Rails Baseball RECORD BOOK 1st Edition 1947–2017 Celebrating 70 Years Compiled and written by Anthony Bush ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the following people for their time and memories: Jake Benson, Reid Bordson, Amy Bush, Buster Bush, Chris Bush, Nathan Bush, Mike Davis, Ken Elnes, Tony Flick, Joe Gaboury, Kerry Helquist, Jason Howard, Matt Koski, Rory Johnson, Sand Jokela, Guy LeBlanc, Steve Makitalo, Jason Malec, Scott McLeod, Ray Miles, Dale Nikko, Kelly Olilla, Derek Parendo, Nik Peterson, Rich Petersson, Scott Pionk, Kelly Stahl Okstad, Shawn Roed, Tim Rohweder, Drew Scherber, Josh Schubitzke, Bob Silverness, Joel Stephenson, Troy Warren, Chris Watkins, Kyle Wojtysiak, Scott Wojtysiak, Mike Woods, The Proctor Journal, The Duluth News Tribune, Teddie Meronek of the Superior Public Library, Kris Aho, David Ouse, the staff of the Duluth Public Library, the Proctor Area Historical Society, Ashley McDonald, and anyone I may have forgotten. Thank you for your contributions. I borrowed much of the format of this booklet from one compiled by Andy Niese, the head coach at Eau Claire Regis High School. If you have any questions or comments (or updated information!), please contact me at [email protected]. For more information on Rails baseball, visit railsbaseball.atomicleagues.com. i PREFACE I came to be a coach at Proctor rather unexpectedly in 2004. The previous year had been a rough one. A marriage engagement fell through, my mother died from cancer, and my father was dying from cancer. I was looking for things to do to take up my time and I decided to email my friend from high school, Tim Rohweder, who was the head coach at the time, to see if he could use me as a volunteer with his pitchers come springtime. He got back to me right away saying he could do one better than that, as in how would I like to be a paid assistant coach? I was in my second year as a special education paraprofessional for Duluth Schools—with a 2:15 p.m. end time—so I jumped at the opportunity. This meant leaving my evening job at the US Postal Service’s remote encoding center in West Duluth. I was glad to move on. The pay was good, but the job was tied to my past. I knew the place would close sooner or later anyway (it closed the following year, I believe), and I was eager to make some changes. Baseball has been near and dear to my heart ever since I was four years old, watching Pete Rose in the 1980 World Series on TV with my dad. (I thought Rose was the “first basement” for a while until I figured it out on my own.) But I’d been somewhat out of the game for a few years prior to coaching. My last season as a college player was 2000. I played a few amateur games in 2001. I didn’t play at all in 2002, and I only played one game in 2003 due to spending time with family before and after my mom’s death that July. Years before, baseball twice came to the rescue in my life and here it was again, providing me shelter from the storm. I didn’t have a great high school sports experience. My boyhood dream of becoming the next Larry Bird and Cal Ripken—combined—just wasn’t in the cards. I was the high scorer on my ninth-grade basketball team, but only because all of the good players had moved up to the junior varsity. I quit basketball after the 10th grade, and I only got one hit in three years of varsity baseball. When I graduated, I didn’t have an affinity for Proctor—I was from Pike Lake, after all—and assumed the town would not have any part to play in my future. But those moments on the hard court and diamond provided valuable lessons in dealing with disappointment, being true to myself in the face of the harsh realities of the world, and in motivating me to be the best I can be with the talents with which I was given. And, though I didn’t realize it at the time, providing the basis of understanding and appreciating the idea of being a shining star on a team even if you’re not a star player. I was a somewhat lost and frustrated freshman in college at Bemidji State University, knowing my destiny had something to do with baseball somehow, but how? When? Where? I came home for the summer and didn’t get the railroad summer job for which I’d applied so I was back cooking burgers at the Pike Lake Dairy Queen. It worked out all right in the short run—and, more importantly, the long run—though. I started dating a coworker. She played college soccer and that drove me to take a chance on playing baseball again. So, I tried out for the BSU baseball team that fall. At first I felt like I didn’t belong, being that I was a walk-on sophomore who hadn’t played in an eternity—15 months! There were 100 guys at the first practice. The second day there was 80, and so on through the week. They were cutting themselves by giving up. I worked hard and I liked working hard. I had something to prove to myself, a girl, and anyone who had doubted my abilities when I was in high school (that was ii all in my mind anyway, but, boy, was it a good motivator). At the end of the week, I found out that I made the team. The girl didn’t last, but I sure felt proud of what I’d accomplished. I didn’t care about playing time; I was just glad to be a part of it. The next summer I got the railroad job—I’m sure being a college athlete helped with that. In fact, I worked for the DM&IR for five summers. My younger brother, Nathan, was a good baseball player for Proctor and he decided to join me at BSU. We both made the team that fall. Through no fault of his own, he was ineligible to play due to an NCAA clearinghouse snafu that left a handful of BSU baseball freshmen out in the cold. Then, that winter, I withdrew from a class and was no longer a full-time student. So I was ineligible also. When I went to tell the coach, I was uplifted by what he told me. He said he wished he had an entire team made up of me. People need to hear stuff like that in their lives— an appreciation for their efforts—and I’ve carried that with me from that day forward. Nate and I both missed out as the Beavers won the Northern Sun conference that year. Neither of us returned to BSU. Nate eventually graduated from St. Scholastica, but didn’t play baseball in college even though he was better than me—there was a lesson in that for me, too. I took a semester off from school and worked for Proctor Builders Supply for a couple of months. The job made me realize I needed to return to school. I wasn’t good at it and I didn’t want that kind of job anyway. So, a bit more lost and frustrated than I’d been a few years earlier—another relationship bit the dust that fall —I transferred to UW-Superior for spring semester. I ran into a teammate from the Bayside Vipers, the Superior amateur team for which I’d played the past two summers, as I was walking between classes on a bitterly cold January day. Surprised to see me on campus, he asked if I was going to play baseball for UWS. Honestly, the thought had not occurred to me; I was really just trying to make sense of myself, one step at a time, at the time. But I marched over to the coach’s office that same day and I was welcomed with open arms. (UWS and Itasca Community College were the only schools to contact me about playing baseball after high school besides BSU, but that was only because I’d sent away for information on joining the Beavers). It was a treat to be reunited with my PHS teammate, Josh Schubitzke, and another Proctor connection—pitching coach Dave Erholtz, my old PE and health teacher. I played ball for UWS for three seasons. We had a good time. We lost more than we won, but we won more than most UWS teams. I was a relief pitcher and I got to play. A lot. And I showed my enthusiasm for the opportunity to be there and be a part of a good group of guys. My teammates voted me the 1999 Most Inspirational Player. That meant so much to me then, and it still gives me a thrill to think that I actually have the ability to inspire people, just by being myself. So a few years later there I was again needing a lifeline, and baseball once again came to the rescue. I’d been out in the world and I was returning home to Proctor Rails baseball. Three strikes and you’re in, I suppose. The 2017 season will be my fourteenth season as an assistant coach for Proctor baseball. I’ve played amateur ball continuously ever since I began coaching. Over the years I started a hobby/side job of writing about baseball history for the Society For American Baseball Research.