Dukes slip past feisty Saltdogs 3-2 for third straight victory
The Duluth-Superior Dukes jumped ahead, blew the lead, but came back to stroll home for a 3-2 victory over Lincoln Friday in a game that ended with a little drama that carried over after the game was over.
It was as if they were going to have a game of streaks, much like their current stretch of the season. The Dukes went off on a six-game winning streak a week ago, then lost three straight at Lincoln to start a five-game losing streak. They ended that with two victories over Schaumburg, and Friday’s victory was their third straight in a ministreak that carried them to even .500, at 17-17.
The Dukes led 1-0 when Ruben Cardona walked, took second on a passed ball, and later scored after an erratic pickoff attempt. It became 2-0 when big Greg Morrison whacked a Rickey Lewis pitch over the right field fence leading off the sixth. Cardona triggered the winning run, also, when he sliced an opposite-field double down the left-field line to open the last of the seventh, and when the Saltdogs tried to manipulate a strategic base on balls to get around slugger Morrison, they just couldn’t seem to stop with the walks, as Brandon Pernell and Eddie Gerald also coaxed free passes, ultimately forcing Cardona home from third with the winning run.
But there was more drama yet to come. Dukes starter Tom Doyle had shut down the Saltdogs on two hits through the first six innings, but ran into a problem in the top of the seventh, when he yielded a single, a walk and hit leadoff man Essex Burton with a pitch, loading the bases. Manager Ed Nottle summoned Matt Koziara from the bullpen to replace lefthander Doyle, and he promptly was touched for a single by Kevin Sullivan, driving home two runs to tie the game 2-2.
The runs were charged to Doyle, which left Koziara in position to pick up his second victory of the season after the Dukes bounced back for Cardona’s run in the last of the seventh, and Derek Gooden closed with a scoreless ninth. Gooden, however, made things interesting by giving up a leadoff double to David Jefferson leading off the inning, and walking Darren Doskocil. Mitsuru Kobayashi dropped a perfect sacrifice bunt that forced Eddie Lantigua to make a big play to record the first out.
Gooden then sharpened his game, striking out Burton, and also striking out Kevin Sullivan, to end the game. But not the excitement. As the teams headed for their dugouts, Sullivan got riled up about something, and both teams rushed out onto the field, coming together for what looked like a mass meeting of the minds, and other things, at home plate. When order was restored, and the teams headed toward their respective dugouts again, the Lincoln players became embroiled in a hassle with some fans, particular one loud, obnoxious and possibly inebriated fellow in a yellow shirt, who came in from the third base bleachers screaming insults at Sullivan.
“He spit on me,” Sullivan said later. The fact that the Dukes face Lincoln twice more could mean more fireworks, heading into Fourth of July week, and possibly even an improved turnout from the 1,057 for the series opener.
When asked about what he saw of the incident, Dukes manager Nottle flashed his best black-humor, acknowledging that the one fan might have been trouble, but adding, “With the number of fans we’re drawing, we can’t afford to throw anyone out.”
Playing at a .500 clip in the Northern League is a pretty impressive thing, but the Dukes have done it in fits and starts — or at least enough winning streaks to offset losing streaks. The Dukes victory Friday lifted them to 17-17 for the first half of the season, but the method to their madness is having an interesting effect on Nottle’s sense of humor. While his players seem to streak two steps forward and one step back, Nottle’s demeanor goes in streaks also, from witty humor to black humor.
“Doyle was 3-hitting ’em, and he wasn’t really in sync all night,” said Nottle. “He still kept us in the ball game.”
It was suggested to the skipper that maybe his charges quit pressing to score, assuming the game was in the bag at 2-0.
Nottle scoffed. “This team is capable of a lot of strange things, but but figuring we got this one won at 2-0 ain’t one of them,” he said.
Since returning home, the Dukes lineup has taken on a much more impressive look. Their losing streak, not coincidentally, started with outfielders Aaron Runk and Brandon Pernell, the only two Dukes hitting over .300, both out with injuries. Shortstop Mike Theoharis joined the club to start the homestand, and as this week progressed, he’s contributed a .350 batting clip while moving up to the No. 2 spot behind Cardona in the order. Runk, hitting third, and Pernell, hitting fifth, returned to the lineup, with Morrison batting cleanup, and moving close to .300 with his home run and single Friday.
