The 1965 American Legion World Series

Aberdeen has enjoyed hosting many major sporting events in its history. Numerous state championships in various sports as well as some regional national qualifying tournaments have occurred here. Largely forgotten may be one of the most unique national — well, world — championships South Dakota has hosted: the 1965 American Legion World Series.

The 1960s were a good decade for baseball in Aberdeen. The Baltimore Orioles minor league Aberdeen Pheasants won the Northern League championship in 1964. In the same year, the Orioles came to Aberdeen to play the Pheasants, the only time a Major League Baseball team has played in South Dakota. Also in 1964, the American Legion Smitty’s team won state and nearly qualified for the “Little World Series” in the regional tournament in Hastings, Nebraska, losing 1-0 in the championship. The Smitty’s also won state in 1960 and were runners-up four other years in the 1960s. Aberdeen’s Veterans of Foreign Wars Teener program won the 1968 state tournament and played in three others.

1965 was an auspicious year to host the Legion tournament, which bolstered Aberdeen’s cause. It was the 40th anniversary of the 1925 creation of American Legion baseball (thus, 2025 is the 100th anniversary) in, it so happens, South Dakota. In Milbank that year, during the South Dakota state Legion convention, Aberdeen attorney Frank Sieh moved to create American Legion Baseball, setting in motion what the Aberdeen American News would call, “the nation’s greatest youth program.”

PREGAME

A 1946 American News story predicted a Legion world series might come to Aberdeen before too long, since it had hosted several national level playoff tournaments to qualify for the big tourney in 1946, 1949, 1951 and 1953. By the 1960s, Aberdeen might have felt its time had come after seeing all of South Dakota’s neighboring states (except Wyoming) host the tournament, for some cities, multiple times. At the time, these hosts had included Omaha; Miles City, Montana; Minneapolis; St. Paul; Bismarck; Billings, Montana; and Hastings, Nebraska. Regional cities that hosted after Aberdeen included Hastings; Rapid City; Ely, Minnesota; Fargo; and Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

In late summer 1962, the Aberdeen American News reported that the Aberdeen Sydney L. Smith American Legion Post was taking its first steps toward bidding on the 1965 national championship. Several post representatives had attended the recent world series in Bismarck to take its measure.

In addition to the 40th anniversary, they could point to 1962’s state Legion tourney in Aberdeen that the state Legion paper said drew “an alltime record crowd” and “had the highest gate receipts of any three-day tournament to date, and the highest net profit of any tournament South Dakota has seen.” Promising prospects.”

The post’s key players included post commander Bob Grabenbauer and athletic officer Ed Ridgway, who had managed the 1962 state tournament, as well as Mayor J.C. Hurlbert. They worked with several community organizations to prepare the proposal. In April 1963, when Ridgway and Grabenbauer presented to the national Legion in Indianapolis, they were confident Aberdeen would be selected.

They were right. The May 2 American News heralded, “Aberdeen Awarded ’65 Legion Tourney.” Scheduled for August 31 to September 6, 1965, “The event, first of its kind in South Dakota, will bring together the eight regional champions in a double-elimination tournament” (in such a tourney, teams are eliminated after their second loss; the last team with zero or one loss is the champion). The chair of the decision-making committee said Aberdeen’s presentation “shows that Aberdeen is the most deserving tourney site ever chosen in the history of American Legion baseball.”

South Dakota Senator Karl Mundt autographed a baseball after he got a Congressional resolution recognizing “American Legion Baseball Week.” Photo by Troy McQuillen.

WARM UP

In preparation for the Hub City tourney, Ridgway was named to help staff the 1963 Legion tournament in Keene, New Hampshire, and Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1964 to “acquaint him with the conduct of the tourney.” From these experiences, Ridgway reported in September 1964, “Not only have I learned how some things should be done, I have also learned how some things should not be done.” He thought Little Rock fans showed little interest. “I think it will be different here,” he noted. “South Dakota fans are more familiar with Legion baseball, and we hope to have our expenses in the till before the tournament starts.” The latter was one of the earliest public goals of the 1965 tournament. Local organizers focused on raising the $18,500 ticket guarantee. In May, the post sent a guarantee check to the national Legion to cover its requirement, reportedly the earliest a post had ever met the commitment.

