorado or Illinois and ending up being disappointed.”

“It’s a regional race,” Eric Parker said after the 1985 — and eventual final — North Dakota Marathon. “When we started this, the goal wasn’t to make it the biggest or the best or gaudiest race around. It was to have the runners come and enjoy themselves. And I’d certainly like to think that they do.”

The YMCA, the longtime sponsor of the race, was $600 in the red after the 1984 race. When the race didn’t return in 1986, Lyle Oechsle, the executive director of the Grand Forks Y Family Center, said no one seemed to care.

“Nobody has said a word to me about the marathon,” Oechsle told the Herald in 1986. “Nobody has asked why we aren’t running it. And that includes runners. We just haven’t developed a local interest in it.”

In 1982, Bismarck hosted its first marathon and is the state’s longest-running marathon. A year later, Fargo and Minot held marathons as well. In 2005, the Fargo Marathon began and became the state’s largest race.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Marv Kluvers.

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How the Minnesota Governor's Fishing Opener has changed

Rob Beer — Thu, 01 May 2025 18:55:00 GMT

DETROIT LAKES, Minn. — I’m as anxious as most anglers for the Minnesota fishing opener on May 10. It just took me more than 50 years to become a year-over-year fisherman.

Last summer I equipped myself with more gear to get out on the water with my family. It’s not even about catching fish for me — though I try — but rather the solitude, peace and conversation while out on the lake.

This year, the annual Minnesota Governor’s Fishing Opener takes place May 10 in Crosslake. Since 1948, the event has been shaped into various sizes and names, depending on the governor, the weather and the host community.

In its early years, the governor rarely attended when it was routinely held on Mille Lacs Lake — just two hours north of St. Paul — for the first 10 years.

Gov. Luther Youngdahl was in office in 1948 and he led the charge, along with conservation commissioner Chester S. Wilson, for sweeping conservation efforts across the state.

Youngdahl didn’t attend his first governor’s opener until 1951 on Mille Lacs Lake. Gov. C. Elmer Anderson passed up all three of his opportunities from 1952-54, according to data from the Minnesota Historical Society.

The early governor’s openers didn’t have the structure of today’s events and didn’t appear to be designed to actually include the governor’s presence. The first decade or so had little media coverage outside the original announcement of the opener itself.

The 1948 opener was coming on the heels of a long, severe winter. The Minneapolis Tribune reported that more than 200 lakes, especially in the south and southwestern parts of the state, could see drastic fish kills. The Fargo Forum reported anglers found a large number of dead fish on Lost Lake east of Pelican Rapids, and the game warden believed the lake froze too deep over the winter, smothering the fish.

The ‘48 opener included all species, however muskie and bass seasons would not open until at least mid-June.

1948 Minnesota fishing regulations 02 May 1948, Sun The Duluth News Tribune Newspapers.com

Along with the anticipation to get on the water, tragedies followed with four deaths reported on opening day. Three anglers died on Woman Lake near Hackensack while a Waseca man drowned on Clear Lake when the boat he was in overturned.

A headline in The Fargo Forum claimed fishing was “fair to good” for area anglers. A game warden reported there were 35 to 75 boats on Lake Sallie near Detroit Lakes and the results were very good.

Still, it was far from a perfect day on the lakes in that area. Rough waters brought some boats in early.

“It was good while it it lasted," said Curtis Cole, who was in a group fishing on Lake Sallie.

Cole’s group landed 12 walleyes in 45 minutes.

The governor’s opener, after 10 years on Mille Lacs Lake, moved to Upper Red Lake for three years, starting in 1958. It was there when the tradition of recent governor’s outings began.

Lt. Gov. Karl Rolvaag, who would later serve as governor in the 1960s, led a group of high-ranking officials to open the fishing season, the state historical society said. Rolvaag showed them how it is done, catching his limit of walleyes, the Minneapolis Star reported.

Before Rolvaag's term, Gov. Elmer Andersen decided to move the governor’s fishing opener to a different location each year, with Leech Lake near Walker hosting in 1961 and Detroit Lakes in 1962.