That pushes Eddie Gerald and Eddie Lantigua down to sixth and seventh, but also makes it a much more potent lineup, with designated hitter Tim Hunt eighth, and catcher David Briceno — another newcomer who just joined the club two days earlier — smacking a double Friday from the ninth spot in the order.
It may be enough to allow the Dukes to keep on streaking, and bring some of that good-natured humor back to the skipper.
Egersdorf’s Amsoil Late Model victory measures Up North racers
The best thing about something like the “Amsoil Late Model Super Series Summer Sizzler” is NOT the name, although it strains the imagination to try to figure out a way to fit any more words into the official “ALMSSSS” title. But aside from giving Up North dirt track racers a chance to make a little extra money from the rotating series, the best thing about the series is it gives our regional drivers a chance to assess their abilities against some top drivers from adjacent regions.
On that basis, the locals stood up pretty well on Tuesday night, when Rick Egersdorf weaved his way through some lapped traffic to take the lead and hold off Harry Hanson to win the featured Late Model event at Proctor, in the first of the Amsoil races this summer.
Egersdorf is from Lake Elmo, which is down near the Twin Cities, a little bit north of White Bear Lake. He drew the fourth qualifying slot and started from the outside of the second row, right behind Joel Cryderman, one of the prerace favorites.
Cryderman zapped to the lead right from the start, and it appeared he might dominate the race, but a couple of early caution flags slowed things down. After the second one, Darrell Nelson of Hermantown made his bid from third place, hurling his car into the turns and passing Egersdorf, then going high to challenge and pass Cryderman for the lead.
Nelson, who has been running strong at both Proctor and Superior, started fifth but had his No. 44 car running exceptionally well in the outside groove, and he turned out to be the closest thing to a dominant racer in the field, once he got past Cryderman. He never could shake Egersdorf, however, who stayed close enough behind him to challenge for the last 15 laps.
As the two came up on some lapped cars, Nelson went to pass and found his path blocked in the high groove. At that level of Late Model racing, getting off the throttle means a lot more than losing a couple seconds. It also means losing all the momentum these churning, broad-sliding vehicles build up lap after lap. When Nelson was balked, Egersdorf shot past low, and Hanson got by him too, before he could pick up his tempo again.
They finished in that order, with Egersdorf taking the checker, Hanson a strong second and Nelson third.
“That 44 [Nelson] had tremendous horsepower,” said Egersdorf. “The guys Up North always spend their money on engines because of the tracks they race on.”
Presumably, Egersdorf meant that tracks such as Proctor, which suffered a bit from the late winter and then saw its new clay compromised by the heavy spring rains, are rougher than the tracks he’s used to racing on. When you run on smoother tracks, there is an extreme emphasis on the finesse of suspension set-ups and handling calculations; when you race on rough tracks, you need the brute force of heavy horsepower to send you hurtling over the bumps and to the head of the pack.
“I think 44 got too excited when he was out front,” Egersdorf added. “The thing I enjoy most in racing is to be able to read a race track and to see how it’s changing, and adapt to the changes as the race goes on. He stayed running the same line, but as the race went on, the marbles went up on the track and the high groove went away. He was losing it, and he made a mistake.”
Maybe Egersdorf, who races mostly at Cedar Lake and Menomenie in Wisconsin, was right, but more likely such strategy became secondary when the leaders came roaring off the back straight, through Turn 3, and then Turn 4, and came upon slower cars. Not that Nelson was complaining.
“Slower cars are supposed to pull up to let faster cars go by down low,” said Nelson. “I was in the high groove and had a line going there, but when I came around turn 4, the lapped car was already up there in the high groove.”
Egersdorf, meanwhile, acknowledged that he had a distinct advantage at the time.
“When you’re leading, you don’t have any way to know what’s going on behind you,” Egersdorf said. “When you’re second or third, you can see what’s happening up ahead and make your move.”
As the crews poked and carved dried mud from the undercarriages of the race cars, and the drivers tried to wipe off the larger streaks of mud and grime from their faces, it became apparent of one of the major differences in racing on dirt compared to racing on the comparatively pristine short-track asphalt ovals.
“Asphalt is fun to do,” Egersdorf said. “But for the spectators, it’s got to be more fun watching guys race on dirt. These guys are all good out here. This is my third feature win this year, but they’re getting tougher and tougher to come by.”
