The South Dakota All-Stars

The Basin League mascot, as drawn by the Rapid City Journal

I get a lot of emails in my day job, with story pitches or about upcoming events and I breeze through most of them. But when I see an email about baseball and history, I’m willing to pay a little closer attention. 

The South Dakota Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre has a display at their museum called “Play Ball! The National Pastime in South Dakota.” Now, I haven’t seen the display in person but it appears to be right up my alley.

And then I read this quote from Jay Smith, who is the director of the museum and this blog post was hatched:

“People do not realize how many exceptional baseball players played baseball in South Dakota,” commented Smith. “Players like Jim Palmer, Bob Gibson, Don Sutton and many more -- the talent level of baseball in South Dakota produced players that went on to play in the All-Star Game at the major league level. I think that our visitors could put together a highly competitive All-Star team from those players with South Dakota roots.”

Hmm, yes, I think I could do that. South Dakota, for never having a professional team and never having more than a million people live here, has a really fascinating baseball history. Most of the greats’ connections to South Dakota came through the Basin League, the semi-pro league that existed in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s along the Missouri River basin. It usually consisted of college kids who had not yet been signed by big-league teams. It did, at times, include some former professionals, but generally the rosters were filled with unsigned players who still had baseball in their future.

The teams came and went (13 South Dakota cities had teams over time, plus Valentine, Neb.) but the league has had an incredible roster of players who later saw the Big Leagues. There was also the Aberdeen Pheasants, who were a longtime Class A affiliate of the St. Louis Browns and the Baltimore Orioles. Having more than 30 years of minor league talent in Aberdeen gives us more than a handful of Major Leaguers.  

To make our team, I had a few ground rules: I want players who have played for an extended stint in South Dakota and have had professional success. I could have counted players born in South Dakota or who played in college in the state but I’ve excluded those players. South Dakota does have some interesting ties from people who were born here, such as Keith Foulke and Terry Francona.)

I’m not counting players like Hank Aaron or Roger Maris or Gaylord Perry, who were all part of the Northern League and would have played in South Dakota over the course of their stints with other teams. For example, Aaron played in Eau Claire, Wis., in 1952 and rounded into form, becoming the league’s rookie of the year and Lou Brock played for the St. Cloud Rox in 1961, hitting .361 and jumping to the Chicago Cubs the next season.

The list is subjective and I feel like I could definitely be missing some guys. I’d be interested to hear your feedback, because I know there’s some out there …

Starters:

Catcher: Johnny Edwards (Pierre, 1958) - A career .242 hitter, Edwards makes our lineup as a starter for his well-rounded game. He put up solid offensive figures from 1962 to 1965, earning three All-Star appearances for Cincinnati. But it was the arrival of Johnny Bench that forced Edwards to be traded in 1968 to St. Louis. He was a two-time Gold Glove defender and was known for his defense in the National League

First base: Mike Fiore (Aberdeen, 1964) - Fiore wasn’t a big-time major leaguer but our team would be happy if he could channel his 24-year-old season in 1969 with Kansas City. There he hit .274 with 12 home runs (including the first home run in Royals franchise history!) and 35 RBI but also slugged .848 in 107 games. He fell off badly in later years, plagued by injury and struggling at the plate but we need a potential slugger and Fiore was that at his best.

Second base: Dick Green (Mitchell, 1959) - Green is the only player on our team that grew up in South Dakota, despite being born in Sioux City. After he graduated from Mitchell High School in 1959, he played for the local Basin League team at shortstop. Green worked his way up to the Kansas City Athletics in 1964, where he hit .264 in his first full year and hung in the lineup until he had a career year in 1969. He hit .275 and knocked in 64 in Oakland. Green was on three championship teams from 1972 to 1974 and he won the postseason MVP award for his play in the 1974 series, despite going hitless. His fielding was stellar, turning six double plays including tying the record with three in one game during Game 3. He would be released before the start of the 1975 season, ending the 12-year major league run with a lifetime average of .240 and 427 runs scored.

Third base: Jerry Adair (Huron, 1957) - Adair only played about 60 games at third base over five seasons but we’re making sure he’s on the field. A career .254 hitter, Adair was known as a great clutch hitter, according to Boston teammate Carl Yastzemski. He was one of the best defensive infielders in the mid-1960s, leading the league in fielding percentage.

