The Times They Are A-Changin': Minnesota Sports in the 1960s

The Baby Boomers came of age in the 1960s and, man, they were a pain in the ass. Mainly, they refused to fight for their country like their fathers had done. Of course, not everybody was opposed to the war. Ten percent of the Boomers fought in Vietnam, and social scientists say that no more than ten to 15 percent of young Americans at the time were really hippies or radicals or anything like that. Sure, there was sex, drugs and rock & roll. But, for every hippie there were ten boys and young men who played football and basketball and other sports at school just like their daddy did.

Sports is, of course, a meritocracy. If you fail, it’s your own damn fault. And, so there was little sympathy in the sporting world for the communal values of the day, not even among the Boomers. Still, a few sports figures went native. The boxer Muhummad Ali, who was stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing to be drafted into the military in 1966, neatly tied together the two big issues of the day when he said, “Ain’t no Viet Cong ever called me nigger.” 

Even some white athletes affected the accouterments of the counter-culture, whether it was long hair or liberal opinions or what have you. Joe Namath and Bill Walton come to mind. But, for the most part, sports and country music remained the two places in America where one could escape from that idea, advanced by the Minnesotan, Bob Dylan, that “the times they are a-changin,’” and that they were changing in a counter-cultural direction. 

And, yet, the times they were a-changin.’ Sports continued the great restructuring that it had begun in the 1950s. The major leagues continued to expand into the south and the west. Television picked the winners and losers. The networks had loved boxing in the 1950s. Now, after several highly publicized deaths in the ring, boxing disappeared from the small screen. The Olympics went from a curiosity to a multi-million dollar business, thanks to TV coverage. ABC’s Wide World of Sports introduced Americans to exotica like, well, soccer, and to “the agony of defeat.” TV made superstars out of people like Arnold Palmer and Peggy Fleming.

But, locally, the big sports story of the 1960s was pretty obvious: Minnesota was now big league with the arrival of the Twins and Vikings in 1961. The NHL and the North Stars arrived in 1969. The Twins came to play respectable ball as early as 1962. It took the Vikings until about 1968. The North Stars? 1981? Meanwhile, Gopher football got one final taste of glory with a national championship in 1960 and a Rose Bowl victory after the 1961 season, but then decline set in. Another co-championship in 1967 was not enough to rekindle interest. The Gopher basketball team experienced a burst of hope mid-decade but then it, too, declined. 

#5 Season #6 Event Twins Storm Into the 1965 World Series, Lose to Sandy Koufax and the L.A. Dodgers 4-3 The Twins and Vikings made Minnesota “big league” in 1961, and the Twins were the first to enjoy success on the field. They became known for their “murderer’s row” of home run hitters—Harmon Killebrew, Bob Allison, Jimmie Hall, Tony Oliva, and more. After winning just 70 games in 1961, they won 91 in 1962 and 1963. They slumped in 1964, but added Oliva’s bat to the lineup, as “Tony-O” won the batting title and Rookie of the Year honors. It all came together in 1965 around the mercurial shortstop Zoilo Versalles. Identified in 1961 as a player of unlimited potential, Versalles had been erratic. And, yet, in 1962 he got a smattering of MVP votes. In 1963, he led the league in triples, won a Gold Glove and made the All-Star team. In 1965, he led the league in at bats, runs, doubles, triples, extra-base hits and total bases, and was a near-unanimous pick as MVP. Oliva won a second batting title and finished second in MVP voting. Killebrew, Allison, Mincher and Versalles all hit 20-plus home runs. Mudcat Grant won 21 games while Jim Kaat was 18-11, 2.83.  The Twins won the American League pennant by seven games. They faced the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers, 1963 world champions, with superstar pitchers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, in the World Series. Well, the Twins beat Drysdale and Koufax in games one and two. But, they lost all three games in L.A. and came home needed to sweep the final two games. Grant beat Drysdale, and hit a three-run home run, in game six. But Koufax two-hit the Twins in game seven, and the Twins lost 2-0 and four games to three. Still, it was a wonderful season. The future looked bright. Even owner Calvin Griffith was beloved, a star of Twin Cities sports.

