Ron Teasley, Alymer McKerlie, and the Carman Cardinals of the old ManDak League – By Ty Dilello (Standard)
On May 29, Major League Baseball announced that it has officially incorporated the statistics of former Negro Leagues players into its historical records on the MLB website.
This means that legendary leaders in some categories like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb have now been replaced in the record books by players who were not allowed to play on the same fields as them during times of segregation.
Josh Gibson, one of the greatest sluggers in the history of the Negro Leagues, is now listed as MLB’s new all-time career leader in batting average at .372, moving ahead of Ty Cobb at .367. The MLB website also shows Gibson overtaking Babe Ruth in career slugging percentage.
“We are proud that the official historical record now includes the players of the Negro Leagues. This initiative is focused on ensuring that future generations of fans have access to the statistics and milestones of all those who made the Negro Leagues possible,” said MLB commissioner Rob Manfred in a statement. “Their accomplishments on the field will be a gateway to broader learning about this triumph in American history and the path that led to Jackie Robinson’s 1947 Dodger debut.”
Because the Negro League’s last season was in 1951, today, there are only three surviving players of the League. Those players are Willie Mays, Bill Greason, and 97-year-old Ron Teasley.
Ron Teasley is a name that some locals if they’re old enough might remember as he had once suited up for the local Carman Cardinals of the ManDak League from 1949 to 1951.
Before we get to Teasley, let’s give some history and background on the ManDak League that the Carman Cardinals competed in from 1950 to 1954.
The Manitoba-Dakota (ManDak) League was an independent baseball league based in Manitoba and North Dakota that was founded in 1950 and lasted until 1957. It became the home for many African American and Latino players who wanted to play some semi-pro ball.
It was the outlet for former Negro League players to continue playing and entertaining fans, occupying fields with ex-major leaguers, minor league stars and some of the best Manitoba, North Dakota, and Minnesota-born players. It featured such greats as Willie Wells, Leon Day, Ray Dandridge and the legendary Satchel Paige, who pitched briefly for the Minot Mallards in 1950.
The ManDak League evolved from the Manitoba Senior Baseball League, which was established in 1948. This returned an independent baseball league to Manitoba for the first time since the Winnipeg Maroons of the Northern League folded in 1942.
To start, there were three teams in Winnipeg and one in Brandon. The League unsuccessfully sought to add a team based in Grand Forks, North Dakota. When negotiations failed, the Carman Cardinals were admitted as the fifth team in the League.
Negro League players started coming to play for Manitoba teams at this time, as Carman joined the League in 1949. They put up a 14-13 record for third place, before falling to the Elmwood Giants in the league semifinals. Elmwood’s team featured the great NHL goaltender Terry Sawchuk as the team’s top hitter.
In January 1950, the Manitoba Senior Baseball League added a team from Minot, North Dakota, and was reorganized into the new ManDak League. The League drafted a new constitution, deciding that its teams would wear a patch that included both the flags of Canada and the United States.
The ManDak League became a strong level of baseball, largely in part to the Negro League players who had come up to play.
In addition to Ron Teasley, some of the other notable players who suited up for the Carman Cardinals these years included Ed Albosta, who pitched for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1941 and the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1946. And Sammy Drake, who played for the Chicago Cubs in 1960.
Lyman Bostock Sr. was a Negro League power hitter, while Walter McCoy and Gentry Jessup were Negro League pitchers. Lester Lockett and Andrew Porter were both four-time Negro League All-Stars.
NHL stars Black Jack Stewart and Jim McFadden also played for Carman in the ManDak League.
The Cardinals came close on a number of occasions but could never bring a ManDak League title to Carman.
In 1950, the Cardinals finished in fourth place out of five teams with a 21-27 record, and lost in the league semifinals to the Brandon Greys. In 1951, Cardinals finished in fourth place with a record of 29-33, before losing to Brandon in the semifinals once again.
In 1952, Carman finished in second place with a 27-27 record, but lost in the championship final to the Minot Mallards. In 1953, Carman finished in third place with a 37-37 record and lost in the semifinals to Brandon. And in 1954, Carman finished in last place with a 24-45 record before losing to Minot in the semifinals.
1954 was the last year that the Cardinals played in the ManDak League before folding. A few years later, the League also folded.
Ninety-seven-year-old Ron Teasley was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. His love of baseball began as a young boy when his father would take him to the historic Hamtramck Stadium to play. It was there that he saw older athletes playing baseball, and he became their ball boy, enjoying retrieving or supplying balls and eventually playing games with them.
Teasley was an all-star athlete in baseball in his high school years and soon after was playing with semi-pro teams in Detroit, Toledo and Ypsilanti, and toured Michigan playing teams from the Negro Leagues. One of those teams, the Motor City Giants of Detroit, was an independent semi-pro team aspiring to become a member of the United States League.
In college at Wayne State University, Teasley finished with a .500 batting average, which he still holds the record for at his alma mater.
Teasley tried out and was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers of Major League Baseball after Jackie Robinson had broken the colour barrier. He was soon released by the Dodgers, but in 1948 he gained excitement as an outfielder with the New York Cubans of the Negro Leagues.