Shortstop: Mark Belanger (Aberdeen, 1964) - In 1964, Mark Belanger was coming off a year of service in the U.S. Army when he arrived in Aberdeen to play in the Northern League. He was the league’s rookie of the year in 1964 at age 20, even though he only hit .226. He would be up with the Orioles in 1965, where he would stay for 17 years, but like the rest of our lineup, he was a light hitter and batting .228 for his career. (He had a very respectable .300 OBP for his career.) During his 1976 season, he made the All-Star game and finished with a .270 average. But his glove was his best asset, leading the AL in defensive WAR every year from 1973 to 1978 and was an 8-time Gold Glove winner.

Left field: Frank Howard (Rapid City, 1957) - Howard, who stood at 6-foot-8 and 275 pounds, quickly became a Basin League star. He hit .390 and mashed 13 home runs during his 1957 season and was soon a must-watch player in the league. When he graduated to the bigs, he had a 17-year career and hit 382 home runs, including 44 blasts in 1968 to win the home run title that year. For his time in Washington, it was fitting that he was called both “the Washington Monument” and “the Capital Punisher.”

Center field: Del Unser (Pierre, 1964-65) - Unser is our defensive rock in the outfield. He twice led his respective league in double plays turned as an outfielder and was a four-time leader in outfield assists in either the American League or National League. He hit .258 for his career and became a champion at the age of 35, winning with the Phillies in 1980. Unser delivered big RBI doubles in Game 2 and 5 of the 1980 World Series, both in pinch-hitting roles and was 5-for-11 in those playoffs, despite only starting one game.

Right field: Merv Rettenmund (Winner, 1963-64): According to the record books dating back to 1960, Rettenmund holds the single-season Basin League record for home runs with 15 in 1964, which is impressive considering the season was usually never more than 50 games. But Rettenmund never had much sustained slugging in the bigs, even with an OPS+ above average in eight seasons. He was a career .271 hitter who had 66 homers in 13 seasons. He was a part of two championship teams; the Orioles in 1970 and the Reds in 1975.

Bench

Outfield: Lou Pinella (Aberdeen, 1964): Another guy who is more well known for his managerial duties with the Yankees, Reds, Mariners, Devil Rays and Cubs, “Sweet Lou” got that name for his swing. In 1964, at age 20, he played 20 games with the Aberdeen Pheasants and hit .270 and was called up to the Orioles later that year. With more minor league time, Pinella wasn’t formally a rookie in the bigs until 1969, when he won AL Rookie of the Year with the Royals and was with the team in the KC squad’s first five years. He played for the Yankees for 11 seasons after that and amassed 1,705 hits, hitting a career .291. That time with the Yankees put him on two world championship teams before he got a third ring as Reds manager in 1990.  

Outfield: Bob Bailor (Aberdeen, 1971) - Bailor is the perfect guy for a bench spot because he was a utility player for almost all of his career. He hit .264 but only had 9 home runs for his career. During his time with the Pheasants in 1971, he led the Northern League with a .340 batting average and 25 stolen bases. When his career was over after time with the Orioles, Blue Jays, Mets and Dodgers, he was a coach with Toronto and was part of two World Series teams.

Infielder: Dick Howser (Watertown, 1954) - Better known as the future manager of the New York Yankees and the 1985 World Champion Kansas City Royals, Howser had a great first season with the Athletics in Kansas City in 1961. Playing shortstop, he hit .280, stole 37 bases and scored more than 100 runs. But his skills tapered and coaching became one of his best skills.

Catcher: John Stearns (Chamberlain, 1970-72) - Stearns is forever in the record books of the Basin League for his 21-game hit streak for Chamberlain in 1972. A two-sport star at Colorado, Stearns played his first game in the bigs in 1974, coming off the bench in Philadelphia and went 1-for-2. But that would be it for Stearns in Philly, with Bob Boone firmly the full-time catcher. He would be traded to the Mets in a trade involving Tug McGraw. Stearns was never a big hitter (.260 career) but he earned a reputation for hard physical play, breaking Dave Parker’s cheekbone in a collision. A four time National League all-star, Stearns broke the 76-year old NL record for stolen bases by a catcher in 1978 with 25 and was pinch-running late in his career, even as injuries kept him from throwing the ball as a catcher. Stearns was on some terrible teams for the Mets in the 70s, which kept him from the playoffs but he had a fine career.

Infielder: Ted Sizemore (Sturgis, 1965) - A catcher when he played in the Basin League, he would become a swift gloved infielder in the bigs. Sizemore’s best season came when he was 24, winning the 1969 NL Rookie of the Year award with the Dodgers, hitting .271 and driving in 46 runs. His career at the plate never really took off from there and he provided a steady defensive presence for the Cardinals and Phillies in the 70s. Another rock solid defender up the middle for our team, especially at second base.

