New Ulm Sports Central - Preserving and Sharing New Ulm Area Sports History

Scoring, Stats, Records--Bookie's Triple Crown
Written by Bill Nelson for Minnesota Amateur Baseball website with Hanska added connections by NUSC

Who is Bookie? His real name is Brian Larson. The 53 year old has been doing the scoring at the State Tournament since 1984. "There was this huge need for a guy like me to show up," he said. No one was keeping consistent records and just picking an all-tournament team could take up to four hours. He explained that once he started keeping score, things like picking the all-tournament teams could be done in 30 minutes. The Board was impressed by what Bookie did so they kept him on and he has done the scoring every year since, except in 1998 when Chaska and Hamburg supplied their own scorers.

Larson's grand father was Richard Larson who was a barber in Hanska. His grandmother was a Mittbruget from Madelia. In 1953 Richard purchased a barbershop and moved to Dassel and that brought Brian eventually to fall in love with amateur baseball. He serves now on the amateur Hall of Fame board.

"Baseball has its triple crown, batting average, home runs and runs batted in...My triple crown is scoring, stats and records. That's what means a lot to me" laughed Larson.

After getting acquainted with the Board of Directors he decided to run for the Board and in 1989 he was the youngest Board member ever elected. He served on the Board for nine years before his workload at Holiday Gas Stations as a telcom analyst became too demanding to fit with his baseball responsibilities.

It was during his tenure on the Board that people would come up and ask questions about this record or that one. After answering, "I don't know, I decided it was time to see what I could come up with," explained Larson. He took a week off of work and spent it going through old newspapers and micro film. He looked at and recorded box scores and old baseball stories. He says that he has all of the box scores from 1924-1954. He also has a majority of the box scores from 1956-1960. He kept working at it and "The records finally started coming together," he said. Brian got some help from New Ulm Sports Central's Herb Schaper who was able to share the historical state tournament box scores from 1939-1954 that were part of the Herb McIvor records archived by New Ulm's Ron Reinhart.

In 1998, he may not have had the opportunity to score, however, all of his records were published in the State Tournament program for the first time ever. "When George (Droege) and Wally (Quaas) said 'Brian, we want it all' I couldn't believe it. I about died you know. There hasn't been a winter since then that I haven't gotten a call, mail or email, somebody looking for information, so that's been kind of fun. Trouble is the stories have been kind of embellished over the years so I have to tell a lot of people that their dad didn't quite do everything they thought he did," said Larson.

Brian got his start in amateur baseball in 1973, between his junior and senior year at Dassel-Cokato High School. (He had done football, basketball and baseball stats in high school since he was a seventh grader). His first duty was to make out the North Star League schedule. He has done it every year since. He wrote the 50 year history of the North Star League and has all the league stats bound in three ring binders. At the same time he started helping Joe Harmala and the D-C Saints. That's where his nickname came from.

"D-C had a screwball lefty and he always would yell, 'Hey you with the book," said Bookie. "Well, one day I was in the dugout talking to our first year shortstop and this screwball goes by and says, 'Look .... it's Rookie and Bookie' and the name kind of stuck. The next year we drafted Dick Traen (Delano) and he thought the name fit me to a T, so it stuck."

Bookie and Traen spent 20 years travelling to games together before Traen died in October of 2006. "He and I did that the last 20 years of his life," commented Larson. "We travelled to games and boy, I tell you we covered everything, there was nothing we didn't know. I dearly miss that guy...Not only for the humor, but he was a very wise guy. Dick always liked to hear other people's ideas. Then he would explore that idea and then he would think about it before he told you that he agrees or disagrees with you. I'm kind of a lone wolf now," said Larson.

Now Bookie has decided that he will retire from scorekeeping after this year. He was going to retire last year, but when he found out that the Board was going to computer scoring this year, he wanted to be involved. "Because of the rain in Arlington, I became the first person to score a tournament game by computer," he said. "Overall, I think that I have scored about 680 State Tournament games." Asked if his retirement is solid he responded, "Yes, no Favre, no Favre."

There are some things that he is worried about. "We are losing some real true town team baseball fans that come for the tournament. They're slowly dying away and they're not being replaced. That's kind of a sad thing," he said. Also "Players aren't as dedicated as they used to be, especially draftees. It used to be an honor to be drafted and now it's different," lamented Larson.

He still is a big supporter of amateur baseball. "I really believe that this is baseball in its purest form," said Larson, "and this is really a great program."