He then took his talents up north to Canada with the Carman Cardinals of the ManDak League. Teasley, who hailed from Detroit, was recruited to play on the Cardinals by none other than Pilot Mound’s Black Jack Stewart, a star NHL player at the time with the Detroit Red Wings.
While playing with Carman, Teasley was selected to the League’s All-Star Team three years in a row from 1949 to 1951. Teasley hit .336 in 1949 with Carman in the Manitoba Senior League and then .299 with Carman in the inaugural season of the ManDak League as an outfielder.
For 97 years old, Teasley is still pretty healthy and has a remarkable memory of his ball career of yesteryear and playing in Carman.
“I remember teammates like Alymer McKerlie, who was the catcher; Gentry Jessop, who was a star pitcher; and Lillard Cobb, and a bunch of guys that were great to play with as well,” said Teasley. “My buddy up there was Lillard Cobb, who was an outstanding player that should have been in the Majors; he could really run.”
Teasley also told this reporter that he enjoyed his paycheque in Carman compared to his other pro stops. He made $150 a month with the Brooklyn Dodgers farm club, $250 a month with the Negro League’s New York Cubans, but got a big raise to $450 a month when he joined the Carman Cardinals.
“I heard the ManDak League was compared to a level between AA to AAA baseball, leaning more towards AA,” said Teasley. “But we had some Hall of Famers in there like Leon Day and Satchel Paige.”
Teasley was excited to hear that his Cardinals teammate Alymer McKerlie, who is 98 years old, is also still alive and living in Morden.
Miami’s Alymer McKerlie was the catcher on the Carman Cardinals and was one of Manitoba’s all-time top baseball players.
It’s even more impressive how he got to be so good at the game, despite only starting to play baseball at the advanced age of 21.
McKerlie was born in Miami on March 11, 1926. He played hockey amongst other sports growing up as baseball just wasn’t readily available in the 1930s. Eventually, he got into the game of baseball and was a fast learner.
McKerlie signed with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1948 for a whopping $165 a month and attended the big-league clubs training camp in St. Petersburg, Florida.
One of the camp highlights was playing alongside the great Stan Musial, one of the finest ballplayers of all time.
“He was quite a character and a really great player,” said McKerlie. “He was one of the best, that’s for sure. The first two weeks at training camp, I thought I was at a track meet and not a baseball camp, as all we did was callisthenics and running. Then I got blood poisoning and was in the hospital for two weeks.”
A shoulder injury suffered at home plate shortly after he returned meant the end of his camp.
After the Cardinals training camp, McKerlie was to be assigned to the Johnson City (Tennessee) Cardinals of the Class D Appalachian League. However, the Miami native decided against a career in pro ball in favour of playing close to home in southern Manitoba.
Back in those days, MLB teams were reluctant to take Canadian players on their teams in fear of taking jobs away from American players.
“I deserved a better look, but I was a Canadian, and they didn’t want anything to do with us in those years. I was only a minor leaguer in their eyes. Another thing was when I had to take out my passport and give them my age when they found out I was 23; they felt I had no years left to get better and make the team.”
McKerlie was later offered a chance to manage a Single-A team in Minneapolis but turned it down as he and his wife were expecting their first daughter.
He returned to Manitoba and began a 40-year career playing and coaching baseball in the Carman area.
He went on to play for the Carman Cardinals in the ManDak League as a teammate and a friend of Teasley and hit .333 one season. He even played a few games against the great Satchel Paige, who played briefly in the League for the Minot Mallards.
“As a pitcher, Satchel had three speeds,” said McKerlie. “Fast, faster and out of sight. He was terrific.”
McKerlie was an excellent umpire and hockey referee for 20+ years and was elected to the Manitoba Baseball Association Honour Society in 1987. He was later inducted into the inaugural class of the Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame in 1997. In 2007, he was named to Manitoba’s All-Century baseball team.
In closing, the ManDak League was a noble, albeit short-lived experiment that was made possible by the continued racial discrimination against Black baseball players in the United States.
The League was made possible for a few years because, at the time, there was a surplus of available African American talent as many short-sighted MLB owners refused to sign Black players because they were considered not as good as the favoured White players.
Because of that, talented players like Teasley headed up north to play for Carman and were welcomed with open arms by Canadians.
“I found it refreshing and enjoyable to experience a lack of prejudice, both on and off the field, because Canadians were so welcoming,” said Teasley.
Ultimately, the combined pressure of baseball’s sharply declining popularity, especially after the MLB level, while operating a league over long distances in tiny markets made the end of the ManDak League inevitable in the late 1950s.
The history of professional baseball in Manitoba and North Dakota before and after the ManDak era shows that, aside from Winnipeg, the area just does not have markets large enough to support a professional baseball franchise.
Carman never came close to hosting a professional franchise before or after the ManDak League folded. Instead, a Carman Cardinals senior ball club exists today in the Border Baseball League.
Today, baseball historians and locals still remember the ManDak League as a treasure that combined community pride with a competitive spirit and some strong, high-quality baseball.
“I really enjoyed my time in Carman, and I still reminisce about those days a lot,” said Teasley. “I enjoyed the people there in town as they were so nice and friendly. And I certainly enjoyed the baseball. Tell the folks up in Carman that I still think about them a lot.”
Photos Submitted