Not all of the work on preparing for the tournament may have been as stressful as meeting the financial goal. In preparation for a pre-tournament pheasant dinner, several Aberdeen Legion members enjoyed being the (presumably) only legal pheasant hunters in the state. In mid-spring, they shot 100 birds for the dinner, which were then kept in cold storage.

AL world series bracket _ game summaries

• THE COURTESY BRACKET: Astute tournament planners and attendees will note the bracket veers from current models. The posted world series schedule indicated that when it got to the point of one undefeated and three one-loss teams, the next games would avoid rematches of earlier games. Since Omaha had beaten Ontario, and Memphis, Charlotte, the apparently chivalrous thing was for the teams to play opponents they hadn’t already played. Thus, Memphis eliminated Ontario and Charlotte handed Omaha its first loss. Today, the undefeated team would wait for the last one-loss team to emerge from sudden-death games. In 1965, with three remaining one-loss teams, the rule about no rematches didn’t apply— perhaps because all the teams had played each other—and a coin toss determined who got the bye, so Omaha played and beat Memphis a second time. In fairness, the bracket was not seeded but drawn randomly earlier in the summer, so one might argue these unusual rules weren’t so removed from the overall randomness. Rather than rewarding the team that won three games in a row, while every other team had lost one or two, in some odd chivalry/courtesy, they essentially restarted the tournament. Today’s tournaments would play to eliminate all but one one-loss team to face the unbeaten team. Interesting that Omaha played Charlotte rather than Charlotte playing Memphis to get to only one team with a loss. Also, after Charlotte beat Omaha, there was a coin toss to determine who played Memphis in the first Monday game. Charlotte won. In the end, after winning more games to start the tournament than anybody, Omaha played more games than Charlotte to lose two games. Today, the losing teams would eliminate each other before playing the unbeaten team—which would have been the champion in a single elimination tournament.

THE LINEUP

Besides Ridgway, the post’s committee included past Aberdeen commanders Grabenbauer and L.J. Ballou as well as current commander Larry Englehart. Other jobs included ticket sales and finances, advertising sales, and promotion, the latter committee wisely included American News sports editor Larry Desautels. Among other activities, this group organized a trip to a Baltimore Orioles-Minnesota Twins series in Minneapolis, at which several Orioles held a sign promoting the Legion world series.

Another responsibility was transporting teams from the airport to Municipal Ballpark, their dormitory (Northern State College’s Kramer Hall) and recreation opportunities—as was planning that recreation. Each team had a local Legion member assigned to look after their needs. Clark Swisher and Don Reshetar, athletic directors for Northern State College and Central High School, respectively, were the trainers for the series, ready for taping and treatment of minor injuries.

Besides attending to young athletes, the News noted, “some older, balder, less-athletic types”—that is, politicians, national baseball celebrities, and other “assorted VIP types”— would also be in attendance and need tending in “the style to which they have become accustomed,” which was the concern of the distinguished guests committee.

Those VIP types included South Dakota Governor Nils Boe, who threw out the tournament’s first pitch. At a banquet, both Frank Sieh and the 1925 state Legion commander Frank McCormick received recognition for creating the program. Baseball “personages” included batting phenom Ted Williams, spitball “great” Burleigh Grimes, and Orioles president Lee MacPhail (pitcher Bob Feller had to cancel due to illness). In addition, said the paper, “Almost every major league club is represented in advance registrations” in Aberdeen motels. Aberdeen National Bank hosted scouts and MLB officials at a luncheon during the tournament. Another celebrity in the tournament was Columbia native, former Aberdeen Smitty and Cincinnati Red Kermit Wahl who was umpiring for the series.

