| Season format: | split-season |
| 1st-half winner: | Superior Blues |
| 2nd-half winner: | Brandon Greys |
| Playoff winner: | Superior Blues |
Northern League baseball had not been played in the upper Midwest since 1917, when the league closed in midseason due to World War I. Reorganization plans began in 1932, and in 1933 the Northern League was slated to begin with teams in eight cities: Brainerd (MN) Muskies, Crookston (MN) Pirates, Eau Claire (WI) Cardinals, Fargo-Moorhead (ND-MN) Twins, Grand Forks (ND) Colts, Little Falls (MN), Superior (WI) Blues, and Winnipeg (MAN) Maroons.
On April 3, the final owner/manager meeting preceding the May 4 season opener was held in Grand Forks. Representatives were:
R. L. Voelz, Grand Forks owner and league president
Johnny Anderson, Grand Forks manager
Lute J. (Danny) Boone, Crookston owner/manager
Bruno Haas, Winnipeg owner/manager
Al Theis, Fargo-Moorhead owner/manager
Joe Bieganek, Little Falls owner
Ray Mergens, Brainerd owner
Dick Wade, Superior owner/manager
Eau Claire: not represented; owner David Quinn was occupied with other matters
Danny Boone was elected treasurer at the meeting, at the insistence of Voelz, who didn't want to be the sole league executive.
Even though opening day was only a month away at the time of the meeting, some important aspects of league play remained to be put in place. For instance, the Brainerd and Eau Claire clubs hadn't yet named managers, and spring training/team selection hadn't begun.
The league would operate on something of a shoestring budget. With the country in the midst of the Great Depression, there was certainly no guarantee of financial success, and cost-cutting strategies were used to keep expenses to a minimum. One of these was that, to avoid the need to carry an extra player, teams tried to find people who could play extra positions. There was also some emphasis on finding younger players, who would generally play for lower pay. The Little Falls club faced a challenge even in finding a place to play, due to difficulty in obtaining financially favorable terms for a ballpark. By mid-April a location still had not been found, and there was talk of moving the franchise to Wausau, WI. Apparently a wealthy businessman there had shown an interest in fielding a team since reorganization proceedings had begun. Finally, on 4/16, Little Falls announced that it had secured a contract to use the Morrison County fairgrounds field.
Once past the hurdle of finding a playing field, the Little Falls team, like the other seven clubs, prepared for spring training. Winnipeg manager Bruno Haas was first to begin, holding early sessions in St. Paul before moving workouts north to Winnipeg. (Perhaps this was done to encourage a larger number of candidates by providing a more central location than Winnipeg to which players could report initially.) Other teams began tryouts within the next few days after Haas opened in St. Paul.
The financial problems faced by the Little Falls club evidently did not deter candidates, and Manager Joe Camillier soon had enough to divide them into two squads for staging a practice game. Nevertheless, the difficulties in obtaining financial support continued and finally proved too great. On 4/24, the Little Falls franchise was vacated. The league was left with seven teams and the prospect of trying to find an alternate location in which to place the team with the season opener less than two weeks away. In the absence of a suitable replacement, the league itself might need to decide whether or not to continue.
Coincident with spring training, the Grand Forks Colts became the East Grand Forks Colts, moving on 4/18 across the Red River from North Dakota to Minnesota. This was done to avoid the expense of building a new ballpark in Grand Forks, since East Grand Forks had a field already. League offices moved to East Grand Forks, too, since R. L. Voelz, Colts owner, was also league president.
After the loss of the Little Falls club, President Voelz began traveling to prospective sites for a replacement team. Locations said to be under consideration were Wahpeton-Breckenridge (ND-MN), Wadena (MN), Ashland (WI), St. Cloud (MN), Bemidji (MN), and Thief River Falls (MN). Of these, St. Cloud and Thief River Falls emerged as most likely to take the place of Little Falls as the eighth team. In late April, Voelz travelled to St. Cloud to meet with town officials. News on 4/28 was that the city was expected to be awarded the eighth franchise, but after all-day conferences the deal had fallen through. Although St. Cloud had a local team already, many of its members lived and worked there and were unwilling to make the frequent road trips required for Northern League play. Fielding a team in the league therefore would necessitate a number of lineup changes. The additional expenses that joining the league would entail were also an issue. Voelz left St. Cloud, saying that he expected to accept the application of Thief River Falls for the franchise. But that didn't work out, either, and on May 1, Voelz announced that the league would begin play with seven teams. The season would be played in split-season format so the league could continue to search for an eighth team in hopes that one could be found in time for the second half of the season.
