Unheralded

JIM THIELMAN: Bucket Lists? We Don’t Need No Stinking Bucket Lists

It was pure genius when the crooner who said, “I don’t really like any kind of work” created the grandfather of all golf tournaments. Bing Crosby’s golf tournament was unlike any other. In the 1960s, A-list celebrities like Bob Hope, Danny Thomas and Glen Campbell brought in television sponsorship money, which brought the “The Crosby” and the Pacific Ocean to …


Unheralded

JIM THIELMAN: Hall Of Fame Honor? Thanks, But No Thanks

Joe Mauer didn’t reject his induction to the Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame this summer, and if he gets enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame next year, he won’t turn that down, either. I’m not saying he should. It’s just that no one turns down an award. Who are you to deny your admirers if you’re to be …


JIM THIELMAN: If You Love Fireworks, You’ll Make Something Of Yourself

You could still play catch at 9:30 as July 4 loomed the other night. Even with the crawl of time, anyone who grew up in Minnesota carries the souvenir of having wrung every glimmer from the penetrating summer sun. Nearly 16 hours of daylight made the week leading to the Fourth of July glorious in the Red River Valley, and …

JIM THIELMAN: Rose In The Hall? Bet It Won’t Happen

The Baseball Writers Association of America will announce the results of its 2023 Hall of Fame vote Tuesday, followed once again by griping about the 1992 election. That was the first year Pete Rose was eligible but left off the ballot, which turned Pete into a cause célèbre. He was one lucky feller that day. Not being in the Hall …

JIM THIELMAN: When The ‘Aw Shucks’ Boys Chased The Babe’s Record

There will be some chit-chat about Roger Maris this month at North Dakota coffee shops and saloons because Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees is chasing the slugger’s single-season home run record. North Dakotans still claim that Maris’ 61 homers in 1961 remain the legitimate, nonsteroid record. North Dakotans still claim Roger Maris as their own, even though he …

JIM THIELMAN: At A 50th Reunion: Fewer Witnesses

I arrived early to my 50th high school class reunion after hitting a bucket of golf balls with Dad’s clubs, the same clubs we used when I last hit a bucket of balls in 1989. It seems that range balls are no longer purchased after a stroll to the pro shop. A machine near the tees plops them into your …

JIM THIELMAN: Beer Here? Not Any More

The best vendors at the ballpark snapped out quips and nonsense, thick as mustard on a hot dog. They poured a beer, handed over a soft pretzel and spun out a story about a mother-in-law they didn’t have or a fish they never caught. Those nearby leaned in to listen. Vendors made fans part of the game, like foul balls …

JIM THIELMAN: How Robinson’s No. 42 Went From Insignificant To Iconic

Accolades will shower Jackie Robinson once again this April 15, the 75th anniversary of him scaling baseball’s racial wall. Every big leaguer since 2007 has worn Robinson’s No. 42 on April 15. It’s the only number retired by all 30 major league teams — the first retired by an entire sport. It held no significance for him. Robinson played when …

JIM THIELMAN: That ‘Call From The Hall’ Is Backed By Intrigue

When former Minnesota Twins Tony Oliva and Jim Kaat “got the call” from Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame this month, it came from Jane Forbes Clark. Few ask, “Who is Jane Forbes Clark?” Well, she chairs the Hall of Fame’s board in Cooperstown, N.Y., where in 1839 Abner Doubleday was said to invent the game of baseball. He did …

JIM THIELMAN: Ken Boyer Derailed My Grand Notion Of Life

You know the world holds boundless possibilities when you live near the only golf course in the nation with the front nine in one state and the back nine in another. So when I was 6, I announced that everyone should reach age 12, then start over. There were a helluva lot of big thinkers through history. None of them …

JIM THIELMAN: Baseball Is Disappearing Into The Corn Field

An Iowa farmer builds a baseball diamond where corn should grow in the 1989 film “Field of Dreams.” Soon, ghosts play baseball. For legal reasons, actor Jimmy Earl Jones plays an author not named J.D. Salinger. The resonant bass voice of Jones says: “They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn into your driveway, not knowing …

