A while back I wrote something about how people didn’t send
postcards anymore. A couple of
days after I posted that bit of wisdom, I received a postcard from a good
friend of “The Teacher” refuting my claim and asking me to write something
about the 1982 World Series.
Apparently, the Teacher had told her friend that I had been at all three
of the games played in Milwaukee.
So this one is for you Will.
Be patient, as there will be a fair amount of meandering before we
actually get to Milwaukee in October of 1982.
I was working
for the Chicago and Northwestern railroad as a trackman based out of
Minneapolis. I had transferred to
the Minnesota division the year before from the Wisconsin division, where I had been
based out of Milwaukee. A trackman
is the grunt that performs the hard labor of building, repairing and
maintaining railroad tracks and rights of way.
1982 was the second year of the grand voodoo economics
experiment that would eventually get us to the collapse of 2008 and the Great
Recession we are still struggling to put behind us. The unemployment rate was at 9.7% and as a result the
railroads were not calling back their employees as they normally did in the
spring. As the summer melted away
and things did not improve, my only opportunity for work was to join a rail
gang that was starting up out of Huron, South Dakota.
And so it was I found myself in South Dakota. My first impression of the eastern half
of South Dakota was how isolated it seemed. In fact, the most impressive thing about the place was its
emptiness. As I looked out
across the flat landscape of endless grass, the place gave me the willies. I was used to cities and all this open
territory somehow felt a little ominous.
It is a little known fact that the Dakotas were two of the last states
settled by Europeans in the continental United States. Looking out across the plains gave me a
new appreciation for the courage of the people who built sod houses and became
the first white residents of South Dakota.
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| Nothing in Eastern South Dakota |
You feel more vulnerable to the whims of weather when there
is nothing between you, a vast prairie and Mother Nature. One day I was working on the
tracks at 7:00am and the sky was blue and the temperature was in the low
seventies. By 10:00am, the
temperature had dropped 25 degrees and a cold rain was being whipped into our
faces by a strong wind. By 1:00pm,
the temperature dropped another 20 degrees and a blizzard had begun. When the natives said, “If you don’t
like the weather wait ten minutes and it will change,” they weren’t kidding.
The isolation went beyond the physical landscape. Huron had been created in the 1880's as a direct
result of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad’s decision to
place a regional office there. The
name refers to the Huron Indians but no one knows who decided to call it that,
but it is believed that someone in the Railroad’s office named the town.
Huron had a population of about 12 thousand and was the
largest town in the immediate area.
There was virtually nothing for someone who didn’t live there to do
and it was a challenge to find places to eat dinner. The place we frequented the most was one of those all you
can eat buffet style barns where the food may not be very good but there is a
lot of it. Cheryl Jean
Stoppelmoor, a Huron native, changed her name to Cheryl Ladd, and replaced one
of the original Charlie’s Angels.
She was a source of civic pride and the buffet barn was reportedly owned
by this lesser or replacement angel.
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| Cherly Jean Stoppelmoor Photo Credit: A European Spanish Fan Site About "Charlie's Angels" |
South Dakota was right in the middle of the campaign to
elect its governor. On the
Republican ticket, Bill Janklow was well known and the newspaper and TV news
shows often-featured stories about him.
As the campaign progressed, I noticed that there had been no mention of
Janklow’s opponent, on TV or in the local press. I took to asking every local I ran into who was running
against the Republican and no one could tell me. On election night, I found out Janklow had won with 70.9% of
the vote. The Democrat was named
O’Brien and I think it was a miracle he had managed to reach 29%.
Janklow would serve 16 years as Governor of South
Dakota. He was the Governor who
pushed through legislation that abolished South Dakota’s law limiting the amount
of interest a bank could charge it’s customers and successfully wooed Citibank
to South Dakota. He also abolished
the state’s department of environmental protection. His political record could probably be debated but it was in
his personal life where he really distinguished himself.
In 1973 Janklow was arrested for drunken driving on an
Indian reservation. The arresting
officer said in his report that Janklow insulted him, resisted arrest, tried to
elude the police and wasn’t wearing any pants. The next day an aide brought him some underwear and pants so
he could leave the police station without unduly hanging out (See Author’s
Notes from Naked Came The Gringo post).
