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

The Marshall Independent has reported that the board of directors of the Minnesota Baseball Association has moved the New Ulm Brewers to Class B. The Brewers have won their first two Tomahawk League games.

The Tomahawk League has called a special meeting for Monday. Only league officers and two official representatives from each team will be allowed to attend the closed meeting. The decision to put the Brewers into Class B appears to be related to seven Kaiserhoff players having been given their release earlier this year so they could play with the Brewers.

The Tomahawk League called a special meeting with this announcement Tuesday morning:

This is notice of a special league meeting to discuss the status of the New Ulm Brewers within our league. This meeting will be held next Monday evening, May 23, 2011, at the Railway Bar & Grill in Sleepy Eye beginning at 7:30 p.m. For those of you who may not have heard, the Brewers were elevated to Class B status by the MBA at their most recent board meeting on Saturday, May 14, 2011." League president Myron Seidl will provide the directors with further information.

Official minutes of the May 14 state board meeting were not posted on the MABA website as of 9:30 a.m.Tuesday morning. The following was posted on the website and attributed to the Marshall Independent.

"Board of Directors Moves New Ulm Brewers to Class B

There is one more team in Class B as of Saturday. The Board of Directors of the MBA invited representatives of the New Ulm Brewers to attend their Saturday board meeting. They had received some complaints that the Brewers had recruited seven new players that had all played with the Class B New Ulm Kaiserhoff in 2010.

In November, the Kaiserhoff had requested to be moved to Class C from Class B because they were losing many of their players and hadn’t done much over the last five years. 2006 was the last year that Kaiserhoff had played in the State Tournament.

Brady Ranweiler, one of the players that moved from Kaiserhoff to the Brewers told the Board that four of the seven players that came had played at least two years with the Brewers previously. He also emphasized that all 23 players that the Brewers had under contract were “100% native born New Ulm.”

Director Roufs said that they were monitoring the rosters of the Class B teams that the Board had let go to Class C. “I received a letter about the seven Kaiserhoff players now playing with the Brewers, said Roufs, “I think it puts the Brewers in a higher level of play than other Tomahawk teams.”

After a long and sometimes vocal discussion, a motion was made to let the Brewers continue to play Class C baseball this season. That motion was defeated in a 6-3 vote. The Board confirmed that the New Ulm Brewers would be placed in Class B this year and also voted to place them in Section 2B, making 35 teams in Class B.