JIM THIELMAN: My Big Brother Was A Rental

Uncle Bert left Washington, D.C., each July, along with everyone else who worked for the federal government. The nation’s capital is built “on a tangle of woods and swamps.” It’s sweltering in the summer. Bert’s family of four drove to his childhood farm in Iowa, then up to my hometown, a small Minnesota river burg where his wife was born. …

JIM THIELMAN: Hottest Twins Home Opener Offered Plenty, Except Beer

It was a record 90 degrees at Metropolitan Stadium when the Minnesota Twins opened their home baseball season April 22, 1980. The math should have been simple: 36,000 fans + 90 degrees = extra beer vendors. Also in the equation: Every college kid in the Twin Cities would skip class. The drinking age was 19. The Met was a frowzy …

JIM THIELMAN: Travels With Larry

My limp, perspiring frame was draped over a table in a small railway station in a small Spanish town. “Want some water?” my sister asked. Something like “uhnnnnh” slid out of my mouth. “Eggs?” “Urrrrrrgh.” “A Coke?” “Ahhhnnnnhu.” I blamed my brother-in-law. Larry, a college prof, was on a Fulbright Scholarship at the university in Alcala de Henares, Spain. It’s …

JIM THIELMAN: The Show Goes On — So Break A Leg

Doc Kippen looked down at me through black-rimmed glasses, bows disappearing into his gray hair at the temples. “I wish I had a bullet for you to bite on, Jimmy.”  I was on my right side, left foot pulsing with each heartbeat as the ankle hovered above my left hip. It could have been someone else’s leg. I had no …

JIM THIELMAN: Mom’s Lesson Went Up In Smoke

It was an example of how to treat people. It didn’t occur to me that it wasn’t just chitchat as I dried the dishes weeks before we were to fly to Washington, D.C., to visit relatives during the last summer of the Kennedy administration. I was down to the silverware — the low ROI portion of dish drying — as …

JIM THIELMAN: My Only Law Class Was An Injustice

The last time I restrained a black man was when I spotted Vince in the Moorhead State University  bookstore. He was from King George, Va, about midway between the Civil War capitals of Washington, D.C, and Richmond, Va. Vince was back for our senior year in college after months of floating on the Potomac, or whatever people “back East” did …

JIM THIELMAN: He Was A War Hero; I Had No Idea

Earl was my best friend at church, which was across the Red River in North Dakota. He didn’t attend my Minnesota grade school and was Native American. That made him like most other kids in church, except he and I had been baptized on the same day. And his dad was a war hero. I mean a “let’s make a …

JIM THIELMAN: What? They Closed The Barbershop?

The coronavirus has closed a lot of businesses, including barbershops, whose gravitational pull was once the envy of any trade. Shuttering these shops decades ago would have gagged communication in small towns and urban neighborhoods. Any news worthwhile to the citizenry was heard in Dad’s barbershop, long before it arrived at the newspaper office. The simple marketing genius of a …

JIM THIELMAN: We Gave It A Shot

Neil Armstrong took one giant step onto the moon on Mom’s birthday in 1969. She took one small step onto the noggins of stratified thinkers about three years later. It was an era of ritualized nonsense in high schools. Didn’t tuck your shirt after gym, the last class of the day? Some assistant principal who spent the Korean War pushing …

JIM THIELMAN: A Lesson Learned From ‘The Summer Of Dread’

The grade school teacher would hand you a yellow-sleeved envelope containing your final report card each spring during our grueling 1960s public education in the Red River Valley.  She would gleam and wish you a fine summer, then gallop like Secretariat toward any saloon, pool hall or campsite where children were not allowed. On the back of the report card …

JIM THIELMAN: When The Ragamuffin Becomes Fact, Print The Ragamuffin

John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” might be the most aching, life-ain’t-fair western film. Told in long flashback, it ends with a newsman trashing the notes from an interview that revealed who really pinged an ornery outlaw. “You’re not going to use the story?” asks Jimmy Stewart’s tired, flawed hero. The newsman explains, “This is the West. When …