In 1974 he was accused of raping his Native American baby
sitter. He denied the charges and
was never indicted. Later he unsuccessfully sued author Peter Matthiessen and
Newsweek magazine for libel when they published accounts of the accusation.
Janklow went on to be stopped 16 times for speeding when he
was Governor. He wasn’t ticketed for
any of these violations. An
investigation revealed that he had not been given tickets “out of respect for
his office and fear of retribution.”
In 2003, he killed a motorcyclist when he was speeding and ran a rural
stop sign. He was convicted of
second-degree manslaughter and resigned his congressional office the next day.
This finally ended his political career and began his career as a convicted
felon. He went to prison and
settled a civil suit with the family of the deceased for one million dollars.
Quite a record for the man who was the dominant force in the
State’s politics for over 20 years.
I guess if you are a pheasant hunter, like elbow room, and want to be
left alone, that part of South Dakota is for you. About the only thing I, personally, can recommend eastern
South Dakota for is its beef jerky.
Best jerky I have ever eaten.
So, if beef jerky is high on your list of priorities, I can
whole-heartedly recommend the Huron area.
Every morning around 6:30am the gang would meet at a parking
area in Huron and be bused to the work site. The man running the gang was about six foot four inches tall
and two hundred and thirty pounds of muscle. He was Native American and was the highest ranking minority
person I ever ran into on the railroad.
He was also the most intimidating individual I have ever run into,
period. When he would stride down
the tracks people got busy fast and made every attempt not to draw his
attention. My lasting image of him
is when he stood out in a howling snowstorm with just a tee shirt on and drove
the gang to work faster. He was a
warrior. He made me think, if I
had been one of those sod house settlers 130 years ago, and looked out and saw
this guy in my front yard, I would have had to turn to Ma and ask her to fetch
me a clean set of britches. There were a lot of stories about him, all of them
centering on what happened to the sorry characters that crossed him.
In early October the Brewers completed an improbable come
back from two games down in the five game American League Championship Series
when Cecil Cooper drove in the tying and winning runs in the bottom of the
seventh inning of the fifth and deciding game. The Brewers, for the first time in their history, were
headed to the World Series.
The day after the Brewers had punched their ticket to the
World Series, the boss of the rail gang gathered us all together before we
began work and told us that we were behind schedule and we were going to catch
up. From that day on, he told us,
there would be no days off. If you
became ill you would need a doctor’s note detailing your near fatal illness or
lose your job. There would be no
exceptions. He had been short,
direct and to the point and all of us figured come hell or high water we would
work every day till the gang was disbanded.
That evening I received a phone call from my old foreman and
good friend in Milwaukee, telling me that he had a ticket for me for all three
of the Brewers Series home games, and asking me if I could get to Milwaukee for
the games. I thought about the
boss’s speech for about a second and told my friend I would be there. We made plans to meet at the Dairy Bar
on Bluemound Road before the first game in Milwaukee.
After hanging up I immediately started to think about two
problems I was facing. First, and
by far the easiest was the logistics of getting from Huron to Milwaukee. I was
taking turns driving to Huron from Minneapolis with another trackman and this
was the week when I didn’t have a car in South Dakota. I called up the bus
station and asked about taking a Greyhound from Huron to Milwaukee. I found out it took forever to go to
anywhere from Huron. The bus was
out. I thought about hitch hiking
but that mode of transportation had fallen out of favor by then and I didn’t
want to risk being out on the road somewhere when the first pitch was thrown.
I called the airport to see what a round trip ticket to
Milwaukee would run me and found it was more than I could afford. I hung up and thought about my
dilemma. I called the airport back
and asked about the cost of a one-way ticket to Minneapolis and found that
price was acceptable. The plan was
to fly to Minneapolis and pick up my car and drive to Milwaukee. I would then drive directly back to
South Dakota after the last game.
With that problem solved, I turned to my far stickier problem. How was I going to get the time off and
keep my job?
