Bob Collins
No kid who grew up loving a good pick-up game of baseball can forget the kind of memories that likely still exist behind the backstop here in Georgetown, Minnesota, about 15 miles north of Moorhead.
The town’s kids played under the lights — or in the shadow of the giant grain elevator if it was a day game. A well-placed foul ball might bounce off one of the cars of the railroad train passing by. Life was good in small-town Minnesota.
Today, Georgetown literally buried baseball.
The Army Corps of Engineers told the city it had to increase its permanent levee against the Buffalo River. But some property owners in town were refusing to let the city use the clay on their property.
So it used the old baseball field in town instead.
In truth, baseball was already dead in Georgetown, just as it is in many small towns in Minnesota. Kids don’t play pickup games, anymore, and that’s if there still are enough kids in a town like Georgetown, population 150.
“We haven’t used it in years,” one city official said.
At Target Field’s opening day today, perhaps there should be a moment of silence for a forgotten diamond in Georgetown.
