Mr. Baseball

Tink Larson does not believe his life story would make much of a book.

Others might disagree.

For instance, there's the time he was pushing age 60 and was forced into action for the Waseca Braves amateur baseball team, replacing the late Todd Mann, who sustained an injury, at catcher. They were hosting the Minneapolis Angels, who won three state championships in the 1990s.

"It was kind of a fluke," said Larson.

But it's a great story.

Larson entered the game in the sixth inning and got a base hit in his first at-bat.

"The crowd clapped a little," he said.

Then, in the seventh, he threw out a runner attempting to steal second base.

The crowd clapped a little louder.

In the bottom of the eighth, Larson threw out another baserunner trying to steal; the crowd clapped louder yet.

When he came to bat in the bottom of the ninth with two outs, two runners on base and the Braves trailing by three, the crowd was clapping enthusiastically.

The Angels catcher turned to Larson and said, "Sounds like you better do something good or this crowd is going to be disappointed."

Larson, who had never hit a home run at the Waseca field, stepped into the batter's box against a hard-throwing Angels pitcher, who played in college.

"That was good for me because he must have supplied all the power," said Larson.

The first pitch was about eye high.

"I can still visualize where it was located," said Larson.

And he'll never forget where it wound up, about four rungs up the light tower in left field. A home run.

"When I got to the plate, some of the crowd was there to greet me," he said. "It might have been my best game as a Braves player."

For many years, the 82-year-old Larson has been known as Waseca's "Mr. Baseball." At one time he coached the high school, VFW and American Legion teams while also directing the Parks and Recreation summer baseball program and playing for the Braves.

After he had spent years meticulously manicuring Waseca's Community Field, it was officially donned "Tink Larson Community Field."

The number of awards, “halls of fame” recognitions and honors he's earned are far too numerous to mention.

These days, he lives in a house across the street from the baseball field. He says he is genuinely grateful for most everything. And, believe it or not, he's still active in competitive baseball.

The sport was one of several he participated in at Kasson-Mantorville High School. By the time he graduated, Larson had lived at eight different locations.

His dad, Levern Larson, was a hired farm hand. He had never owned property until he bought a house in town for $8,000 when Larson was a senior in high school. His father worked the rest of his life grinding feed at a grain elevator and helping his brother on the family farm.

"When he was doing this, he would go on three hours of sleep each night," said Larson.

Larson's great-grandfather bought the farm in 1864 and it has been in the family ever since. A log cabin that was built at that time is still on the farm, filled with a lot of very old items. The barn, built in 1879 in a style from old Norway, is possibly the only one of its kind in Minnesota.

Larson's mother, Wava, was a homemaker before working for 25 years at Dayton's in Rochester. Larson had two younger sisters, Laurie and Karen.

Larson said it's too long of a story to discuss why he did so many sports, but admitted, "There were mitigating circumstances sometimes."

Though he doesn't talk much about it, Larson was reportedly a very good wrestler in high school.

"If you listen to Blaine Nelson, he thinks I wrestled in eighth and ninth grade," said Larson. "By his unverified accounts, I supposedly lost only one match in two years and that was in a tournament to open the season of that eighth-grade year and it was in the semifinals of a 32-man tournament. Supposedly, I was leading a state champion from Albert Lea when I made a mistake and got pinned. Allegedly, in the first match I wrestled, I pinned a state champion from Mankato."

A highlight in the second year would have been the final match of the season, when Larson supposedly was wrestling another undefeated wrestler and there was a big write-up about it, and rumor has it that he pinned him in 12 seconds of the second period.

Larson didn’t get to wrestle in the tournament again that year because a bigger wrestler was horsing around and pushed on his Adam’s Apple too hard, putting him in the hospital for a while.

Larson said he would have started in basketball his senior year, but he couldn’t play, so he boxed Golden Gloves and was undefeated for the winter.

But he broke a thumb in his final match, right before tournament time.

"I guess I was injury prone," he commented.

As a youngster, Larson dreamed of being a professional baseball player.

"But, obviously, as I grew older, I knew I wasn't good enough to do that," he said, so he went to college to play baseball and get a teaching degree so he could coach.

"I was influenced in that direction by the way I got along with my high school and college coaches, Dale Timm and Jean McCarthy," said Larson.

Another thing he doesn't talk about often is his stint as a minor league baseball umpire.

"I did it for two years, but the money was so poor that I was having trouble supporting a wife and two kids…and she was pregnant with another one," said Larson. "It might have worked out for me had I stayed with it because I was graded way ahead of some guys that made it to the major leagues. But it’s just like being a professional player. Just because you might be better in the minor leagues doesn’t mean you’ll make it to the major leagues. So just because I was ahead of those guys that made it doesn’t mean I would have made it. I try not to think about it because I had such a great life coaching here in Waseca and now both here and at MSU, Mankato that I don’t regret anything."

Larson attended umpiring school with John McSherry, whom older folks may remember dying while umpiring home plate seven pitches into the Cincinnati Reds' home opener in 1996. McSherry was the top-rated umpire at the school. Larson was second.

While at umpire school, Larson registered the record for the best score ever up to that time on the rules tests given to potential graduates.

One funny story: "I was on the bases one night in pro ball and it was Appreciation Night with a huge crowd there for all the prizes they were giving away," said Larson. "There was a name drawn and he was from the State School for the Blind. Of course, everyone was looking around to see this person and the first base coach was a nice man named Pel Austin. Well, he hollers and gets the crowd's attention, then points to me and says, 'Here he is.'"

While Larson had a no-nonsense approach to teaching physical education, health, history and sociology and coaching baseball and basketball, there were some lighter moments.

Part 2 next week continued next week.