Beginning with the first baseball game recorded in Minnesota -- before the territory became a state -- Rippel leads sports fans on a tour of 150 years of Minnesota sports highlights. Inside are stories that are sure to spark the memories and imagination of young and old alike -- the Gopher baseball team winning the College World Series in 1956, the Flying Dutchmen of Edgerton (a town with a population of less than one thousand) winning the state high school basketball tournament in 1960, the US Olympic hockey team's gold medal victory in 1980 with twelve Minnesotans on its twenty-man roster. The stories are peopled with familiar characters and famous teams: Pudge Heffelfinger, the Duluth Eskimos, the Minneapolis Millers and the St Paul Saints, Patty Berg, Roy Campanella, Rod Carew, Calvin Griffith, Herb Brooks, Bud Grant, and Kevin Garnett. Rippel surveys a wide range of sports history, covering professional, college, and high school sports, from basketball, ice hockey, and football to boxing, golf, soccer, and horse racing.
Drawing on newspaper reports, first-person accounts, and published works, Rippel recounts athletic contests and personalities that have roused Minnesotans through the state's history. This book inspires readers to relive the glorious sports stories from the state's past.