#7 Athlete Harmon Killebrew Harmon Killebrew came to the major leagues at 18 in 1954 as a highly-touted “bonus baby” and a second baseman. It took him awhile to hit his stride. He hit eleven home runs and .224 in 254 games in his first five major league seasons. Then, in 1959, he led the American League with 42 home runs. He also struck out 116 times, and it wasn’t clear whether he was better known for the HRs or the Ks.  In 1961, in his first year as a Minnesota Twin, he again led the league in taters with 46 and he hit .288. Yet, there were those strikeouts. In 1962, the Twins improved by 20 wins to a total of 91, and Killebrew led the league with 48 HR and 126 RBI. But, his batting average dropped to .243 and the strikeouts increased to a league-leading 142. By the time he was done, he had hit 40-plus home runs eight times and struck out 100-plus times in seven seasons. When he retired, he was second only to Babe Ruth in home runs in the American League, and he was second only to Mickey Mantle on the career list for strikeouts with 1,699. So, not everybody noticed that Killebrew cut down dramatically on his strikeouts as the years went by. Beginning in 1965, he struck out 100 times only once, and in 1969 he really put it all together. He led the league in HR and RBI at 45 and 140, and in walks with 145. He struck out just 84 times, he hit .276 and led the league in on-base percentage at .427. He was a runaway winner of the AL MVP. In 1970, he went 41-113-.271 with another 84 K, and he finished third in the MVP voting. In 1971, he went 28-119-.254 with 96 K. And, remember, he came up as an infielder and played a lot of decent third base over the years, though he finished up as a first baseman, of course.  The other thing people admired about Harmon Killebrew was that he was regarded as a quiet and a kind man. Somebody once asked him what his hobbies were. “Just washing the dishes, I guess,” he said.

#4 Team Minnesota Vikings 1969 Expansion franchises used to get nuthin.’ You had to suffer for awhile. And, the Minnesota Vikings did that. They won their first game ever, shocking the Chicago Bears 37-13 as Fran Tarkenton threw four touchdown passes. But, by the end of 1967, coach Norm Van Brocklin and Tarkenton were both gone, and the Vikings were 32-59-7. Then, in 1968, they seemed to turn it around, going 8-6 and playing quite respectably against the powerful Baltimore Colts in the playoffs before losing 24-14. Then, in 1969, they opened with a disappointing loss to Tarkenton and the New York Giants. Then, in week two, they demolished the heavily favored Colts 56-14 as new QB Joe Kapp threw an NFL record seven touchdown passes. Before they were done, they won twelve straight games by an average score of 29-8. In the playoffs, the came from behind to beat the L.A. Rams 23-20, then manhandled the Cleveland Browns 27-7. The Vikings were 12 to 13-point favorites to beat the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl IV. Instead, the Chiefs defense dominated and the Vikings lost, embarrassingly, 23-7. But, until Super Bowl Sunday, it was a glorious season for the Vikings and the making of the reputations of coach Bud Grant and the so-called “Purple People Eaters” (the defensive front of Eller, Marshall and Page). Mostly, it made a legend of coach Grant in just his third season at the helm.

# 4 Event The Vikings Demolish NFC Opponents,  But Lose First Super Bowl to Kansas City, 23-7 The Minnesota Vikings vastly exceeded any and all expectations in 1969. They were just 40-65-7 going into the season, and they relied on a third year coach and a new quarterback. Sure enough, they opened with a loss to their former QB Fran Tarkenton and his new team, the New York Giants. Then, in week two, they clobbered the Baltimore Colts 56-14, and they were off to the races.  They won in Chicago 31-0. They humiliated the Cleveland Browns 51-3 as Kapp threw three more TD passes. They bombed the Steelers 52-14. They beat the undefeated L.A. Rams 20-13 after leading 17-3 at the half.  But, in the first round of the playoffs, they fell behind the Rams 17-7. In the second half, they forced the Rams to punt for the first time and scored on their first possession. The Vikings went ahead 21-20 at 8:24 of the fourth. Then, Carl Eller sacked L.A. QB Roman Gabriel for a safety and Alan Page intercepted a Gabriel pass to effectively end the game. The Vikings then manhandled Cleveland for the second time this year, leading 24-0 at the half and winning 27-7. The Vikings were favored to win Super Bowl IV, but were able to run for just 67 yards and turned the ball over five times. The Vikings first half possessions ended in three punts, two fumbles lost and a missed field goal. They were 0-for-5 on third down and trailed 16-0. They got within 16-7 early in the third period, but that was the extent of the rally. What really grates in hindsight, of course, is that in four Super Bowls, the Vikings never really played any better than this.