Pitchers:

Bob Gibson (Chamberlain, 1956) - Probably the best pitcher on this list. Gibson was a 9-time All-Star who won the NL Cy Young in 1968 and 1970 and he won the MVP award in 1968 as well. In that 1968 season, Gibson had an ERA of 1.12 and a WAR of 11.8. He had 268 strikeouts and 28 complete games. The Cardinals have had a lot of great arms and Gibson is probably still the best one. And he played in Chamberlain, South Dakota in the mid-1950s. I can hardly imagine what that was like.

Don Sutton (Sioux Falls, 1964) - Sutton had an incredibly long career of 23 seasons, which started in 1966. He reportedly had a hard time getting signed out of high school in Alabama, leading him to the Sioux Falls Packers. The records show he threw 13 innings of relief on July 22, 1964 to win a 3-2 game over Pierre and was named to the all-star team at the end of the year. He was also used frequently in relief performances. In the majors, Sutton would record 324 wins and have an ERA of 3.26. But it took Sutton a while to reach the Hall of Fame, because he never won a Cy Young award and had only one 20-win season, even though he’s 14th on the all-time wins list. Thankfully, he was voted in on his fifth chance on the ballot in 1998.  

Jim Palmer (Winner 1963, Aberdeen 1964) - Jim Palmer might have forgotten about playing in South Dakota but the baseball fans in Winner and Aberdeen surely have not. From his SABR bio:

After his high-school graduation, Palmer, 17, played summer ball for a team in Winner, South Dakota, a team that included future major leaguers Jim Lonborg, Merv Rettenmund, Bobby Floyd, and Curt Motton. The club lost in the league finals, but Palmer impressed Baltimore Orioles farm director Harry Dalton, who scouted the series. Some league observers thought the 17-year-old Palmer threw harder than anyone they had ever seen. On the 1,200-mile drive home, a friend of Palmer’s (driving Palmer’s car) fell asleep at the wheel, and the car careened into a ditch and flipped several times. There were no seatbelts in the car, and Palmer escaped with a sore left knee, an injury that eventually required surgery. The Orioles were unaware of the injury when they signed Palmer to a $50,000 contract right after he returned home.Just before heading to spring training, Palmer married Susan Ryan, whom he had known throughout high school. The couple headed to Aberdeen, South Dakota, where the Orioles had a Single-A affiliate in the Northern League. Aberdeen ran away with the league pennant, while Palmer finished 11-3 with a 2.51 earned-run average, throwing a no-hitter in June. He battled control problems—130 walks in 129 innings—but otherwise kept the opponents off the bases.

He made the big league club out of spring training in 1965 at age 19. He was a six-time All-Star, all in Baltimore. He won three World Series titles and won three Cy Young awards in a four year span (1973, 1975, 1976) and was a first ballot Hall of Famer. And he ate pancakes on the days he pitched.

Don Larsen (Aberdeen, 1947-48) - At 17, Larsen found himself in Class C baseball in Aberdeen, where he made 16 appearances and was 4-3 with a 3.42 ERA, where Larsen was five years younger than his teammates on average. But fans saw a hint of what type of pitcher he would be in 1948, when he was 17-11 with a 3.75 ERA in 211 innings pitched. Larsen struggled in the bigs some more before latching on with the Yankees and having the ball in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series when Larsen pitched a perfect game for a 2-0 win. The accomplishment helped him to World Series MVP but Larsen never finished with more than 12 percent of the vote for the Hall of Fame and wrapped his career with a 81-91 record over 14 seasons.

Jim Lonborg (Winner, 1963) - Unfortunately, we’re running out of room for guys to be in our all-star team rotation (especially since they used a four-man rotation in that era). Lonborg would provide a good arm in the pen. He won 22 games and struck out 246 batters in his Cy Young winning season of 1967 with Boston. The Red Sox made the World Series that year, going to 7 games and Lonborg pitched three of them, including Game 7. But he ran into a fellow Basin League buzzsaw in Bob Gibson, who the ex-South Dakota pitcher battle, striking out 10 batters in a complete game performance. The Cardinals got to Lonborg for 6 earned runs in 6 innings and the Cardinals won at Fenway Park, 7-2. Lonborg gave up about a hit per inning pitched (2,464.1 IP and 2400 hits allowed) and thanks to the advanced statistics of today, we know he was close to the league average for his career, with an ERA+ of 95.