Beginning at midnight and in bad weather, Andersen fished with a party of eight for more than three hours. The group returned with eight fish, The Fargo Forum reported.

By this time, with a throng of media in tow, the event was called the “Governor’s Fishing Party,” and it probably was.

As Forum columnist Wayne Lubenow quipped in ‘62, “that means that news media will send everybody including the janitor to the lakes for the opener.”

At the 1977 opener at Arrowwood Lodge in Alexandria, accommodations were perhaps too plush, wrote Steve Palmer in the West Central Tribune, perhaps suggesting the 1978 edition may include changes.

“They felt that a fishing opener should mean more of a ‘roughing it’ type thing,” said Jim Lukaszewski, who helped set up the event at Arrowwood.

In 1978, the Minneapolis Tribune reported that year's outing on Crane Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area would have a tab of $6,000. Gov. Rudy Perpich said he'd rather just fish with his family and not have the huge media entourage. It would also be renamed to the “Minnesota Fishing Opener.”

The name stuck with the next governor, Al Quie, when he visited the Park Rapids area for the 1979 opener.

But that name got away as several newspapers in the state in the following years just called it the “Governor’s Fishing Opener.”

Since 1976, every governor has attended their opener with the exception of 2020 when COVID-19 postponed Gov. Tim Walz’s presence in Otter Tail County until the following year.

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Through the years: Nearly half of Twins managers have been fired midseason

Rob Beer — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 14:55:00 GMT

MINNEAPOLIS — There have been 14 managers who have worn the colors of the Minnesota Twins. As manager Rocco Baldelli fights through the team’s early struggles this season, and reportedly in the last season of his contract extension, his future remains uncertain.

Throughout Twins’ history, six of the 14 managers were fired during the season, five were fired after a season, one retired and one simply quit.

Here's a look at the team's managers by decade.

The 1960s

Cookie Lavagetto, the holdover manager from the Washington Senators, was the first Twins skipper to be fired after going 25-41 in 1961. But first, he was given a second chance.

With the team suffering through an 11-game losing streak and winning just one of its previous 17 games, owner Calvin Griffith forced Lavagetto to go on a week’s vacation before a June 6 game against the New York Yankees.

Sam Mele filled in, and was tossed for arguing balls and strikes in the second inning, as the team promptly lost 7-2 to the Yankees. Fargo-raised slugger Roger Maris, meanwhile, hit his 16th home run on the season and drove in four runs that game.

Mele finished his stint with a 2-5 record. When Lavagetto returned June 13, infielder Billy Martin drove in four runs in an 8-6 win over Kansas City. On June 18, however, in the middle of a doubleheader sweep by the Chicago White Sox, infielder Bob Allison and pitcher Camilo Pascual scuffled, leading the reportedly soft manager to tell the press, “Nothing. This is simply a family affair.”

Lavagetto was fired five days later.

Mele took the reins over again and lasted until his in-season firing in 1967. Others to be fired in-season were Bill Rigney (1972), Johnny Goryl (1981), Billy Gardner (1985) and Ray Miller (1986).

Mele, who skippered the Twins all the way to Game 7 of the 1965 World Series, was canned during the 1967 campaign after a 25-25 start. He is one of six managers, including Baldelli, to have a winning record (522-431) on the Twins bench.

Cal Ermer managed the remainder of the season and was fired following the 1968 season after the team finished 79-83. "It has become quite apparent to me that Ermer lost firm control over the ball club," Griffith said in a statement. "Therefore I've decided that a change of leadership would be beneficial to the club."

Martin retired as a player in 1961 and took over the team in 1969. As a former third-base coach for the Twins, the feisty Martin was known to use a tape recorder between innings to voice his opinions on the team’s play. Despite the team’s success in 1969 and going 97-65 to win the new AL West by nine games, Martin fought pitcher Dave Boswell outside a Detroit restaurant in early August, the Minneapolis Tribune reported.