An older generation of race observers remember the legendary Russ Laursen from Cumberland, Wis., while the younger generation of race fans has grown up watching his sons, Steve and Brent Laursen, compete on dirt tracks in the Upper Midwest. Steve Laursen won the Amsoil trophy last year, but wasn’t at Proctor Tuesday night. Instead, he was recuperating from Monday night surgery on a broken neck.
“Stevie had a bad accident about a month ago,” said Brent Laursen, who did race at Proctor. “He broke the C6 vertebrae in his neck. He was getting along, but he was wearing a cast from his waist up, and going to work. The doctors told him, though, that he couldn’t do any racing, or snowmobile riding, or anything that active, unless he got this procedure done. So he went in and had the two and a half hour surgery last night [Monday].”
Steve Laursen was doing well after surgery, which was termed fully successful, according to Brent, and fans at Proctor were urged to contribute to a fund for Steve, who had the surgery done in Stillwater, Minn.
Brent is a veteran racer himself. In fact, those who recall the skills of Russ Laursen will be surprised to learn how long Brent has been racing. “I’ve been racing for 30 years,” he said. “I’ve won a lot, and lost a lot. But I’ve been shut out so far this year.”
Streaking Dukes find .500 mark tough to reach, tougher to hold
Ruben Cardona sat silently in front of his locker Monday night, contemplating how subtle the difference can be between winning and losing — a difference the Duluth-Superior Dukes demonstrated when they opened this week’s seven-game homestand at Wade Municipal Stadium with a 3-2 loss to Schaumburg.
Last week, the Dukes hit the road and won three straight games at Schaumburg to climb up over the .500 mark, then they went to Lincoln where they lost three straight to slip back under sea level.
Back home at Wade, they played well, and won a lot of little victories, but they dropped the only one that mattered in the 3-2 loss to Schaumburg. Cardona had two chances to be the hero, after the Dukes had seen a 2-0 lead dissolve, and his 0-for-5 night belied how close he had come to delivering two pivotal hits.
The Monday game also was a whirlwind debut to pro baseball for shortstop Mike Theoharis, who was signed out of the University of Santa Clara and arrived in Duluth just in time to meet the team when it arrived from its week on the road. Theoharis was involved in numerous plays on both sides of the ball throughout the game, and manager Ed Nottle said he thought he acquitted himself well.
The Dukes missed chances to score in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings, so, instead of climbing back to .500, the Dukes slipped to 14-16, leaving Nottle in a sour mood. “Obviously, we’re in a bind,” Nottle said, noting that two of the club’s best hitters are out with injuries, and great depth is not an asset of teams in the Northern League. “We had five rookies on the field tonight. I thought we played well, considering that.
“Aaron Runk has put a year together and he’s really improved defensively, but he jammed his thumb and he’ll probably be out for a couple more games, at least,” said Nottle. “It’s on his left hand, not his throwing hand, but it’s his top hand on the bat. And Brandon Pernell twisted his ankle pretty good, so we can’t be sure when we’ll get him back, either. He twisted it getting on the bus after a game.”
Game injuries are inevitable, but when key players get hurt getting aboard the bus, you know you’re not having a very good streak. In Monday’s game against Schaumburg, the Dukes lost their fourth in a row to slip to 14-16.
The obvious difference was that the Flyers hit two home runs while coming from a 2-0 deficit to spoil a strong pitching performance by Kris Koslowski. Matt Nokes socked one to tie the game 2-2 in the fifth inning, and Christian Franco hit one to left-center in the eighth to provide the winning margin.
But the subtle things were the most painful.
In the ninth, Theoharis singled up the middle to lead off, took second on a wild pitch, and went to third when Mike Radwan grounded out. With two out, Cardona, the Dukes leadoff man, came up against hard-throwing reliever Evan Fahrner, and sliced an opposite-field liner to left, but Brian Shultz came in hard to make a shoestring catch and end the game.
In the last of the eighth, Eddie Lantigua led off with a double down the left-field line, and took third when Greg Morrison grounded to second. Eddie Gerald was walked intentionally. Designated hitter Chris Schwab hit a fly ball to medium center field, and Lantigua dashed back to third to tag up. When center-fielder Franco came in for the catch, Lantigua slid in, easily safe because the throw was 10 feet wide to the right.
Lantigua, however, left third a split second too soon, so the only question was whether the umpires had noticed. The Flyers quickly appealed the play, and, sure enough, Lantigua was called out. So, instead of a 3-3 tie, the Dukes were the victims of a weird double play.