I lay awake that night running half a dozen schemes, out and
out lies, and other strategies for talking my way to the World Series but none
of them felt right. As the night
wore on, I came to the conclusion that my only course of action was to, gasp,
tell the truth. Having made that
decision, I was able to fall asleep.
The next day it was weighing heavily on my mind that, at the
end of the day, I was going to go to the boss’s trailer and make my pitch for
missing work Thursday through Monday.
It wasn’t lost on me that he had made his speech just the day before and
those stories I’d heard about him weren’t easing my mind any.
The work day finally ended and as I made my way toward the
boss’s trailer I still wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to say to him. When I entered the trailer, he
was doing paper work and slowly looked up and said, “What do you want?” I took a deep breath, and said, “A
friend called me last night and he has a ticket for me for all of the World
Series games in Milwaukee. You can
give me permission to go and I will be back Tuesday or you can refuse to let me
go and I will go anyway and not bother to come back at all.” He looked at me for a long moment and
said, “Put your name on that calendar on Thursday and Tuesday.” I picked up a pen off his desk and
wrote my name on the calendar and left the trailer without another word. I had learned early, when you get the
answer you want, get the hell out of there before anyone has a chance to change
his or her mind.
As I left the trailer, I wondered where that spiel had come
from. I hadn’t planned to put my
job on the line and I don’t know if I would have quit if he had called my bluff
but I think it was likely. Happily, I didn’t have to make that call and I was headed to the World Series.
The next night the Series began in Saint Louis and I watched
the Brewers destroy the Cardinals 10 to 0 with a bunch of my railroad
friends. Paul Molitor set a Series
record with five hits and Robin Yount added four more. One of the great things about the World
Series is that it is a series and if you play a poor game early on there is
plenty of opportunity to make up for it.
Game two was played the next night and the Cardinals came
from behind to win. The Cardinals
catcher Darrell Porter, a former Brewer, stroked a two out, two run double that
tied the game at 4 and the Brewers reliever Pete ‘Bigfoot’ Ladd ended up
walking pinch hitter Steve Braun in the bottom of the 8th forcing-in the game
winning run and tying the Series at one game a piece. The next day was a travel day for the Cardinals, Brewers and
me as the Series shifted to Milwaukee.
A friend dropped me off at the Huron airport terminal around
noon. I walked into the
ticketing and waiting area to buy my ticket. The room was about 16 by 20 feet and I walked up to the
counter to buy my ticket for Minneapolis.
That accomplished, I looked around and saw there was another square room
attached to the waiting room that promised cold beer. I asked the desk person how I would know when my flight was
ready for boarding and she told me not to worry about it. About half way through my first beer,
the same woman came and got me and told me my flight had arrived. I followed her out of the terminal and
across the tarmac where a very small jet waited. Just out side the jet were three very fat cowboys, complete
with boots, belt buckles and ten-gallon hats. My first thought was, could this tiny plane get the four of
us off the ground. They were
jovial fellows and we stood around making small talk waiting to get on the
plane. Before long the co-pilot
opened the hatch and we climbed aboard.
Soon we were airborne and then twenty minutes later we were
on the ground in Mitchell, South Dakota and the cowboys got off the plane. The co-pilot parted the curtain that
separated the cockpit from the passengers and said, “It looks like just you and
us for the rest of the way.” So I
settled back for my own personal flight to Minneapolis. There seems to be something between
South Dakota and me when it comes to being alone. Years later, I would find myself in Sioux Falls on business
and went to a big downtown mall to see a movie and found myself the only person
in the theatre. I felt like Elvis.
The next day I started out on the five and a half hour drive
to Milwaukee. When I got there I
could feel the excitement through the car windows. There were banners everywhere and it wasn’t long before I
saw a giant foam Brewer’s logo walking down the street high fiving everyone in
sight. The place was absolutely
giddy with anticipation. It is
amazing how a sporting event can unify a community. I wish some of that magic could be applied to solving hunger
or homelessness but those are complex social dilemmas and the World Series is
about fun and games. Regardless, it is a
really cool feeling when a whole city gets on the same page and everyone shares
a goal and point of emphasis.