On May 4, the season opened with East Grand Forks at Eau Claire, Crookston at Superior, and Winnipeg at Brainerd. Fargo-Moorhead, originally scheduled to open against Little Falls, was idle. The unbalanced schedule resulting from the withdrawal of a team meant that each of the remaining teams now had a number of open dates. Clubs often used these dates to play exhibitions against local teams or traveling teams that passed through their area.
When the Fargo-Moorhead Twins began play after sitting out the season opener, their winning percentage took a while to rise above zero: they lost their first 11 games. Shortly into their losing streak, owner/manager Al Theis tried to motivate his players by promising roster changes unless performance improved. It didn't, and before the season was two weeks old, some players had been released and replacements signed. In the final week of June, Theis himself was replaced as manager by Ralph Williams (F-M third baseman). Williams and Emil Snyder also took over from Theis as owners. The change in oversight helped little; Fargo-Moorhead climbed out of the cellar for only a few days at the end of the first half of the season, finishing sixth for the first half of the season. Even that small distinction depends on which report you consult. The Fargo Forum has the Twins sixth; the Eau Claire Leader's published standings were somewhat different, with Fargo-Moorhead still seventh and in the basement. The ascent was brief and in the second half the Twins finished a distant -- and unambiguous -- last.
July brought another managerial change. East Grand Forks owner Voelz released Johnny Anderson on 7/3 for economic reasons. John Vanusek, pitcher and outfielder, took the reins in Anderson's place, presumably at a more modest salary.
The Superior Blues led the standings for most of the first half, although the Winnipeg Maroons made a run at them in late June. The half closed on 7/6, with Superior taking the first-half pennant ahead of Winnipeg.
Attempts had been made to find an eighth team to replace Little Falls for the second half of the season, but had failed. Thief River Falls still wanted the franchise but lacked a park meeting league standards. St. Cloud was once more a candidate, but again did not enter the league. Nevertheless, the second half start on 7/7 saw the league begin play with a somewhat different set of teams than those that began the first half. This was because one of the teams had been relocated. Suffering poor attendance, transfer of the Brainerd Muskies to Brandon (Manitoba) was announced in the latter part of the first half (6/23). Since Brandon was a larger city, it was hoped that attendance would pick up, perhaps spurred by the development of a Canadian rivalry with Winnipeg. The club began baseball in Canada as the Brandon Greys on 6/27. Their record in Brainerd had been 14-21, a poor start that, coupled with an initial string of five straight losses in Brandon, helped them to a poor 15-27 first-half record. The team played much better in the second half, compiling a 40-20 record, winning the second-half pennant, and advancing to the playoffs against first-half champion Superior.
Shortly into the season's second half, the Cardinals of Eau Claire were renamed the Bears in the midst of a change of ownership. This came about as part of a chain of events that began in the first half. The original owner, Dave Quinn (after whom the team was occasionally referred to as "the Quinns") felt that attendance in Eau Claire was low. On 6/24, Quinn declared his intent to move the team to Regina, Saskatchewan. This plan was opposed by league president Voelz, who, together with a group of Eau Claire businessmen, mounted an effort to secure the team and keep it in Eau Claire. Voelz temporarily took over business management of the club from Quinn on 6/26 and it was decided that the franchise would remain in Eau Claire. On 7/5, a plan was announced whereby Voelz would relinquish ownership of the East Grand Forks Colts and move to Eau Claire (taking the league office with him). The new Colts owner was Johnny Anderson, the ex-manager who had been released just days before.