Bob Turley (Aberdeen, 1949) - Known as Bullet Bob, Turley was known as a power pitcher, which was on display with the Pheasants in 1949, where he went 23-5 with a 2.31 ERA and led the league with 205 punchouts. Turley was playing with the St. Louis Browns by 1951 was traded to the Yankees for the 1955 season. His best season would come in 1958, when he won the Cy Young, the World Series MVP and the Hickok Belt, which awarded the top professional athlete of the year with an alligator-skin belt with a solid gold buckle. Turley

Dan Quisenberry (Sturgis) - One of the best closers of the early 1980s, Quisenberry used a submarine pitching style to lead the American League in saves five times for the Royals, where he helped them win the 1985 World Series. Without an overpowering fastball, Quisenberry had pinpoint control, yielding very few walks and he finished with 244 saves, the sixth-most baseball history when he retired in 1990. We can also look back to Quisenberry, along with Goose Gossage and Bruce Sutter, moving from a style of a relief ace to a 9th inning closer style, that we've come to know now, made popular by Tony La Russa.

Don Schwall (Mitchell, 1957) - The summer before he was an all-conference basketball star at the University of Oklahoma, Schwall was on a standout squad in Mitchell as a pitcher. The next year, he would sign with Boston and he won Rookie of the Year in 1961, when he posted a 15-7 record and had an ERA of 3.22 on a team that was 10 games under .500. That would be a career highlight for Schwall, who would finish with 408 strikeouts in 743 innings pitches and his career was finished after seven seasons and a 49-48 record.

Dave Giusti (Mitchell, 1959) - A palmball master, Giusti would lean on the pitch heavily for the Pirates of the early 1970s, winning Reliever of the Year in 1971 from The Sporting News, a season where the Pirates were World Champions. He had four seasons in a row of 20 saves or more, capped by his 1973 National League All-Star season.

Eddie Fisher (Mitchell, 1957) - Fisher quickly developed his knuckleball, learning in the White Sox bullpen from legend Hoyt Wilhelm. His career would be known for his relief work, including 1965 when he finished fourth for the American League MVP award and made the All-Star team. He made 690 appearances, which is in the top 100 for pitchers all-time.

Dick Radatz (Watertown, 1957) - Before he was known as “The Monster” for continually stumping Mickey Mantle, Radatz had to be convinced to be a reliever by Red Sox legend Johnny Pesky. It was Boston where Radatz made his name, standing at 6-foot-6 and 230 pounds, where he pitched his first 18.1 innings without an earned run and led the American League in saves, games and relief wins in his 1962 rookie year, winning the Fireman of the Year award. He would be an all-star in 1963 when he had 33 scoreless innings in a row and earned the Fireman Award again in 1964, striking out 181 batters in 157 innings, something that won’t ever happen again for a reliever. And it would be over after that. He would play for four other teams in his final five seasons but would never find his form again.

Phil Jackson (Mobridge, 1966) - OK, he’s only on the team for his name. But he famously figured out that baseball wasn’t going to be his thing by playing for a season in Mobridge in the Basin League. He had been at the University of North Dakota when he gave pitching a professional try. He got knocked around and was relegated to mop-up duty. But he soon moved to basketball, where a career as a player and an 11-time NBA champion coach was eventually realized. Good call, Phil.

Manager:

Sparky Anderson - We don't have to overthink this one. The pride of Bridgewater, S.D., Anderson gets to run our club with his championship pedigree. (We fudged our rules a little bit here but it's worth it.) Earl Weaver was also out here in South Dakota for a while but he would hate this lineup of light hitters and defense.

Team outlook:

Our team is about pitching and defense. A one-two punch of Palmer and Gibson would be dangerous and we could lean on Turley, Lonborg, Larsen and Sutton to fill things out. Frank Howard is our slugger and we'll need some timely hitting around him. We're hoping to win a lot of 2-0 and 3-2 games. 

*Sources: Thankfully, a lot of the good Basin League research has been done before me. Darrell Shoemaker of the Rapid City Journal did a nice series in 2003, summing up the highlights of the league. Also my paper, The Daily Republic, had some helpful pieces in its archives. My old boss as a Capital Journal intern, Lance Nixon, had a good story about the Pierre connections earlier this year. A big thanks to the great resources at baseball-reference.com and their minor league pages.