JIM THIELMAN: It’s A Short Walk From The Sunshine To The Shade

These are panic-stricken days. Each win by one of baseball’s better teams, the Minnesota Twins, brings the boys closer to disaster. The team’s World Series prospects flicker with each home run that is launched through precisely calculated launch angle. The victory cigars grind to ash with each strikeout notched through optimum spin rate. After too many dreary seasons to count, …

JIM THIELMAN: Twins Have A Bead On A Mardi Gras Season

The American League Central standings have barely shifted since the Cleveland Indians fell from a first-place tie with the Minnesota Twins on April 21. The turbulent April weather that could have crinkled a pitching staff has been forgotten. The Twins lead their division by 11.5 games. It could become a Mardi Gras season. This franchise has reached 100 wins just …

JIM THIELMAN: Ayyyy, What’s Up, Deck?

Who would think stark realizations about shrewd capitalism and insight to human nature could come from watching nine innings of pantomime baseball? Not this little black duck, as Daffy would say during cartoons in which Bugs Bunny was the smart one and Daffy was, well, daffy. Because the Minnesota Twins have had more bad seasons than good since moving into …

JIM THIELMAN: Haircut Blood — A War Story

The Panama Canal had long disappeared. The wackiest ship in the Navy had no land in sight when Ellsworth Gregor Buechel of Pittsburgh sat down for a haircut at sea. He didn’t call the vessel he was on by its rightful name, the APL-14. He called it “The Ritz Carlton”: A football-field long, unpowered ship, four decks high, towed by …

JIM THIELMAN: Can’t Die; I Haven’t Figured Anything Out 

Jazz the Cat thudded to the master bedroom’s wood floor followed by rapid tapping at 3:30 a.m. It sounded like a seizure. I went to college. Turning on the light proved me right once again. Cats with cancer migrating to their central nervous system don’t come home from the emergency veterinarian. There, they stopped the seizures with valium at 4 …

JIM THIELMAN: Fate — Life’s Tricky Pal

One of Dad’s tasks as autumn hummed into winter was lifting his golf clubs from the car trunk and storing them in the basement. He was doing this one October when I was about 16. “Why’d you ever come back to Minnesota from San Diego after the war?” I asked. “You could play golf all year.” Fate had made the …

JIM THIELMAN: Maybe Oliva Is Too Good For The Hall Of Fame

After we arrived at the expansive field on the outskirts of Cooperstown, N.Y., that smoldering Sunday in July 2001 for Kirby Puckett’s Hall of Fame induction, Tim, Shari and I needed to visit the port-a-potties, all blue, lined in a row by the road. We joined one of the dozens of human anaconda lines packed with tomorrow’s sunburn victims. A …

JIM THIELMAN: Christmas Letters: The Good, The Bad

I grew eager each December when the Christmas cards feathered out from a neatly stacked pile into a pitcher’s mound on the dining room buffet. It meant the one mimeographed Christmas letter would soon arrive. As I reached junior high, I couldn’t wait for what was the genre’s quintessential stereotype. The letter — who had a mimeograph machine? — addressed …

JIM THIELMAN: In Our Family, Even The Bigamist Was A Veteran

This blog was originally posted on Unheralded.fish’s Facebook page Monday. Ah, Veterans Day. It did not exist by that name the day I was born. But has every day since. That’s my slim contribution. Along with being a No. 19 draft choice in the Vietnam lottery. The closest I have come to winning a lottery. Then the Paris Peace Accord …

JIM THIELMAN: Uncle Joe’s Surprising Legacy

About a half dozen years after World War II, Uncle Joe rattled through some woods around Minnesota’s west-central lake country and started to frame a cabin. It was to be about 600 square feet in a clearing with a southern exposure. In winter, the struggling sun would bathe the windows facing the lake, making even a February day a little …