In the seventh, Tim Hunt had singled leading off, and Theoharis couldn’t duck quickly enough to avoid getting clunked on the helmet by a Justin Craker pitch. Radwan, who had driven in both Dukes runs in the second, walked to fill the bases with nobody out, bringing in reliever Val Mencas, who threw three balls to Cardona before coming back for a strike. On the next pitch, Cardona sent a screaming line drive hooking down the first base line. For an instant, it appeared that the hit would drive home at least two, but instead, first baseman Mac Mackiewitz speared it with hit big glove and easily doubled Theoharris off second.
It wasn’t as though the Dukes had no luck, or played poorly. In the second, Morrison led off with a single, and Gerald singled to right, and Schwab walked to load the bases with none out. Hunt struck out, and Theoharris — in his first pro at-bat — was called out on strikes on a 3-2 pitch. But Radwan hit a sharp grounder toward third, and the ball took a nasty hop, zipping over the left shoulder of third baseman Matt Donohue, and driving home both Morrison and Gerald for the 2-0 lead.
Shaky defense has been one of the problems for the Dukes this season, and with two-thirds of the outfield out injured, and a new guy at short, there was little reason for optimism. But it was one of the slicker games at Wade this season, as Schaumburg got 10 hits and played errorlessly, while the Dukes added seven hits and had just one error. Hunt was strong in left, and had two hits, while Lahti played well in right.
Theoharis, who hit .302 with 7 home runs and 17 stolen bases for Santa Clara, was in the midst of the action all night, and a preliminary report would be: great glove, quick hands, quick feet, adequate arm, decent bat. He almost made a spectacular play in the second, when he dashed behind the bag for a diving stop of a base hit, but couldn’t come up with the ball in time to get a force out at second. He later made a couple of routine plays, but he made a wild throw to first on Eddie Lara’s grounder in the seventh for the team’s error, but he came right back to charge and short-hop a grounder to retire Matos for the only time all game, leaving him 3-for-4.
With the bat, Theoharis took the called third strike his first at-bat, never swinging at six pitches. He made contact on his next trip, grounding out, then got bonked by the pitch. But he finished by aggressively singling in the ninth and winding up at third.
“For his first game in pro ball, I thought the kid looked good,” said Nottle.
Tommy Archer spend LeMans weekend – in Detroit Trans-Am
Ah, LeMans, where enormous factory resources are poured into running exotic cars at speeds topping 200 miles per hour, for 24 hours, through the curving roadways of the French countryside. The romantic allure of the whole scenario is the stuff of legend, and of movies.
Then there is Detroit — cold, hard, Motor City — a place devoid of that colorful romance, where there is some question whether any more races will be run on the Belle Isle parkways, and where any movies more than likely would focus on the intrigue of an inner-city shoot-em-up.
There were races at both venues last weekend. Tommy Archer, Duluth’s best-known auto race driver, who had become a fixture racing a French Team Oreca Viper at LeMans in recent years, was not at the historic 24 Hours of LeMans. But Archer didn’t have time for any wistful thoughts about France, where Audi prototypes finished 1-2, broadcast on Speedvision cable, because he was starting on the outside of the front row of the Trans-Am road race at Detroit’s Belle Isle, which was live on CBS-TV.
“I missed LeMans a little,” said Archer. “There are some parts of racing there that are a lot of fun. But I’m in a perfect situation right now. I’m the only driver on a team where I can go for the championship, not an American driver on a French team, where everything is planned out. I’ve got my car, my engineer and my team, and I no longer have to worry about being quicker than the other team car.”
Archer was speaking by cell-phone, from a cottage in northern Michigan, where Cinjo Racing Team owner Joe Tranchida invited the team for a little rest and relaxation after the Detroit race, which was something less than successful. Instead of racing 24 hours in France, he raced for about 15 minutes at Belle Isle when an axle failed on his car. But he is undismayed.
“This whole thing has brought a little peace and quiet to my life,” Archer added.
Relaxing at a cabin a couple hundred miles north of Detroit might not be the same as spending a week in Paris, and the roar of a big racing engine doesn’t seem compatible with “peace and quiet,” but the transition has been easy for Archer, who first rose to prominence ice racing, then dominating small sports cars with his brother, Bobby, who is racing out of Texas these days. Tommy Archer was one of three drivers of one of the Team Oreca Vipers on the international endurance racing stage until this year, when the team underwent major changes and he looked elsewhere for satisfaction.
