The day the Cardinals came to town

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/08/2016 (3687 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

To younger fans, the Winnipeg Goldeyes are the professional baseball team that plays at Shaw Park.

When pro ball returned to the city in 1994, the team was a member of the independent Northern League and had a home field squeezed into the north end of the late and perhaps lamented Winnipeg Stadium.

Older fans fondly remember the original Goldeyes, a team in the St. Louis Cardinals farm system. That version began play in the Northern League in 1954 when the Class C league was part of organized baseball. Home was an excellent baseball field in the south end of the Stadium.

The Cardinals were the first bona fide major league team to visit Winnipeg for an exhibition game when they came to play the Goldeyes on Aug. 20, 1962.

After beating the first-year New York Mets 10-5 at the Polo Grounds in New York City the previous day, St. Louis arrived in Winnipeg at 2 p.m. The visitors left right after the game for a matchup in Milwaukee the next night with the Braves. Although the Cards weren’t having a good season in 1962, sitting in fifth place in the National League, the lineup Winnipeggers saw was filled with stars. St. Louis won 9-1 in front of 12,300 fans.

Stan (The Man) Musial played left field and had a RBI single in three at-bats. At age 41, the future Hall-of-Famer had more than 3,000 hits for the Cardinals. Ken Boyer played third base until he was replaced in the sixth by another Hall-of-Famer Red Schoendienst. Many baseball pundits believe the several-time all-star belongs in Cooperstown with Musial and  Schoendienst, who played most of his career at second. Bill White, who won seven Golden Glove awards, was at first base. He later became the National League president. The double-play combination of Julian Javier and Dal Maxvill each had a run-producing hit. After graduating from college with an electrical engineering degree in 1960, Maxvill came north to play shortstop for the Goldeyes. The next summer he started the season in Winnipeg before moving up to the AAA International League.

Maxvill won the World Series with the Cardinals in 1964 and 1967 and later served as the team’s general manager. Ex-Goldeye Julio Gotay pinch hit for Javier in the sixth. The infielder spent parts of 10 seasons in the majors.

Local fans were pleased that St. Louis manager Johnny Keane choose to start a battery of former Goldeyes. Pitcher Paul Toth went seven innings for the win. His catcher was Jimmie Schaffer, the Northern League MVP in 1958. Curt Simmons, who won 193 games in the majors, worked in relief. Another future Cardinal, 19-year-old rookie southpaw Larry Jaster, pitched the first six innings for Winnipeg. With his pitching staff worn out after a tough 10-day schedule, manager Fred Koenig pitched the final three. He needed to save pitchers for a doubleheader the next night with the Grand Forks Chiefs.

Elrod Hendricks, whose major league career spanned 12 years, primarily with Baltimore, caught part of the game. Keane’s coaching staff included Vern Benson, who managed the Goldeyes in 1956 and again in 1957 when the team won the Northern League championship.

Memories of Sport appears every second week in the Canstar Community News weeklies. Kent Morgan can be contacted at 204-489-6641 or email: sportsmemories@canstarnews.com