More Local Baseball History

It was the Dead Ball era...

Dick Cleem played in the St. Vincent town baseball team when he was an adult. He also played baseball with Pembina, North Dakota. He played with the Kittson County All-stars against the House of David's colored traveling team. He also played the House of David's team in Winnipeg.



Happy Chandler played for Hallock (at that time a semi-pro team) one summer to earn money for college, when they played against the Gooselaw team (8 brothers and one cousin...) from St. Vincent. Chandler later said, "I would say no man ever walked in shoe leather that could throw a baseball with more speed and control than Eli Gooselaw..."


On a Minnesota baseball forum, a member shared this with me:

I think the term “Twilight League” was a generic term describing many of the minor leagues in the early days of the 1900s. Of course, none of the ballparks then were lighted and the teams played at various times during daylight hours, but mostly in the early evening. Hence the term twilight league. I believe the league you are looking for though is the Northern League. Here is a link to a site that lists all the minor leagues in history. And within those lists are the following links that will give you the teams in each of those leagues: Northern League Class D (1903-1905), Northern-Copper Country League (1906-1907) Northern League Class D (1908), Minnesota-Wisconsin League (1909-1912) Northern League Class C (1913-1916), Class D (1917), Central International League (1912) Northern League Class D (1933-1940), Class C (1941-1942) Northern League Class C (1946-1962), Class A (1963-1971) Northern-Copper Country League Class C (1906), Class D (1907), Copper Country Soo League (1905), Northern League (1903-1905) Nowadays, there are semi-pro leagues that sometimes call themselves twilight leagues...