The team then got clobbered in the divisional series, losing the best-of-five series 3-0 to Baltimore. Billy was done.

"I feel he has completely ignored our understandings," Griffith said when he fired Martin on Oct. 13.

The 1970s

With high expectations in 1970, Bill Rigney lasted just 70 games, going 36-34. With outfielder Tony Oliva and pitcher Jim Kaat battling injuries, the team trailed Oakland by 9½ games when Griffith pulled the plug on July 6.

Frank Quilici, hired at just 33 years old, had his chance for three seasons with the Twins from 1972-75. But following a 6-4 extra-inning loss to the White Sox to finish the 1975 season at 76-83, the personable Quilici, who later would become a Twins radio color commentator, was told he would not be retained.

Enter the no-nonsense Gene Mauch, the recently fired manager of the Expos, for the 1976 season. With the likes of Rod Carew, Lyman Bostock and pitcher Dave Goltz, who threw 13 complete games that year, Mauch turned the Twins around, going 85-77 his first season. At the gate, however, Minnesota drew an AL-worst 715,394 fans.

But even with Carew batting an astounding .388 in 1977, the Twins finished fourth in the AL West at 84-77. A stalling offense that scored 201 fewer runs and hit just 82 home runs led to Minnesota finishing again fourth in the division at 73-89 in 1978. The following season, the Twins finished 82-80, just six games back from the AL West lead. Mauch’s future in 1980 spiraled.

The 1980s

Following a 3-2 loss to Detroit on Aug. 24, the team’s 1980 record dropped to 54-71. Mauch simply had enough. He quit.

"I feel the responsibility for the general play of this ball club and am not satisfied that I'm making the proper contribution. I suggested to Calvin Thursday that in reevaluating his club for the future it might be well to do so in a different atmosphere," Mauch said.

While new manager Johnny Goryl, the team's former third-base coach, rallied the team to a 23-13 finish to the 1980 season, the former Twin himself (1962-64) didn’t make it through the 1981 campaign. Frustrated because he thought the team had talent, Griffith fired Goryl after an 11-25 start, beginning a quick hook of managers by the team. Goryl went 34-38 and his 72 games as manager is the second-shortest stint behind Lavagetto’s 66 games in a Twins uniform.

Immediately taking over for Goryl after serving as third-base coach, Billy Gardner went 41-68 during the strike-shortened season of 1981. He then lost a then-franchise record 102 games in 1982 as the team ushered in the Metrodome.

Let’s point out an interesting fact here. For a team that has drawn at least a million (and 3.2 million during Target Field’s first season in 2010), only 921,186 fans helped christen the dome its first year. The team wasn’t worth watching.

It was a veteran reliever that couldn’t keep the ship from tipping during Gardner’s term. Acquired in a 1982 trade with the New York Yankees, closer Ron Davis went 19-40 as a Twin, blowing 14 saves in the 1984 season alone.

It was Gardner who began to usher the future cornerstones of the franchise over the next four years. Kent Hrbek, Gary Gaetti, Tim Laudner, Frank Viola and Tom Brunansky would help raise expectations with the rising superstar Kirby Puckett in 1984.

But with more pitching struggles in 1985 (the staff ERA ballooned to 4.48 for the season), Gardner too was gone after winning just 43% of his games, the lowest since Lavagetto.

"I can't believe how 10 guys on one pitching staff can go sour at one time,” Gardner said after being fired in June 1985 with a 27-35 record. “I just think what happened is they made a lot of money, they were picked to win and the pressure got to them. I really do."

New manager Ray Miller wasn’t a fit either, winning 109 of his 239 games. Team owner Carl Pohlad wanted more usage out of his young stars, something he said Miller refused to do.

"Ray was under extreme pressure that he had to win every ballgame to make sure he'd be asked back next year ... so he may not have played his younger players," Pohlad said.