“This is a really neat team,” said Archer. “Cinjo Racing is named for Cindy and Joe Tranchida. Cindy’s favorite number is 3 and Joe’s is 6, so our car is No. 36. It’s a Pratt-Miller chassis with a Viper body, painted blue, with a 310 cubic inch V8. They wanted to make a run at the Trans-Am championship, and they had a list of drivers, and my name kept coming up, so they called me.
“I told them I’d be interested only under certain conditions. We had to have the right engine builder, the right engineer, and the right equipment, because everybody would expect us to win, so we want to have a chance to win. Everything worked out. I sold my part of Archer Brothers Racing to my youngest brother, so I don’t have to worry about that when I’m gone racing. We got Will Moody to be my crew chief, he was my pick, and we’ve got a good car, with European bodywork on it just like the LeMans cars, and we’re getting better.”
The Trans-Am is the longest-running U.S. professional road-racing series. Back when the 1960s turned into the ’70s, the series boomed in popularity with the likes of Parnelli Jones, Mark Donohue, Dan Gurney, Sam Posey, George Follmer and Swede Savage, and it raced all over the country, including at Donnybrooke Speedway in Brainerd, before that 3-mile road course turned into Brainerd International Raceway.
The series has undergone many changes, nearly becoming extinct when the factories withdrew, but always continuing. Archer raced in it back in the early 1990s, and now he is back, and claims the series has changed for the better.
“The Trans-Am is paying more than ever,” he said. “We had 30 cars racing at Detroit, and Paul Gentilozzi won $45,000 for winning; I won $9,000 in 1993 when I won there with a Dodge.”
Archer stunned the Trans-Am world when he won the Detroit Trans-Am, right under the noses of the auto factory bosses. It proved he could bring his winning ways to the big time, and his recent success at places like LeMans put more pressure on him to succeed now.
“It’s tough, but we’re getting closer,” Archer said. “Some guys like Gentilozzi have been racing Trans-Am for 15 years, and we’ve got a brand new car with a brand new chassis. We’ve been fifth, fourth, second, and then 19th at Detroit, so we’re regrouping, but we’re still fifth in points. Gentilozzi runs a Jaguar, and there are a lot of Corvettes, Camaros, Mustangs and even a Mangusta.
“At Mosport, I was third qualifier, only one-tenth off the pole, and I finished second, and set a track record on the last lap of a 125-mile race. Then we went to Detroit and I was second-quickest to Gentilozzi, so I started on the outside of the front row. Gentilozzi got the lead, and I was running bumper-to-bumper behind him, but after seven or eight laps, we lost an axle. A 35-cent clip fell out of the retaining circle, and it caused us to lose the left rear axle.”
Instead of flying home the morning after LeMans to get back to the office at Archer Brothers, Tommy Archer is spending a little R-and-R in Michigan. Next weekend, it’s off to Cleveland, where the Trans-Am series again runs on Saturday on CBS, as a preliminary event to the big CART race. The roar of the big engines will bring his version of a little peace and quiet, while he hurls the No. 36 blue Viper toward the checkered flag.
Beardsley returns to run Grandma’s, reflects on 1981
DULUTH — Dick Beardsley said he enjoys coming back to Grandma’s Marathon, and he has returned every year but one since 1981, when he set the event’s record, of 2 hours, 9 minutes, 37 seconds. He has come back in recent years as a celebrity, as a color commentator, and this year he returned as a marathon runner.
He ran the distance in 2:55:39, which placed him 88th overall. Not bad, for a 45-year-old. While his life has been full of all sorts of incredible situations, ranging from several life-threatening incidents and injuries, to a well-documented chemical dependency problem that he conquered along the way, one thing has remained constant: Nobody has ever threatened to beat Beardsley’s record time in Grandma’s Marathon.
“I’m amazed it still stands,” he said. “But it will be broken.”
Maybe. But with each succeeding year, it seems less likely. More and more runners are competing almost as a recreation rather than as a serious competition, and while the number of entries increases by the year — with over 9,100 starting the full marathon on Saturday — the record stands out there, all alone. Benjamin Matolo won Saturday. His personal best is a 2:11, and he claimed he was focused on running a 2:07, but instead, he ran a 2:14:25, almost two full minutes shy of denting the list of top 10 finishing times.
