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

History of the 1941 state amateur baseball tournament in New Ulm has been enhanced with multiple pages of material from a personal scrap book kept for Otis Loose back at that time. Loose was a catcher on the New Ulm state champions and continued to play amateur ball in New Ulm as well as operating a business and being involved in community activities.

The Loose scrapbook was made available by his wife, Peggy, and was mostly newspaper clippings from the New Ulm Daily Journal. Previous material were focused on clippings from the New Ulm Review.

Photo copies from the book were re-positioned to fit a 8.5x11 sheet format to match others and to make the information available to be scanned digitally and added to the historic website of New Ulm Sports Central. Indexing and scanning to the site will be completed in 2011.

The 1941 tournament files join such sports preservation material from the 1943 and 1958 state amateur tournaments. In 1941, the attendance record for the tournament was not only shattered in New Ulm, but the new record doubled the previous high. Other material preserved for 1941 includes separate "books" and files on the regional tournaments and post state victory banquets, the Herb McIvor 1941 tournament book and a file on the mythical championship game against Owatonna.

Members of the state championship team included Jack Aufderheide, Mike Enrico, Ray Bassett, Harry Brand, Stan Manderfeld, Ronny Spelbrink, Bugga Stelljes, Howard Lindemann, Clarence Light, Ray Manderfeld, Otis Loose, Douglas Kusske, Leon Ochs, Benny Needham, Dick Eichten, John Debolock, Carl Lindmeyer, Robert Aufderheide and draftees Bassie Wagner and Gail Mayo (from Springfield) and Henry Nicklasson (from Fairfax). Bat boy and equipment managers were Richard Steinberg and Bounce Bastian.