4. Town Team - Pomme de Terre

PDT Teams

In the four years, 1954-1957,  Lowry's Resorter's League town team compiled a 36-3 record, won 3 league championships and made the State Amateur Class B Regionals twice. Perhaps at the behest of the other teams in the Resorter's League, in 1958, when both Cyrus & Clontarf dropped out of the Pomme de Terre League, Lowry opted to move to that league, which in addition to Lowry, included Hancock, Morris, Starbuck, Hoffman, Glenwood, Chokio and Kensington.

Pomme de Terre?  What do the french know about baseball?  English translation: Potato.  The Potato League. Really? And with most of the towns having a sizably greater population than tiny Lowry, well .. disappointment awaits.

And my fears were realized in PDT game one, when the other new member of the league, Hoffman, dropped the Leghorns 6-5.  But I began to feel confident (over-confident) when Lowry took the next 2 games, 6-2 over Chokio and 5-4 over Kensington. But then things went south. A loss to Starbuck (13-12) with 7 errors committed, followed by losses to Morris, Hancock. But the season (for me) was salvaged by a 12-4 win over Glenwood under the lights at Barsness Field.

Lowry finished 7th in the 8 team league in 1958, but - schadenfreude - Glenwood was on the bottom.

So going into the 1959 season, it seemed the boys were over-matched, confirmed to me on opening day when Morris trounced Lowry 11-2, followed by a 15-2 drubbing by Glenwood (ouch) and a 7-5 loss to Kensington.  Lowry stood 0-3.  But Holy Cow, Lowry notched consecutive wins over Alberta, Starbuck AND the seemingly unbeatable Morris Tigers.  Lowry stood at 3-3. But reality set in in game 7 when Dean Olson of Glenwood twirled a shutout for Lowry's 2nd loss to Glenwood (double-ouch). But they then won a 18-17 slugfest over 2nd place Kensington to get them to 500, 4-4.  A shutout over Alberta and an extra-inning 5-4 loss to Starbuck evened the record at 5-5. Then followed 4 straight wins - 8 of their last 10 - to finish tied for 2nd at 9-5 and a place in the playoffs.  Despite defeating Lowry twice, Glenwood finished 7th with a 5-9 record. tsk tsk. Lowry faced Kensington in the playoffs winning 1 game but coming up short in the 2 of 3 series.

1959 Final Standings

But a pretty respectable season for the boys of summer.

Previous posts in this series 

Episode 1: The Ballpark

Episode 2: '55 Champs
Episode 3: '56-'57 Seasons
...

Note: This series of posts is supported by Ray Hayenga's scrapbook which came to me from his son Bruce by way of Dave Chan.  Ray collected every Park Region Echo clipping on the Lowry ball team from 1954 to 1962.  I have digitized this scrapbook.  If you want a look, here's a link:Ray Hayenga's Scrapbook.  Caveat:  It's a large .pdf file. Your browser may not be able to preview it but you should be able download it.

Copyright © 2018 Dave Hoplin