Miller, with a 59-80 record, was fired Sept. 12, 1986. With veteran manager Jim Frey turning down the job, Pohlad hired within once again. Tom Kelly, the former Twins infielder who was serving as a team coach, posted a 12-11 record for the remainder of the 1986 season. While that '86 team finished 71-91, efforts to fix the bullpen worked in 1987.

World Series wins

Setup pitchers Juan Berenguer, George Frazier, Keith Atherton and Dan Schatzeder all dodged losing records while new closer Jeff Reardon shined with 31 saves. The 85-win Twins would beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1987 World Series.

Kelly led Minnesota to another World Series title in 1991, but a 90-72 campaign in 1992 left the Twins six games back of AL West winner Oakland. In the following years, the Twins went south, never finishing higher than fourth in the division through 2000.

The 2000s

Kelly surprisingly retired on Oct. 12, 2001 after 16 seasons, the most ever in Twins history and second longest in franchise history. Kelly, then just 51, got the Twins back into contention as they finished six games back in the AL Central in 2001. He compiled a 1,140-1,244 record.

Ron Gardenhire, another third-base coach, got his chance in 2002. Despite winning six division crowns in his first nine seasons, the Twins advanced to the AL championship just once. His clubs went 78-148 combined after Aug. 1 and 6-21 in the playoffs. He was fired with one season left on his contract following the 2014 season.

"The reason for this change, I think it's safe to say, the last couple years we have not won enough games," GM Terry Ryan said. "That's what it comes down to. It's nothing more, nothing less than that."

The 2010s

Paul Molitor, who was coaching in the Twins organization since 2005, was named manager in November 2014. Named manager of the year in 2017, he was gone the next season following the team’s 78-84 campaign in 2018.

Injuries to key players such as Byron Buxton (28 games played), Miguel Sano (71 games played) and Joe Mauer (missed a month of action for neck strains and concussion-like symptoms in his final season) hampered the team’s chances. Jorge Polanco also served an 80-game suspension for performance-enhancing substance use to begin that 2018 season.

The clipping from the Oct. 3, 2018 Brainerd Dispatch when Twins manager Paul Molitor was fired. Newspapers.com. Click on image for link to original story.

With new brass Thad Lavine and Derek Falvey having now more than a year to observe and react, Molitor’s exit on Oct. 2, 2018 was considered just another puzzle piece to bring in their own manager.

This time, it was 37-year-old Rocco Baldelli, a former player who had never managed a ball club. He was also the first manager since Miller in 1985 to come from outside the Twins organization.

Into the 2020s

Hired before the 2019 season, Baldelli is one just six managers (Mele, Ermer, Martin, Rigney and Gardenhire) to have an overall winning record. He’s led the Twins to the playoffs three times, including the team’s first playoff game and series win since 2004 when Minnesota beat Toronto in the 2023 AL Wild Card Series.

The analytical-minded organization, especially with Baldelli managing, has led to decisions ranging from brilliant to head-scratching.

“There are some baseline, cultural things we want to believe in, right?” Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey said in 2022. “We want to really dive into the information, root ourselves in evidence, make decisions that are based on facts and not just things that are flying around. That’s our process.”

This season, Twins are 18th of 30 teams in payroll at $145.2 million, sliding four spots from 2024, according to spotrac.com.

But a losing record so far this season, and among the worst starts in Twins' history, could jeopardize Baldelli’s future. Minnesota is also drawing its lowest average attendance per game since 2000, except for the COVID-19 seasons of 2020 and 2021, leading to even more fan malaise. Just 10,240 fans showed up for an April 14 game against the New York Mets.

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How famed Minnesota speedway rebounded after bankruptcy, missing grandstands and vandalism

Rob Beer — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 14:55:00 GMT

BRAINERD, Minn. — In 1993, I glanced at an idling sports car on my left, gave a thumbs-up and waited for the signal to put the hammer down.

KTHI-TV (now KVLY) sports anchor Dan Hammer and I were racing as part of media day for the Brainerd 300 at Brainerd International Raceway. Reaching speeds of more than 100 mph down the long straightaway, we barreled into the first turn, then zigged and zagged throughout the remainder of the three-mile road course.

