7/14/2009:
Before integrating Major League Baseball and creating the first players' pension fund, Baseball Commissioner Albert "Happy" Chandler was a young college kid playing ball on the northern plains.
Born on this date in 1898, Chandler grew up in Kentucky. While attending college in 1920, he came in contact with University of Kentucky baseball coach Andy Gill. Gill was putting together a semi-professional team to take to Grafton, North Dakota over the summer break. "Those Swedes and Norwegians up there are crazy about baseball," he told Chandler. "You never saw such crazy fans!" Chandler quickly jumped on board at the mention of a one hundred dollar a month salary. As he later recalled, "...it sounded like a gold strike and jamboree combined." And a gold strike it nearly was, at least at one game.
It was the bottom of the ninth in a particularly gritty home game and Chandler's team appeared to be done for. But suddenly, with their outs dwindling, the Grafton team came alive. Chandler described the scene in his autobiography. "Three of our men rapped out little hits, and all at once we had the bases loaded. We had two outs, and I was walking to the plate as the last hitter." Chandler continued, "I took a called strike and then hit a foul. Our three base runners were tense as jackrabbits. All they wanted was for me to connect, and give them a chance to run...I tightened up on the bat...saw a good one coming and whacked it - for a double." All three runners came in and the Grafton team chalked up one more victory.
Pandemonium erupted in the grandstands. As the crowd whooped and hollered, Chandler felt something hard hit his shirt. Then another and another. Confused, Chandler yelled at his coach, "...they're throwing things at me." The coach rushed out to the field, shouting " [they're] silver dollars you idiot! Pick ‘em up!"
Several players ran out to help Chandler. They filled his pockets and put another handful in the bat bag. When he later counted them, he had a hundred and fifty silver dollars! He wrote in his autobiography, "That was a North Dakota custom I could easily get used to."
At summer's end, Happy Chandler went back to Kentucky where he went on to serve as governor, senator and eventually the commissioner of baseball. But he never forgot his summer experiences on the northern plains. In 1946, he returned to North Dakota to dedicate Grafton's new stadium named in his honor, Chandler Field.
Dakota Datebook written by Christina Sunwall
Sources:
Eriksmoen, Curt. Did You Know That...?: 47 Fascinating Stories About People Who Have Lived in North Dakota. Vol. 1: McCleery & Sons Publishing, 2006.
Happy Chandler, Vance H. Trimble. Heroes, Plain Folks, and Skunks: The Life and Times of Happy Chandler. Chicago: Bonus Books, Inc., 1989.