PUBLISHER’S COLUMN: FIELDS OF GREEN
“If Freeman didn’t have a team, I’d be playing somewhere else. I can’t imagine a summer without baseball.”
That’s what Jake Weier, player/manager with the Freeman Blacksox, told me when I visited with him about his team’s run through the District 6 Amateur Baseball Tournament and upcoming trip to Mitchell for the Class B state tournament. It’s also all you need to know about Jake’s love for — and commitment to — America’s Game.
I’ve been told by more than one person that Jake was the right man for the right job at the right time, and if it were not for him, it’s likely that amateur baseball in Freeman would have been dealt a significant setback, if not a debilitating blow. Yes, the baseball gods knew what they were doing when they christened him as the new team leader in 2018, as veteran leaders like Eric Hortness and Brett Scherschligt were ready to hang up their cleats, and eventually did.
Weier and the Blacksox, of course, are headed to the state tournament this week and will be joined by friendly rival and neighbor Menno, a team that is also benefiting from new leadership in player/manager Caleb Preszler. Caleb told me earlier this year that sea change was happening with the Mad Frogs, too, and that somebody needed to fill that leadership slot, and he ended up being the guy. I don’t know if that involved a short straw, a finger on the nose or a lost bet, but whatever it was, Caleb willingly accepted the role, owned it this summer, and will be delivering the lineup card at Cadwell Park this weekend.
For folks like Jake and Caleb who love baseball, South Dakota is a haven. Amateur baseball is truly unique here; I don’t believe there is another state in the union that offers this level of organized town team ball. And baseball looks good on Freeman and Menno. It always has. There’s a great photo in the collection at Menno Heritage Museum that shows a game between the two towns being played in a hillside pasture on the east side of Olivet. (I’ve included it with this column at freemansd.com for those who are interested in taking a look.)
The photograph is circa 1900, most of the men pictured appear to be wearing dark suits and hats, and the women pictured are further off to the side, near the horses and buggies, are donned in dresses. The game is identified as being played at Riverside Park (the Rames pasture on the northeast side of the bridge) and when you drive past the site today, you can image that once upon a time the location might have hosted a game or two.
Baseball was frequently written about on the pages of our newspapers, even in the first decades of the 20th century, and here in Freeman, fastpitch softball became every bit as popular as America’s Game; in its heyday in the mid-to-later part of the 1900s, maybe even more so.
Much has changed, of course. Life has become complicated and cumbersome. Yet through the groans of growth and the cries of conflict, baseball still stands tall and proud in our towns, as it should.
A summer without baseball?
Jake can’t even go there, and neither can I.