That was a lot smoother than the first wave of drivers. Instead of going two at a time, all 10 of those media members hit the gas on the first signal and zoomed down the track. Nervous track officials and bystanders watched as brake lights glowed down the track as these "racers" tried to avoid any collisions as they made the first turn onto the road track.

Twenty years earlier, BIR itself had crashed.

Built by owner George Montgomery as Donnybrooke Speedway, the track north of Brainerd brought high expectations to racers with its mile-long straightaway.

“I know we’ll be able to hit 200 miles per hour on the straightaway at Donnybrooke,” racer Jerry Hansen told the Minneapolis Tribune before the track’s grand opening in August 1968.

After a successful start, bad weather, small crowds and lingering infrastructure issues had Montgomery’s track feeling the pinch by the summer of 1972.

By March 1973, the track was in foreclosure.

That November, Hansen and fellow racer Dick Roe bought the track which was then in the hands of an Edina construction magnate. As general manager, Roe came up to look at the track just days before closing on the deal.

“There was a nice 5,000-seat new grandstand right on the main straightaway that George had bought,” Roe told the Sports Time Machine.

After closing on the property earlier in the day, Roe drove up from the Twin Cities. At one of the track’s entrances, the gate was pushed over. That sparkling 5,000-seat bleacher was gone.

The bank that loaned the money repossessed the grandstand.

“They sold it to the University of North Dakota, and they hired a big construction company that came down with many trucks and a lot of people, and they disassembled the whole thing,” Roe said.

All that was left was the track, a three-story tower, two ticket booths, a couple of bathrooms and a scoring building.

“Not even a 10-row bleacher,” Roe said. “We had to start from scratch.”

The track even got a new name: Brainerd International Raceway.

When the track was vacated, vandals struck the tower, spraying Purple K fire extinguishers throughout.

“It ruined all the stuff,” Roe said, including radios and other communications devices.

Roe went right to work, securing sponsorships from R.J. Reynolds. Winston bought the first bleachers, Camel the second, enough for 5,000 fans once again.

More sponsorships from Pepsi and 7-UP rolled in, helping to eventually replace and improve the track’s infrastructure.

Two longstanding issues remained, though. Thousands of fans still couldn’t camp nearby and the area still wasn’t on board with having a noisy and rowdy racetrack in a part of Minnesota known for its peaceful lakes and outdoor recreation.

“One of the last races at Donnybrooke,” Roe said, “Hells Angels came up and they kind of took over the town of Nisswa and they had a bad taste in their mouth from the racetrack and such.”

So Roe knew he had to get the Brainerd-area business community involved. A Nisswa club earned money for working the front gate, selling and taking tickets. Other groups got involved as well.

Roe’s brother David was the head of the AFL-CIO and worked with Gov. Wendell Anderson to push for the state to grant a camping license for the 1975 season.

“We ended up getting our first camping license for 500, so by having camping inside the track, that pretty much settled the neighbors' problem,” Roe said.

The Brainerd Lions Club took over the camping operation, “which ended up all through the years, made them a lot of money,” Roe said.

The noise issue was the next hurdle. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s limit was 78 decibels, and as Roe pointed out, the IBM Selectric typewriter of that era was 81 near your ear.

David Roe enlisted Vice President Hubert Humphrey to persuade lawmakers to exempt the track. At 2:30 a.m., legislation passed to exempt BIR, the state fairgrounds speedway, Elko — five in total, Dick Roe said. “If we hadn't had Humphrey pushing this through, and the legislators, all doing pretty much what he had asked and such, we'd have been completely out of business."

By 1976, Roe and racer Dick Kantrude purchased the majority control of the track, with Hansen keeping 49% control.

An image from the Aug. 13, 1968 edition of The Forum which featured a full-page spread on Donnybrooke Speedway. Newspapers.com. Click on image for link to original page.

To increase seating, BIR purchased old bleachers from Met Stadium after the Vikings and Twins moved to the Metrodome.