Success for the Gopher football and basketball teams had come about four years apart, which is also how much time passed between the day when Murray Warmath decided to recruit African-American athletes from around the country and the day when John Kundla decided to do the same. What they, and we, didn’t know was that there was a very short window of opportunity for the Gophers to do so. The Gophers were able to recruit football stars like Bobby Bell, Carl Eller and Sandy Stephens and basketball stars like Archie Clark and Lou Hudson because their hometown universities were still segregated. But, those hometown universities quickly saw that schools with black athletes were winning and the schools without black athletes were not. Soon enough, they, too, had black athletes, and those black athletes no longer needed to travel a thousand miles from home into an unfamiliar land of ice and snow to play major college sports. 

#8 (tie) Event

Gophers Clobber #1 Iowa, 27-10

The 1965 World Series was the only sports event of the 1960s that could hold a candle to the Gophers 1960 football win over Iowa, 27-10. It featured #1 (Iowa) vs. #3. A national championship and a trip to the Rose Bowl were at stake. And, for the Gophers, revenge for a series of humiliations by the hated Hawkeyes.

Iowa coach Forest Evashevski was of course no stranger to the Minnesota Gophers. He played for Michigan—he caught a touchdown pass—in the Gophers 7-6 win to clinch the 1940 national title. Now, he was in his ninth year as coach of the Iowa Hawkeyes, where he was 52-27-4 with Big 10 titles in 1956 and 1958. The Gophers were 2-6 against Evashevski with five straight defeats. Iowa came to Minnesota on November 5, 1960, unbeaten and ranked #1, but a little bit banged up. They were in the middle of perhaps the toughest schedule in college football history, having beaten the #10, 6, 13, 12, 10 and 19-ranked teams. Now came the #3 Gophers, then a trip to #5 Ohio State.

The Gophers outgained Iowa 299-198 as each team turned it over four times. The Gophers scored two touchdowns after getting the ball on the 14 on downs after a bad snap on an Iowa punt, and again after recovering an Iowa fumble on the 19. Fullback Roger Hagberg caught a key 30-yard pass and later scored on a 42-yard run. The 27-10 Minnesota win moved the Gophers into the #1 spot in the AP poll.

Still, led by the baseball team with four Big 10 titles and a pair of national championships—and with football contributing its last two titles to this day—the Gophers got back into double digits with a total of eleven conference titles in the ‘60s. This would prove to be a trend. Baseball coach Dick Siebert was hired in 1948 by athletic director Frank McCormick (1932-1950). But, despite Siebert’s success, the McCormick era was not otherwise “good times” for Gopher sports. Setting aside just the football titles, in the 1930s and 1940s the Gophers had won just 14 Big 10 titles out of a possible 191.

And, so, as success for Minnesota Gopher football and basketball teams became more elusive, fan loyalty shifted to the new professional teams, and it never looked back. That meant that Harmon Killebrew and Tony Oliva and Fran Tarkenton and Alan Page are remembered as the superstars of Minnesota sports in the 1960s while Bell, Stephens and Hudson are but vague memories.

Hoops and Hockey

Early in the decade, the high school basketball tournament was still the toughest ticket in town but here, too, decline set in. By the end of the decade, attendance at the basketball tournament had declined for the first time ever after more than 50 years of steady growth.

It was due, at least in part, to the professional competition. It was due to the dominance of the Lake Conference, located in the western suburbs of Minneapolis, and to the notion that the small towns could no longer compete. But, more than that, it was due to the obvious decline in the caliber of play. A quarter-century earlier, the NCAA had resisted the move to deemphasize sports, but the MSHSL had been moved to implement stringent restrictions on the amount of basketball that Minnesotans could play. As a result, during the 1960s, no more than one or two boys won Division 1 basketball scholarships in a typical year. This was also the underlying reason for the Gophers’ continuing lack of success.