In Eau Claire, an attempt was made to provide a more permanent ownership arrangement, and to improve the ballpark in hopes of increasing attendance. A covered grandstand was planned as one of these efforts, to provide spectators protection from rain and the hot sun. A local group formed Eau Claire Baseball Club, Inc., and at the end of July (7/28), Voelz surrendered the team into its hands. The president of this organization was Herman White, a man who would become Northern League president in 1935, and who would figure prominantly in the affairs of the league for decades to come. While this reorganization was going on, the name change from Cardinals to Bears took place -- on 7/13 as near as I can tell. (Lloyd Brovald tells me that the name "Bears" may have come from "A Bear for Wear," the slogan of Gillette Rubber Co., Eau Claire's largest industry.)
The highest scoring game of the season occurred on 8/16 in Winnipeg, with the Maroons beating the Eau Claire Bears 35-19 -- a score that remains the highest in Northern League history.
When R. L. Voelz had turned over the Eau Claire franchise to Eau Claire Baseball Club at the end of July, he said he might stay in Eau Claire to go into business, and to maintain the league office there. Apparently things didn't work out; on 8/14 he announced that opportunities he couldn't dismiss had opened up in Minneapolis and that he would be moving there, taking the league office with him. (This would make the fourth location of the office during the season.) He also stated that he hoped to own the eighth Northern League team in 1934, it still being a goal to fill that missing spot. Those hopes were put to rest on 8/28, when Voelz was deposed as league president by discontented owners and managers, and replaced by Danny Boone, owner/manager of the Crookston Pirates. The next year found Voelz trying to organize upper Midwest and Canadian cities into a proposed Western International League. (The league seems not to have materialized, however.)
Boone wasted no time asserting his leadership, as two examples illustrate. First, the final series between Fargo-Moorhead and Eau Claire ended on something of a sore note. There was a row on 8/30, with one of the Eau Claire players even throwing a ball at an umpire. The Eau Claire players were accused of ill behavior in the pages of the Fargo Forum. Boone investigated, fined two of the players, and required one of them, Danny Collins, to apologize to the Fargo-Moorhead patrons. Second, following another incident occurring on the same day, Boone fined Winnipeg's Lloyd Sterling and Brandon's Johnny Reider for getting into a fight, as well as Winnipeg manager Bruno Haas.
Meanwhile, Fargo-Moorhead had continued to play poorly. The Superior Blues, which had played so well in the first half, turned in a mediocre performance and settled down low in the standings. The second half of the season ended on 9/10 with the Brandon Greys taking the second-half pennant, ahead of the Winnipeg Maroons, which repeated their second-place finish. Brandon faced first-half winner Superior in a best-of-seven playoff series. Superior took the series 4 games to 2. An unusual aspect of the playoffs (according to the Fargo Forum) was that some of the players hadn't been on the two teams' regular-season rosters but had been recruited from other teams.
Financial difficulties were a continuing source of difficulty throughout the season. The Fargo-Moorhead players weren't being paid under Theis, and the situation didn't improve under Williams and Snyder. Finally, in early August, an arrangement was made whereby any profits made by the team would be divided among the players. However, as there were no profits to speak of, there wasn't much to divide. One gesture offered by the Moorhead Chamber of Commerce late in the season (8/22) was to no longer charge the team to play in the Moorhead ballpark.
After the season ended, the Fargo-Moorhead franchise was revoked due to continued inability to pay the players. There was, however, feeling in Fargo that the club was being singled out unfairly, the belief being that Eau Claire wasn't paying much if anything, either. It's not clear whether or not there was a real basis for this belief, however, as it was reported in Eau Claire near end of August that all back wages had been paid to their players, and that the league retainer had been paid as well -- the latter being important as it would allow the franchise to be continued to 1934. Furthermore, by the end of November, President Boone was already making overtures for a return of the franchise to those in the Fargo-Moorhead area who might be interested in supporting it. He even had some idea of who might be available as manager. By December, talks were in a more definite stage, with a call for a meeting in mid-January to be attended by Secretary Turnquist, who had made several trips to the area.
The Crookston team appears to have been called the Red Sox originally, at least judging from newspaper accounts dating from before the season opened 5/4. I haven't run across any explicit reference to a nickname change, but at least as early as 5/19 the Crookston club was known as the Pirates.
Brovald, Lloyd. Personal communication, 1998
Eau Claire Leader, 1933
Fargo Forum, 1933
Superior Evening Telegram, 1933