Roe made 50-some trips in a ‘78 Ford flatbed, hauling that lumber from Bloomington to Brainerd.

“That wood was old, it was 30-40 years old when we took it,” Roe said.

Those grandstands lasted until the mid-'90s when BIR replaced it with aluminum components, along with building the current tower.

Roe said they learned so much from the first six years of Donnybrooke. Of course, one was getting the support of the surrounding communities. Secondly, having its own campground, which Roe to this day still considers a stroke of luck. And thirdly, being able to land big-time racers and series.

“We got the national NHRA event in ‘82, the Uncola Nationals and the Pepsi Grand Prix, the Camel GT, all of these series,” Roe said. “We lucked out.”

Roe also pointed out that having advance ticket sales made a huge difference.

“We probably sold 60% of our tickets in advance,” said Roe, who made deals with auto parts stores, Dayton's and various other locations to sell tickets.

It was a difference maker when the weather could be uncooperative.

“If you had a good advance sale, if those people don’t come, that’s their problem,” Roe said. “They already own a ticket, where Donnybrooke never had anything such an advance sale.”

Several racers who have passed through BIR over the years are racing legends. Shirley Muldowney, Don Prudhomme, John Force, Joe Amato, Bobby and Al Unser and Paul Newman are just a short list of notables.

The actor and racer Newman won his first professional race at BIR in 1982.

“We'd sit out after the races, usually having a pig roast and drinking beer, and out there having fun,” Roe recalled. “He was just another guy. But he loved coming to Brainerd because the people left him alone, and he could just be Paul Newman, the racer.”

The track has survived since 1974 — even the tumultuous years under the ownership of Don “The Colonel” Williamson, who would later serve as the mayor of Flint, Michigan, from 2003-2009. Williamson owned BIR from 1994 to 2006 while firing Roe in the process.

“He did nothing but alienate people, and it got so that attendance was starting to drop and such, and that’s when I convinced Dave Copham to buy the track,” Roe said.

Dave Copham’s son Jed and his wife Kristi took over the track in 2006, with Kristi now the sole owner after Jeb died in a swimming accident in 2018.

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What's in a name? Vikings pondered several nicknames, including Twins and Wolves

Rob Beer — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 14:58:00 GMT

MINNEAPOLIS -- Roger Staubach’s Hail Mary pass to Drew Pearson in the 1975 divisional game at Met Stadium could have happened in a game between the Twins and Rangers.

Hold on!

Twins and Rangers?

As the Sports Time Machine looked back at the first season of the Minnesota Twins — for clarity, today’s Major League Baseball team — there was a time when the expansion football team in Minnesota considered the Twins as its nickname.

All sorted out, the Twins became the Twins, the Vikings became the Vikings and that Dallas football club, after first being introduced as the Rangers, changed their name to Cowboys, all in 1960.

The football debate

The Vikings and the Cowboys were awarded NFL franchises in their respective cities on Jan. 26, 1960, with Dallas immediately fielding a team for the upcoming season. The Vikings, meanwhile, had to wait until 1961, the same year the Twins took the field after the franchise relocated from Washington.

Part of the reasoning was that Met Stadium in Bloomington needed to be expanded to 40,000 seats as the Minnesota club had an NFL obligation to sell 25,000 season tickets.

By August 1960, the Minnesota NFL club did not have a nickname. Reidar Lund of the Duluth News Tribune reported in his Aug. 7 column that Eskimos were in the mix, a sentimental choice because of the former Duluth Eskimos team that played in the NFL in the 1920s.

The former owner of the Eskimos, Ole Haugsrud, was now chairman of the board for the NFL club in Minnesota. Other mentions of a possible nickname were Vikings, Miners, Lakers, Twins and Wolves.

The Lakers name became available that spring when the NBA team moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles. The Wolves nickname, at least in its shortened version, would later be picked by the expansion NBA franchise in Minnesota in 1989.

