Austinson shares story of his life

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, November 30, 1999

I met Warren Austinson when he came into the office intending to make sure his 50th wedding anniversary announcement was put into the newspaper.

Tuesday, November 30, 1999

I met Warren Austinson when he came into the office intending to make sure his 50th wedding anniversary announcement was put into the newspaper.

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He got more than he asked for.

He got a couple cups of coffee and his ear chewed on for an hour or so.

But he didn’t mind. I didn’t either.

Heck, I met the man who was cut in favor of Moose Skowron.

Austinson – born and raised in Lyle, where his dad owned and managed the Austinson Store – was married in 1949 to an Iowa girl by the pretty name of Ruth Ann Heard.

But, of course, Austinson wasn’t married until after the season.

What a season it was.

Austinson played third base for the Austin Packers of the Southern Minnesota League, a semi-pro baseball outfit that was once the biggest work-day distraction around these parts.

It used to be that everybody on the day shift would look forward to those Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday baseball games at Marcusen Park. Crowds upwards of 4,000 would flock to watch Austinson and the rest of those boys of summer.

They used to line up two deep inside the outfield fence.

"Automatic double," said Austinson of the ball hit sharp enough so that it rolled to the wall, where it’d get caught up in the fans’ feet.

Austinson was simply caught up in baseball.

"When I used to be alone as a kid," Austinson said, "I’d fill my pockets with stones and I’d hit the stones all night long."

Hitting stones became a full-time infatuation for Austinson, who has never bothered to remove the baseball from his heart.

Austinson’s life-long baseball journey even took him to Macon, Ga., where in 1947 he played a little bit for the St. Louis Cardinals organization.

"We played morning and afternoon," Austinson recalled.

But he came back home and went to work at the Hormel plant that same year. They didn’t pay a guy enough money back then to rattle around in the minor leagues, where the contract might’ve read "Room, board and broke."

Austinson doesn’t seem to regret coming home. His fondest baseball memories are post-Macon.

Austinson, whose middle name happens to be Herman, showed off some George Herman-like clout once in a while.

"I hit some home runs," said Austinson, who whacked three dingers in a Southern Minny game once; drove in nine runs in that game, enough to win the 15-8 game himself.

In the title game in 1949, Austinson, a third baseman, played with a broken bone in his leg.

He had three at bats and was finally taken out after he was thrown out at first base.

By the rightfielder.

"It was a small bone in my right leg," Austinson said. "It was pretty sore. I had to be taken out. I tried to run, but I stumbled and fell on my way to first."

Austin won the title and Austinson played about half of the 1950 season as a married man.

But when manager Emil Scheid, who was also a boss in the plant, started advertising in newspapers for plant workers who could play ball (or is that ballplayers who could work plant), Austinson’s career was on short time.

Scheid yanked Austinson after Skowron came aboard in the middle of the 1950 season.

Skowron, we all know, went on to become a pretty good ballplayer.

But Austinson thought he handled the third sack pretty well.

Though he doesn’t harbor any hard feelings, Austinson tends to think Scheid played the religion card on him.

"He liked to have Catholic ballplayers," Austinson said. "I was a Lutheran."

Brady Slater’s column appears Tuesdays