The Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm is calling for players to join a “vintage” baseball team resurrecting the old Chisholm Orators to play in a league this summer. PHOTO: via Minnesota Discovery Center.
Here’s the deal, see. They’re forming a ball club, see. Up at the Minnesota Discovery Center, see. Yeah, the old Ironworld. Yeah, by the Glen Location, see. Grow your best muttonchops and handlebar mustache, see. We’re getting the Orators back together. That’s right, the Chisholm Orators, terrors of the infield back when Silent Cal Coolidge was our man in the White House. It’ll be the bee’s knees, see. Now you’re on the trolley!
That’s right, the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm announced yesterday it is calling for men and women to join a “vintage” Iron Range baseball team to play in a statewide historical league this summer. Oh, it’s a real baseball team, but they’ll play by the rules that existed in the period from 1857-1864, which included one-hop outs and a wide array of ground rules that vary game to to game. This particular team will resurrect the name of an old semi-pro team called the Chisholm Orators.
The Chisholm Orators played in the Duluth-Mesaba baseball league, an “outlaw” or independent minor league that operated outside the purvey of Major League Baseball in the early 20th Century. In fact, in its prime the Duluth-Mesaba was one of the biggest and arguably best independent leagues in the country.
A little poking around led me to “When the Black Sox Played on the Range,” a fascinating story about the Duluth-Mesaba League by Anthony Bush written for Zenith City Online. Apparently, in 1922 the Duluth White Sox franchise was struggling in the league. About midway through the season they folded. The league needed another team to finish the White Sox schedule, but how do you find one on short notice? Perhaps the year gives you a clue what they did. In 1919, eight members of the major league Chicago White Sox threw the World Series for payouts by gamblers. The resulting “Black Sox” scandal led to those eight players, including greats like Buck Weaver and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, being banned from professional baseball for life.
Banned from any “official” professional baseball, that is.
Outlaw leagues like the Duluth-Mesaba could do what they wanted, and in 1922 what they wanted was to bring back the Black Sox to play some of the Iron Range’s best teams. While all eight disgraced players were signed to play on the Range that summer, Jackson never showed. Regardless, the other ex-pros played against the Orators, the Hibbing Colts, the Eveleth Reds and other teams from the region. The fact that the Black Sox went 4-8 tells you about the quality of baseball on the Iron Range at the time. Please, read Bush’s whole story for the full effect.
But wait — you also remember that Chisholm was the home of Dr. Archibald “Moonlight” Graham, the one-time baseball prospect who would go on to be a family doctor for two generations in his hometown, right? And that Graham was featured in the novel “Shoeless Joe,” which became the movie “Field of Dreams” in which the ghostly visage of Shoeless Joe Jackson helps connect a man to his dead father?
Mind. Blown. You can’t make this stuff up. Well, you can and some people did. But it’s all copacetic.
If you’re interested in going out for the “new” Chisholm Orators, read more here. It’s open to men and women ages 18 or older. They need to hear from you before May 1. The Orators play four games, a double header in Chisholm on June 6, a game down in Stillwater on July 18 and another Chisholm game on Aug. 8.
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