Erwin J. (Whitey) Jones of St. Paul wrote letters to newspapers around the state supporting his idea for a team name, the Minnesota Medics, honoring the state’s fine medical facilities in the Twin Cites and Rochester, the Post-Bulletin reported.

While it certainly had a ring to it, Medics isn’t a name that would appear on the positive side of a ledger when it comes to football. And that’s exactly why the team went with a fiercer moniker.

On Sept. 27, 1960, the Minnesota NFL club officially announced the team would be called the Minnesota Vikings by team president William Boyer as a tribute to the region’s Norwegian heritage and a fighting spirit.

“Ideally, a nickname for an athletic team serves a dual purpose,” said team president William Boyer when the Vikings were announced. “First, it should represent an aggressive person or animal imbued with the will to win. Secondly, if possible, it is desirable to have a name connotate the region that particular team represents. The name Vikings seems to us to score well on both points.”

The team considered being called the Minneapolis-St. Paul Vikings at first.

Vikings general manager Bert Rose cleared that up when he met with the Rochester Rotarians on Nov. 17, 1960.

Ozzie St. George's column in the Rochester Post-Bulletin on Nov. 30, 1960. His column includes comments from Vikings general manager Bert Rose, who stressed the new NFL club has a statewide feel. Newspapers.com. Click on image for link to original story.

“We felt that the name, Minneapolis-St. Paul Vikings, was too long and we were afraid St. Paul might get dropped — that possibility was fraught with disaster. So we chose Minnesota — we hope and believe the Vikings will have the backing of the whole state,” the Rochester Post-Bulletin reported Rose saying.

And how ‘bout them Cowboys? The Dallas club was originally named the Rangers, but on March 20, 1960, the team adopted the Cowboys because Dallas-Fort Worth already had a Rangers baseball team in the American Baseball Association.

Baseball wins with nickname

On Nov. 27, 1960 — two months after the Vikings were named — newspapers around the country carried the news that the relocated Washington Senators club will be known as the Minnesota Twins, following the Vikings’ lead to incorporate the state into the name.

With the announcement, the team unveiled its Minnie and Paul logo, uniting Minneapolis and St. Paul. That logo remains a fixture above center field at Target Field.

The Senators name remained in Washington as the city was awarded another franchise that began play in 1961.

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60 years ago, skateboard craze overtook hula hoops — as broken bones and injuries became common

Rob Beer — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 14:55:00 GMT

As springtime weather approaches, let’s turn back the clock 60 years to a recreational sports explosion that hit our region.

The Sports Time Machine couldn’t help but notice a full-page photo spread in the April 22, 1965 edition of the Rochester Post-Bulletin while researching a previous story. Children of all ages were pictured with the newest neighborhood toy — the skateboard.

Believed to be a fad — and there’s some merit to that — skateboarding became a huge hit in 1965, and along with that, a rash of injuries followed.

Developed in the 1950s as California surfers craved a dryland fix, retail skateboard ads began to appear in the mid-’60s as teenager after teenager tried their luck standing on the moving board for several feet at a time.

Quickly, especially out west, it became competitive. In May 1965, the first International Skateboard Championship took place with three $500 college scholarships at stake. Sponsored by Skateboarder magazine, 300 youths participated.

About a week later, ABC televised the skateboarding championship as a segment on its “ABC’S Wide World of Sports,” growing the advancement of tricky moves on the wheeled boards.

It would take until 2021 before skateboarding became an Olympic sport, years after Tony Hawk became the most recognizable skateboarder in the world.

Some of us were just lucky to propel ourselves down the block. My older sister Debbie and I had a light blue skateboard with red wheels growing up in the ‘70s. A pebbled asphalt street provided a prickly vibration and fortunately, outside of a scrape or two, I don’t think either of us went fast enough to cause greater injury.

Goodbye hula hoop, hello skateboards

The hula hoop of the late 1950s and early ‘60s gave way to skateboards as the new residential craze.

