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

Three early years of the Tomahawk Amateur baseball league plus the 1943 Western Minnesota season have now been cataloged

for the benefit of the Sports Central history preservation and sharing program.

The Tomahawk Leagues, complete with a majority of games in write-ups and with baseball box scores, were for the seasons of 1946, 1947 and 1949. The material was originally in the baseball scrapbooks of Herb and Millie McIvor. Their condition has been deteriorating but were copied and organized to 8x11 page formats as have many other years for the two leagues.

The project focused to complete those projects for those years to preserve the history of Hanska area pitcher Ken Ahlness who had a short pro career in 1948 when an arm injury in the second inning shortened his career in the Fargo debut of the 1948 season in the Northern League. Ken had played some ball on Tinian in the Pacific in World War 2 and once struck out former Detroit/Twins first baseman Vic Wertz three times on the island.

The material is preserved because the McIvors kept detailed scrapbooks of baseball in the 1940's and 1950's and were transferred to New Ulm Sports Central by Ronald Reinhart to preserve that history.

Four souvenir books were made into a biographical history for the Ahlness family, a copy of which is planned to be provided for the Hanska community. It was prepared by NUSC's Herb Schaper who has completed a number of extensive individual baseball biographies.