Duluth Huskies Baseball, Hot Dogs, and an Arco Coffee Can (1 pound)

(Pay attention here, cause I am going to veer wildly off topic!)

My brother went to a baseball game last night (along with 700 other hearty souls), the Duluth Huskies, a team in the summer collegiate league; the game was held at Wade Stadium in West Duluth, which seats 4200, and was built as a WPA project with over 300,000 bricks that another WPA project had produced by stripping brick paved streets in Duluth.  Relevant to nothing, it was 45 degrees during the game.

From the early 1930s through the 90s, Wade Stadium was home to various versions of the “Duluth Dukes,” a single A team at time affiliated with the Cardinals, Tigers, Cubs, or White Sox over the years.

Twelve players from the 1968 Detroit Tigers World Series championship team played for the Duluth-Superior Dukes of the 1960s, including Denny McLain, Bill Freehan, Willie Horton, and John Hiller.

McLain was playing for the ’66 Dukes, when my grandfather took  a bunch of us grand kids to a game on the night of July 3. Some of my siblings and cousins were in attendance, but I don’t remember my brother being there, of course at that time, he was old enough to be far too cool to do family stuff.

My grandfather, an immigrant, whose motto was “live every day until you die,” did. A snuff user, he used to have a 1 pound empty Arco coffee can on the dash or floor of his Oldsmobile, which served as a handy spittoon.  I don’t remember much about the game, or the night, except the next morning, learning that my grandfather had passed in his sleep.

The Huskies have local owners these days, including a gentleman named Mike Rosenzweig, a guy who I have a shared history with:  in seventh grade, he, I and two other guys suffered the humiliation of being dressed in leiderhosen and appearing as a German “Oom-pah-pah” band at the junior hight “talent show” at the insistence of a sadistic band instructor.  An experience I am sure we would all like to put behind us.

I can’t say what it’s like to own a summer collegiate baseball team, but if you ever get a chance to invest in an A, AA, or AAA team affiliated with one of the majors, grab it – it’s a fabulous revenue model, unequaled in any industry I know of.

But back on the  topic of this site.  My brother and his group enjoyed a bevy of traditional baseball treats at the game, at minor league prices – a hot dog ($3.25), bratwurst ($4.75), pretzel ($3.00), popcorn,  peanuts, cracker jacks, and Swedish Fish ?! ($3.00) — and a good time was had by all.  (Except I have no idea who would put ketchup on a bratwurst!).

And by the way?  Last night, the Huskies came from behind, and topped Thunder Bay, 4-3.

Duluth Huskies