Back home, retailers, hospitals and even city councils were busy dealing with the new craze. In April 1965, Scheels locations in Fargo-Moorhead were selling the “Beginner’s Choice Super Surfer” for $1.99, a relative bargain over the $2.98 slip-on roller skates in the same advertisement.

In May, Home of Economy in Grand Forks had in stock the “Super-Surfer Deluxe Skate Board” made of laminated ash and mahogany with a lacquered finish for $7.98.

Kirk Gill remembers the day he was photographed riding with Bob Burfeind and Gunnar Erickson by Merle Dalen of the Rochester Post-Bulletin in 1965. Dalen and reporter Thomas Furth meshed their images and words in a near full-page spread in the Post-Bulletin.

Paul Butters, 4, travels in a more relaxed position on his skateboard in this photo that appeared April 22, 1965 in the Rochester Post-Bulletin. Newspapers.com. For more images from photographer Merle Dalen in that edition.

"I was participating in a lot of other sports at the time and skateboarding was not a hobby for me like it is with young people today with the jumps and different things," Gill told the Sports Time Machine. "We were using it for entertainment and a little bit of transportation at the time."

Gill points out any safety equipment, such as a helmet, was not a consideration during that era. He said its been a long time since he's jumped on a board and rides more bike now than he did as a child.

"I have grandkids and they aren't skateboard crazy," he said. "We've had a few around the house but it's been a number of years for me, it'd go back all the way to the '60s."

Injuries pile up

Skateboarding and injuries went hand in hand as naivety or overconfidence soon drove elbows, wrists and knees to the pavement.

Fargo city commissioners did not deem skateboarding any more dangerous than many other sports. When DeMolay asked to hold a skateboard meet in May 1965, Mayor Herschel Lashkowitz asked “Just what is this skate boarding?”

“That’s what you read about on the front page of today’s Forum,” commissioner Kenneth Johnson replied, noting a story about two boys’ injuries caused by skateboards.

In June 1965, the National Safety Council reported five deaths and 200 people had been injured skateboarding across the U.S. by skateboards in just a few months.

One Missouri father had had enough.

With his 12-year-old daughter in a cast as a result of a skateboarding accident, he threw the family’s six boards into a bonfire, proclaiming, “This ought to save some money.”

And newspapers were quick to report injuries, even involving older surfers.

The West Central Tribune in Willmar reported two Montevideo adults suffered two broken wrists with another fractured their leg. The Fargo Forum reported a 30-year-old woman fractured a hip and a 37-year-old female broke her wrist.

“I’ll say we have,” said head nurse Margaret Shimmin of St. Luke’s emergency room in Fargo, when asked if there had been any skateboarding patients there in a May 2, 1965 story. Shimmin said there were about a dozen patients she has dealt with during her shifts.

“Some of the patients are rather sheepish when they tell you they were hurt skateboarding,” she told Forum reporter Gifford Herron.

Trampolines, water skiing and contact sports were surely causing their share of emergency room visits. Even the hula hoop, as Herron wrote, had its own risks as “oldsters threw their backs out of kilter from body gyrations they shouldn’t have tried at their age.”

Police in Minot, North Dakota, were busy with patrolling various hilly streets as daring skateboarders tried out speedy new moves in traffic. In Bismarck, thrill-seeking skateboarders found a stretch of inclined pavement on the State Capitol grounds a perfect spot to hold time trials and obstacle course events.

Dealing with it

Cities questioned their ordinances. Parents questioned their purchases. Kids questioned what other tricks can be performed.

Lead, South Dakota, put its foot down on skateboards, banning them entirely by April 1965.

Forum columnist Wayne Lubenow caught wind of a new policy at Moorhead's South Junior High ��, where kids on crutches from skateboard accidents were released five minutes early from class to avoid being trampled in the hallways between classes.

A seventh-grader vouched for the policy, saying six kids in her class alone had broken bones from skateboarding. All this by April 25, 1965, leading Lubenow to close his column:

“If you don’t have a broken leg from surfing, you aren’t anything, man.”

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