Month: April 2015

Baseball In A Hockey Town (Walt Whitman, a cold day in North Dakota, and the American Game)

“I like your interest in sports ball, chiefest of all base-ball particularly: base-ball is our game: the American game: I connect it with our national character….Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic! That’s beautiful: the hurrah game! well—it’s our game: that’s the chief fact in connection with it: America’s game: has the snap, go, fling, of the American atmosphere—belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life”
-Walt Whitman

My daughter and I went out to the University of North Dakota baseball game against Chicago State last Sunday, and typical of early April in our area, it was cloudy, windy, and cool. From our vantage point on the first base line, I noticed to the 2 indoor ice hockey rinks across the street. No doubt, like all of these facilities in Grand Forks, they were likely full in use. Hockey is king here; baseball is kind of an afterthought, but many follow the Minnesota Twins- mostly after the NHL Stanley Cup has been handed out in June. Wintertime in the city parks and back yards brings little outdoor rinks, usually busy with kids in pickup games dreaming of glory at the U, or hoisting Lord Stanley’s Cup. The sports culture here is clearly hockey oriented- very Canadian-like in its fanaticism, but really has its own identity. It is really a big time college sports experience, not unlike what you’d see at big football schools like Nebraska (where I did grow up), or basketball schools like Duke. My daughter did grow up here, however, and she loves the fast paced, hard-hitting, yet athletic and graceful skaters of her beloved North Dakota team. We’ve seen 2 national championships together, and she has a closet full of shirts and jerseys, including a team autographed one from 2010.

In making a run at minor league baseball in Grand Forks, Minot, Bismarck, and Fargo in the mid 1990’s, a major flood put the kibash on the Grand Forks Varmints, and soon the others failed as well. Save for Fargo, now North Dakota’s lone franchise, pro baseball is gone in North Dakota. They have a great little park, holding about 4500 people, new enough to have nice amenities, but also has the neat feature of having the same outfield dimension as old Yankee stadium. It’s a fitting tribute to Fargo’s own Roger Maris, the ex-Yankee and one-time single season home run record holder in the big leagues (although many in Fargo still think that he does, dismissing the steroid era home run hitters like Bonds and McGwire). Fargo’s ballpark plays a lot like Wrigley Field in Chicago with its wind and fickle temperatures. We’ve seen dozens of games and several championships there in the last 15 years, and the fans are loyal, but it’s not like a hockey night in North Dakota; the modern, pro-style arena packed with 12,000 fans and a broadcast that reaches the entire state generating the proverbial Monday morning “water cooler” talk.

My Grandpa Nyquist loved baseball, particularly his beloved St. Louis Cardinals; we spent some of his last days together watching the 1999 major league playoffs on TV. We spent many hours working on the farm in south central Nebraska listening to games on the radio, sometimes into the twilight. I am thinking of him today, smoking his pipe, occasionally telling me about the greats he saw at old Sportsman’s Park like Hall of Famer Stan Musial. Lindsey was just a young child when my Grandpa passed. I wish he was here to see his great granddaughter  clapping and yelling as an opposing batter is out on a close play right in front of us at first base on this Sunday afternoon.

The wind howls out to left field, aiding North Dakota batters to the tune of 15 hits, including 4 home runs. It’s a blow-out, but we’re having a great afternoon as Lisa brings us some lunch in the picnic area. Soon enough, summer will be here, and we’ll likely make the rounds of Fargo, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Winnipeg (another hockey town with baseball), and maybe even Chicago. Although she doesn’t say, I can see that my sports buddy is drawn in by the chance to reflect, think, and enjoy some time outside in a singular, almost literary way that only baseball, the greatest game, the American game, offers.

Play ball. 

The Forks

On the corner where the old southside neighborhood’s angled streets meet the squared off south end of downtown, there is a convenience store that may be one of the most diverse places in the city.  Although the university at large represents a number of nationalities and backgrounds, the focal point that is this store is most interesting. 

Right across the street is the homeless shelter; the police station is one block north entering downtown; 3 churches are on the same block, 2 of which face the parking lot; the large downtown high school, Grand Forks Central, is about 3 blocks away, many downtown businesses are closeby,and there are numerous law offices around the courthouse to the northeast.   In the late afternoon, this corner is filled with students, people from the shelter (many of whom have come to North Dakota from points around the country looking for work), businesspersons closing out their day, police officers getting coffee, and people from the neighborhood, like me, out for a walk or maybe to grab a simple grocery item.  Most everyone smiles, someone holds the door for me, and stories are shared as we all make our way. 

As I start walking the block or so to my house in the historic neighborhood,  I’m thinking of the nearby Forks of the Red and Red Lake Rivers, another more ancient junction near here, as a gathering place also in the near southside.  I’m thinking that then, like now, many different stories have lead here; some tragic, some hopeful, some more routine, yet all richly human in our passage.