JIM THIELMAN: No Baseball Owner Would Be This Candid Today

Twins President Calvin Griffith letter to Jim Thielman – July 1974 Whatever I wrote in that letter to Calvin Griffith in 1974, it didn’t include any profanities. I told the first owner of the Minnesota Twins about it a few years later. “Did I write back?” he asked. He said it was his habit to take phone calls and respond …

JIM THELMAN: Jubilación — Maybe We Should Embrace It

The Spanish word for retirement is “jubilación.” I learned Spanish when I rode with Juárez. Benito — we were on a first-name basis — never retired. He died at his desk reading a newspaper, by one account. So I will be avoiding desks and periodicals from here on. In the past year of reading about the challenging responsibility of retirement, …

JIM THIELMAN — Opening Day: It’s Greek To Me

Dunno why, but for the past half-century, Major League Baseball has missed the fun-filled opportunity to have Don Demeter throw out the first pitch of each season. The lanky, giraffe-necked Oklahoman will be 83 this year and retired from baseball for 50 years. It’s not as if he couldn’t have been capably handling this chore. If you’re not starting to …

JIM THIELMAN — A Sharp Razor Might Take The Edge Off These Days

When winter was packing a punch, the man would be outside Thielman’s Barber Shop sitting in a car, motor idling. On summer mornings, he’d likely be in a suit standing by the door, probably smoking a heater. Dad arrived, either in cold darkness or dewy early dawn, unlocked the door, flicked on the lights and knew what to do on …

JIM THIELMAN: So You’ve Been Asked To Write A Eulogy — Now What?

It’s always summer. A few days until the Fourth of July in a small Minnesota town surrounded by lakes. For nearly 50 years, that was the setting each time I thought of my cousin, Dave. So I had the beginning written when I was invited to do his eulogy. Even though I never considered myself for this role, I didn’t hesitate …

JIM THIELMAN: Happiest Cat Ever Born Dies

On a peaceful, moonlit, October night in 1999, Bob the Remarkable Cat coiled around a gravely ill feral kitten. Bob was in little better shape. His long tail was a mysterious stub and a gash decorated his left side. Threads of gangrene had begun weaving through him. A dust of stars scattered when dawn broke on the outskirts of Detroit …

JIM THIELMAN: What I Didn’t Know About Uncle Hugo

Dad looked at the clock one night and said, “It was Hugo’s birthday today. I should have called him.” He was closest to Hugo, his oldest brother. (Hugo, left, and Dad, pictured above). “I feel a little bad about that.” It was only about 9 o’clock, but that was it. Truly, it was that thought that counted. Dad and his four …

JIM THIELMAN: What’s The ‘Rush,’ Paul Ryan?

Do we have video? “Rushed.” By ambulance? Usually “rushed” in a headline suggests dire health issues. Which, I guess, dovetails with the topic of health care. Or do you see him in more of a sprint? Capitol to White House. That’s like a 2-mile run. I think the world record for the now-defunct 2-mile run is about 8 minutes. And …

JIM THIELMAN: Did Whack To Hand Cost Cubs ’45 Series?

Hitler was barely dead when the Chicago Cubs lost the 1945 Series to Detroit in seven games. The analog clock has stood still for the Cubs since. Until now. So with the Cubs headed to the World Series, you’ll hear some names. Like Phil Cavarretta. He was the National League Most Valuable Player in 1945 and the original “Mr. Cub,” …

JIM THIELMAN: In This Election, It’s Not Him, It’s Me

To this day, I have no idea about Dad’s political leanings. When you run a business in a small town, you don’t want to give people a reason to find another place to do business, he said. Dad’s response to political comments was, “Oh? Is that so?” A well-chosen phrase that suggests both surprise and agreement to someone immersed in …

JIM THIELMAN: Muhammad Ali Called Me An Idiot, And It Was Great

I had just turned 26 when Muhammad Ali came to WFMC. World Famous Mayo Clinic. It was a deadline press conference held in a bland, beige conference room at the Kahler Hotel in Rochester, Minn. At any major press conference today, there is sponsorship signage in the background and lecterns adorned with expensively researched brand logos. “Tell the agency to …