The first thing I did was to head to the Dairy Bar to meet
my friend with the tickets. The
bar was full and pre game festivities were in full swing. As I walked in the door, I spotted the
brother of a friend who lived in Fairbanks Alaska. He had come from the frozen north for the Series. All bragging rights relating to
travel to the Series flew out the window.
Of all the bars in Milwaukee, he happened to be sitting in the one I
walked into. Play it again, Sam.
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| The Upper Deck at Milwaukee County Stadium was shaking in the 7th inning of Game 4 Photo Credit: here |
I connected with my friend and after warming up at the bar
we headed over to County Stadium.
One thing was apparent. The
Saint Louis fans and the Milwaukee fans were mirror images. Both cities were
populated with a lot of German beer-drinkers and despite each sides’ loyalty to
their teams, everyone got along swimmingly. The parking lot was full of costumed characters and people
without tickets set up TVs so they could watch from the parking lot and feel
part of the action.
Another great thing about a World Series is that it is
played in the hometowns of the participating teams. As a result, the fat cat to average fan ratio is reversed,
say, from a Super Bowl. Both Saint
Louis and Milwaukee are great baseball towns and a much larger percentage of
their actual fans filled the seats for each of the games.
As we entered the stadium, the anticipation was something
like a physical force. Milwaukee
was primed and ready to explode.
Then Game 3 happened. The
Brewers got behind and never gave their pent up fans anything to cheer
about. Willie McGee, who had hit
four home runs all season, hit two in Game 3 and the Cardinals won 6 to 2,
giving the Cards a two game to one lead in the Series.
The next night Brewer fans again were ready to tear down the
stadium but as the game progressed, and the Cards took a 5 to 1 lead into the
bottom of the seventh inning, anxiety had replaced the euphoria. The fans had sat through 16 innings
with little or nothing to cheer about and it was getting late.
In the bottom of the seventh, a Cardinal error and a Don
Money single put two runners on with two outs. The Brewer’s second baseman Jim
Gantner lit the fuse when he doubled in Ben Ogilvie to make the score 5 to
2. The stadium erupted. I was in the second deck above first base
and the deck was actually vibrating under our feet. Sixteen innings of frustration began to be forgotten. Paul Molitor drew a walk to load the
bases. Robin Yount singled to
right driving in two runs to make it 5 to 4. Cecil Cooper then singled, driving in Molitor and the game
was tied. The crowd was on its
feet and the roar was deafening. I
had never heard anything quite like it and would not hear anything approaching
it until the noise at the 1987 World Series at the Metrodome matched and
exceeded it when 25 years of Minnesota professional sports frustration was
released in the enclosed confines of the Dome. But the Brewers weren’t done. Gorman Thomas singled in two runs after the Cardinals
intentionally walked Ted Simmons and the bedlam hit another level. The party was on. The Cardinals went quietly in the 8th
and 9th and the Series was tied two games apiece. I wonder how much beer was consumed
that night in Milwaukee? I’d like to report I held up my end.
In Game 5 the Brewers took a 6 to 2 lead into the ninth
inning. Robin Yount had a home
run, double and four hits to lead the Brewers. The Cardinals scored 2 in the top of the ninth making the
final score 6 to 4. The Brewers
were headed back to Saint Louis with a three game to two lead and would need
just one more win to secure their first World Series title.
I gathered my frazzled self and drove to South Dakota the
next day. The Brewers would get
clobbered 13 to 1 in game 6 to even the Series. In Game 7 Milwaukee was
leading 3 to 1 in the sixth inning when the Cardinals combined a double, a walk
and two singles to score three runs making it 4 to 3 Saint Louis. The Cardinals added two runs in the
bottom of the 8th and went on to win their umpteenth World Series.
The Brewers wouldn’t see the post season for the next 26
years and wouldn’t win a playoff series for 29 years. They have never won a World Series, but hope springs
eternal. For a brief time in
October of 1982 the city of Milwaukee, in fact the whole state of Wisconsin,
believed. Wait ‘til next year!
Happy Birthday, Will.
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