As the celebrities and, more importantly, the players began to arrive, the newspaper was filled with advertisements welcoming them. Local businessman Abe Pred, owner of Pred’s women’s fashion store and sponsor of the Preds amateur baseball team, wrote:

“Aberdeen has acquired national prominence in amateur baseball circles,” especially the “fine record that the famous Aberdeen Preds compiled in state and national competition over the years.” Pred’s store displayed the team’s trophies during the tournament.

Courtesy of Aberdeen American News

One of the welcomes was penned by South Dakota U.S. Senator Karl Mundt. Earlier in the summer the Republican had introduced a bill to recognize the tournament week as National American Legion Baseball Week. Unexpectedly, his GOP colleague Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen attached a constitutional amendment to the Mundt bill limiting the Supreme Court’s role in reapportionment after the Senate Judiciary Committee blocked his standalone proposal. Aiming to bypass the Committee, Dirksen hoped to get a vote on his amendment when Senators considered Mundt’s bill. As a result, the baseball resolution failed. Claiming he was “loathe to use the resolution” and had “tears in his eyes,” Dirksen arranged a duplicate Baseball Week resolution that ultimately passed. The national American Legion appreciated the publicity the controversy generated, presenting Mundt and Dirksen souvenir baseball bats, which, Dirksen suggested like soldiers in a military wedding, the Senators held over President Lyndon Johnson’s head as he signed the bill. The Senators also autographed balls to be used for the tournament’s opening pitches.

Speaking of bats, each world series team received a commemorative six-foot-long bat made by a retired Aberdeen teacher and lettered by Gordon Haug, the creator of Philbert the Pheasant, the Aberdeen minor league team’s newspaper cartoon mascot. In the waning days of the Pheasants’ forgettable 1965 season, the Philbert cartoon proposed, “Philbert suggests attendance at American Legion World Series Aug. 31-Sept. 6.”

PLAY BALL

Finally, the teams arrived: Arlington Heights, Illinois; Berlin, New Hampshire; Charlotte, North Carolina; Lyndhurst, New Jersey; Memphis, Tennessee; Omaha, Nebraska; Ontario, California; and Portland, Oregon. Once settled, the players had a chance to practice at Municipal Ballpark, after which, the American News reported, “all eight clubs expressed pleasure with the playing field which is in excellent condition for the big event.”

Ultimately, the 1964 runner-up Charlotte team took the prize after consecutive (for them) dominant performances over Omaha, which played four games in the last three days of the tournament to Charlotte’s three.

Despite the weather, attendance was good compared to the era. About 30% more people attended in Aberdeen than Little Rock the year before, and Aberdeen’s attendance beat seven of the 11 tournaments in 1960-1970.

The Aberdeen series also set some world series records that still stand—most, not surprisingly related to pitching. The Charlotte pitchers who each rung up 19 Omaha batters are tied for the most strikeouts by a pitcher in a game (tied with Dave McNally, future Baltimore Oriole All- Star). Similarly, Omaha’s two games suffering 19 strikeouts are tied for the most in a nineinning game (two teams struck out 21 times in extra-inning games). A Portland pitcher is one of several who threw a one-hit complete game. Omaha’s Ken Fila (also national American Legion Player of the Year) is one of only three pitchers to have a 0.00 ERA in the series (minimum 20 innings).

Aberdeen might have been most interested in the financials of the tournament, and Larry Desautels gave preliminary reports that it would net $5,000-$7,000 profit. Unfortunately, the weather—windy, damp, and 50-to-60-degree temperatures—cut attendance and would like “hurt chances for future tournaments in this part of the country.” Actually between 1975 and 2009, there were nine more in Minnesota and the Dakotas—four each in Fargo and Rapid City. Aberdeen host at least one more national regional tournament, in which the Smitty’s played as the host team, which the News said, “helped attendance,” but it had trouble competing with the state softball tournament. There doesn’t seem to have been another effort to host the world series…