It's coming up on 9 months since we moved to Middle of Nowhere, Minnesota, and to be honest, I'm still adjusting, and I generally still miss city life. But one of the big items in the pro column of living here is being able to see free ball 8 blocks from my house every summer. The Minnesota Town Ball season has been starting up the last few weeks, and I've gotten to the home openers of both of our local teams, the Rockies and the Springers. Both games were 7:30pm weeknight games, which are selfishly super easy for me to bike 5 minutes to after I help put the kids to bed - as I'm sure many of the players do as well.
The Brewers laid the wood to the Rockies last week Friday, and the Springers returned the favor to them on Wednesday with a 12-0 spanking that was called after 6 innings due to a combination of rain and embarrassment. It's not easy to even find game schedule information for town ball, let alone box scores, so I'm not going to even attempt to dissect the games or the players. And that's honestly kind of the point of town ball. It doesn't matter who wins or loses, or how many times the pitcher didn't cover 1st base on a ground ball, or how many errors the fat immobile third baseman made, or how many calls the one umpire blew. It's about being out in the community and supporting the local 9, and I'm excited to be a part of that now as a Cold Spring resident. And apparently, I also need to be a Luxemburg fan, since we wear the same caps.
touch with baseball when his childhood heroes Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, and Jim Gantner retired but the Great Home Run Chase of 1998 reignited his passion. As a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Erik became involved with the campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity. With this group Erik traveled to Portland, OR and Baltimore, MD to work on construction projects and help the group raise $25,000 to partially sponsor a house in Milwaukee. Also at UWM, Erik met Peter Nagel. The two attended their first Brewers game together during Opening Weekend 2003. Despite their failure to ignite the coals at their first tailgate, the two had a blast and were soon making weekly trips to the ballpark. Erik has gone on to several colleges and changed careers several times, and has moved all the way out to New Hampshire, but has always stayed true to his baseball roots by holding part-time stadium usher jobs. To this day he looks back fondly on his incredible cross-country journey.
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