“Those times, like my 2:09 and Garry Bjorklund’s 2:10, are good times today” Beardsley said. “I can’t remember exactly, but I’m sure I was hurting a little back then in 1981. Today, the engine felt good, the legs felt good. But when I got to the last two miles, it seemed like I was taking a long time to get to the finish line.”
In 1980, Bjorklund ran a 2:10:20 to win Grandma’s, which stands as the second-best time. Bjorklund was training for the Moscow Olympics at that time, and he was in fine tune. If you don’t recall the Moscow Olympics, it’s for good reason. President Jimmy Carter chose to play a trump card in the cold war that summer, and boycotted the Moscow Olympics, so all the athletes who had spent so much of themselves getting ready to represent the U.S., were left out.
But in 1981, Bjorklund, who was from Twig, and ran for Proctor High School before starring at the University of Minnesota and on the world stage, ran against Beardsley. The two staged the greatest duel in Grandma’s history, running far ahead of the field, and pushing each other to an incredible pace. That pace let Beardsley set a record that may never be broken, while Bjorklund’s second-place 2:11:31 stands as fourth-best in the event’s history.
Bjorklund, also, came back for the 25th anniversary of the event, because he also won the first one. He lives in Colorado now, and he ran the aptly named Garry Bjorklund Half-Marathon with his wife. They finished back in the pack somewhere, but the return of Bjorklund and Beardsley rekindled memories of their legendary 1981 race.
“I didn’t know how fast B.J. was going to go,” recalled Beardsley, who now lives in Detroit Lakes. “We went out fast, running sub-5-minute miles from the get-go. Two miles into the race, I looked back but you couldn’t see anything because of the fog. B.J. said, “It’s just you and me, and I’ll run with you as far as I can.”
“B.J. came to our school, and we had a chance to run with him. He and his good friend, Mike Slack, would take off and be gone. So it was really neat for me to get to the point when I could actually run with him.”
Beardsley also recalled how swift the pace was going in 1981, and that he had no real idea of how fast they were going.
“They had set out coffee cans with mile markers, but as the race went on, the signs wilted so you couldn’t read ’em,” Beardsley said. “And my watch had broken.”
Then he chuckled, and added, “It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know; I might not have run that fast.”
Bjorklund and Beardsley pushed each other to the record pace, and that is what might be missing today, Beardsley suggests, as the top runners claim that they are all holding back, waiting for someone else to set a fast pace, which they can follow to set up their own strong finish.
“The great thing about a marathon is that there are such variables that can affect it,” he said. “What has to happen, for someone to break the record, is you’ve got to go from the get-go.”
To run a 2:09:37 for exactly 26.2 miles means a runner must average just UNDER 5-minute miles, for every mile. So if waiting causes a runner to run a few miles over the 5-minute pace, the record becomes hopelessly out of reach.
And that’s probably OK, because it brings Beardsley back, year after year.
“I love coming back here,” Beardsley said. “I ran it in ’81, ’82 and in 1987 I ran a 2:22 in a comeback, trying to make the Olympic team. The only year I missed was 1989 or ’90, when I had made a commitment to be the M.C. at a walleye tournament in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, and I couldn’t get out of it.
“The great thing about this is that this is what’s going on in Duluth, and the whole community comes out and embraces it. It’s big-time, but it’s still got a charm you couldn’t get in a bigger city.”
The lure of the 25th anniversary lured Beardsley back to actually compete. “About the only marathon I’ve run is a thing they had for past winners in London in April,” said Beardsley. “I was going to do 22 miles, just to help me get ready for Grandma’s. My initial goal for Grandma’s was to run a 3:09 — one hour off the record time. But when we got to where my hotel was, I thought, what the heck, I’d go the rest of the way. I ended up doing a 3:09 then, so I got the time I had hoped to train for here.
“Now? I guess I’ll take a couple of days off, then go back to running four or five miles a day with my dog.”
One of the treats for Beardsley was not only to finish the marathon in under his targeted 3:09 ñ by 6 minutes, yet ñ but to renew acquaintances with Bjorklund.
“I didn’t know B.J. very well before the race, and I haven’t talked to him in years,” said Beardsley. “In ’81, he owned a bunch of running shoe stores, and I worked in one of them.”
And, sportsman that he is, Bjorklund didn’t fire his upstart employee, just because the employee beat the store-owner and set the all-time record at Grandma’s Marathon. Twenty-five years later, Grandma’s is still “home turf” for both Beardsley and Bjorklund, and an appreciative crowd cheered appreciatively, to welcome them home.
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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