I suppose it\u2019s possible live a good life and not like baseball.\u00a0 At least that\u2019s what I hear.\u00a0 Most of my friends are fans though.\u00a0 I have different groups of \u201cbaseball buddies:\u2019\u2019 some I played with, others I go to games with, and some I just enjoy talking ball with.<\/p>\n
One of my best baseball buddies passed away in March.\u00a0 Donald Cook was 89; everyone knew him as \u201cDuke.\u201d\u00a0 I first got to know Duke back in the Seventies when I was playing and coaching.\u00a0 Many conversations about softball\/baseball, farming, and life followed.\u00a0 I\u2019ll miss those talks.<\/p>\n
The last one was at Oak Hills Living Center in New Ulm a few days before Duke died.\u00a0 Scott Surprenant and I went to see him.\u00a0 I don\u2019t always get things right, but that visit was one time I did.\u00a0 Duke was frail and bound to bed.\u00a0 But he was able to talk with us.\u00a0 I guess we all knew we were saying \u201cgood bye,\u201d although no one said that.\u00a0 He smiled when I took the baseball that was on the nightstand and suggested we go have a game of catch.<\/p>\n
Duke was a gentle spirit.\u00a0 I really don\u2019t recall him raising his voice.\u00a0 That isn\u2019t to say certain things didn\u2019t upset him.\u00a0 We occasionally delved into politics, and he had a way of scrunching his face that told you he wasn\u2019t too pleased with some turn of events.<\/p>\n
I missed most of Duke\u2019s playing career.\u00a0 That began as a boy with Mulligan in the Brown County League.\u00a0 There were seasons with Leavenworth and Comfrey.\u00a0 Later, Duke played fastpitch softball when those games drew big crowds to small towns.\u00a0 Duke played two seasons in the semi-pro Western Minny League with his brother Mel.\u00a0 Mel was an all-star slugging outfielder; Duke was more of a role player.<\/p>\n
The brothers were close beyond the ballpark.\u00a0 They farmed together, growing and selling seed under the Cook Brothers Seed label.\u00a0 Duke and Mel were of that Greatest Generation of farmers who crossed from horses to tractors, bridging World Wars and a moon landing.<\/p>\n
Duke and Mel grew up on the farm following sports by vacuum tube radio and newspaper.\u00a0 They played every game they could.\u00a0 There was even a Leavenworth hockey team that played on area sloughs.\u00a0 Farm kids were clad in homemade catalog-pads to protect their shins.<\/p>\n
Duke joined the Marines in the Fifties.\u00a0 This was at the height of baseball\u2019s popularity and the soldiers played ball wherever he was stationed.\u00a0 He told about teaching the game to Japanese players on a tour of duty across the Pacific.<\/p>\n
I did get to play a few games with Duke.\u00a0 Ten or so years ago, a group of locals played the St. Paul Quicksteps at Fort Ridgely and Sleepy Eye Ballpark.\u00a0 These were a demonstration of 1860\u2019s \u201cbase ball.\u201d\u00a0 There are no gloves.\u00a0 The pitcher or \u201cstriker\u201d throws underhanded.\u00a0 If a ball is caught on one bounce, the batter was out.\u00a0 Duke was our catcher, and a number of foul hits bounced to him that he caught for outs.\u00a0 We named Duke our MVP, not bad for a fellow near 80.<\/p>\n
It won\u2019t be as a player that Duke will be remembered though. \u00a0In 1964, a group of girls wanted to start a Leavenworth softball team and asked Duke if he would coach.\u00a0 He said yes.\u00a0 That \u201cyes\u201d began a remarkable half century of coaching and organizing leagues.<\/p>\n
In 1972, Congress passed Title IX of the Education Act.\u00a0 That began the process of giving girls the opportunity to play sports that we take for granted now.\u00a0 This area was way ahead of the curve.\u00a0 Duke was a big part of that.<\/p>\n
Duke was a very good coach.\u00a0 His teams were always well-prepared and usually successful.\u00a0 A 1977 newspaper article referred to a fifty-game winning streak his Leavenworth Bi-County team had.<\/p>\n
Around then, I coached the Prairieville girls team.\u00a0 We were pretty good, winning more than we lost.\u00a0 We never beat Leavenworth.\u00a0 There was a tournament in Comfrey when my Prairieville team beat some good teams to make the championship game on a Sunday night.\u00a0 The girls were excited and recruited all their friends and relatives to come watch.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the opponent was Leavenworth.\u00a0 The score ended up something like 30 to 2.\u00a0 Afterward, in his humble and affable way, Duke came over and congratulated our team and told me how nervous he was to play us.\u00a0 I may have been grimacing, but my girls loved him.<\/p>\n
In his later years, Duke continued to help out whenever he could.\u00a0 Phil Siefkes and I coached an ASA team that our daughters played on.\u00a0 We loved having Duke on the bench with us.\u00a0 He had about 10,000 games under his belt and had seen everything.<\/p>\n
A lot of us coach our kids, and that is important part of passing on our games to a next generation.\u00a0 There are a few people who are involved not out of parental obligation, but for love of the game.\u00a0 Duke was one of those.\u00a0 Of course, like any good coach, Duke\u2019s greatest gift was never teaching skills.\u00a0 It was understanding that life lessons can be learned in practice and in games.<\/p>\n
When I did research for an exhibit on local baseball at the Brown County Historical Society, I recruited a committee of area \u201chistorians.\u201d\u00a0 Duke and Mel were part of that.\u00a0 I remember going to their farm to do an oral history and being enthralled by their recollections of pasture ball in the Forties.\u00a0 Not only games and scores, but what it looked like and sounded like and felt like to spend a Sunday afternoon at Billy Groebner\u2019s pasture where huge crowds of farm families would gather.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to miss those memories and keen recollections.\u00a0 Duke was telling me once about Ted Williams\u2019 visit to Springfield in 1938.\u00a0 His Minneapolis Millers team played the Springfield Tigers as part of Sauerkraut Days.\u00a0 Duke was ten years old.\u00a0 He told me the count on Williams when he hit a deep triple late in the game.\u00a0 This was 75 years ago; he knew the count!<\/p>\n
Last winter, our oldest Anna was home visiting.\u00a0 She went in to Schutz Foods to get something.\u00a0 When she got home she told me she had seen Duke there.\u00a0 Anna played for Duke 25 years ago.\u00a0 Duke asked her, \u201cYou\u2019re Anna, Randy\u2019s daughter?\u201d\u00a0 When Anna said yes, Duke replied with a twinkle in his eye, \u201cOh good, I got one right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Often when someone close to us passes, we like to say they are in heaven engaging in some Earthly activity that they enjoyed.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know the accuracy of those claims; they may be more to comfort the surviving.\u00a0 But if Duke is playing catch somewhere in the beyond right now, that\u2019d be okay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I suppose it\u2019s possible live a good life and not like baseball.\u00a0 At least that\u2019s what I hear.\u00a0 Most of my friends are fans though.\u00a0 I have different groups of \u201cbaseball buddies:\u2019\u2019 some I played with, others I go to games with, and some I just enjoy talking ball with. One of my best baseball …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 19:05:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106959,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106958\/revisions\/106959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}