And, so, by the end of the decade, the high school hockey tournament had surpassed basketball in popularity. The small towns, especially those “up north,” could still compete in hockey. From 1957 to 1968, International Falls won five state titles, Roseau three and Coleraine Greenway two, and many of those boys grew up to play Division 1 hockey in college—many more than could do that anymore in the world of basketball.

#9 (tie) Event #19 Season “Cinderella” Edgerton Edges Richfield 63-60 in OT En Route to State Basketball Championship Metro schools had begun to dominate the state high school basketball tourney a little too much. From 1913 to 1939, they had won just six of 27 championships. In the 1940s, it was four; in the 1950s, six. From 1943 to 1959, it was 10-of-17. So, in 1960, Richfield of Region 5 was a heavy favorite, and they thrashed North St. Paul 60-51 in the first round, after leading by as many as 14. Austin was also favored and beat Thief River Falls 55-41. Meanwhile, tiny Edgerton came into the tournament unbeaten but largely unsung. Sure, they had beaten perennial power Mankato 73-44 in Region 2, but…. But, Edgerton played well in the first round, beating Chisholm 65-54. That set up a classic David vs. Goliath semi, Richfield vs. Edgerton, and the first-ever state tournament meeting of two players who had scored 1,000 career points—Bill Davis for Richfield, and Dean Veenhof for Edgerton. Things looked bleak for the Dutchmen when Veenhof fouled out with five minutes left and Edgerton up 50-46. Davis tied it at 56 and the game went into overtime. In the end, Edgerton scored just one field goal in the fourth quarter plus overtime but made free throw after free throw to pull out a 63-60 thriller.  Edgerton then defeated Austin 72-61 as more than 19,000 fans watched at Williams Arena. Edgerton was the smallest school from the smallest town ever to win a single class state title.

#9 (tie) Event #12 Dynasty The E-Dynasty Gathers Force as Edina Beats Warroad 5-4 for the 1969 State Hockey Title Edina was settled in the 1860s, and was a small farming and milling community as late as World War II. Edina was known as a bastion of racial exclusivity, as deed covenants sought to keep blacks and Jews out. In 1960, mayor Ken Joyce spoke out against these policies and the village voted in favor of inclusion. Edina’s population tripled to more than 30,000 during the 1950s. Edina high school was founded in 1949. Its first state titles were mythical football titles in 1952 and 1953. A boys golf title was its first official title in 1954. Its three-peat in boys basketball began in 1966 with just its fourth title.  But, after that, the titles piled up like so many sacks of flour, and today Edina leads all Minnesota schools with 186 athletic championships: 37 in girls tennis, 24 in boys tennis, 17 in girls swimming, 13 in boys hockey, twelve in girls golf, and eleven in boys swimming. Its most famous champions, of course, are its boys basketball three-peat in 1966, 1967 and 1968, and then its 1969 state hockey champions with their overtime win over Warroad and Henry Boucha. The basketball team was 79-1 over three years and won a state record 69 straight games. Meanwhile, the Edina hockey legend began in 1969. Fans loved Henry Boucha and tiny Warroad, while they were in awe of Edina. In the final, Edina led 4-2 when Boucha went down and out with blood draining out of his ear. Yet Warroad came back to tie it up and to send the game into overtime. Defenseman Skip Thomas scored at 3:09 of OT to give Edina the first of seven state titles. The tournament drew a record of more than 80,000 fans, and the hockey tournament surpassed the basketball tournament as Minnesota’s premiere high school event.

In the 1950s Minnesota’s sports heroes were Gopher gridders, high school hoopsters and Friday night fighters on the TV. In the 1970s, they were Vikings and Twins, high school pucksters and Olympians on TV. All of those changes—from the Gophers to the pros, from basketball to hockey, from boxing to the Olympics—all of them were packed into just a few years of the 1960s. Like it or not, Dylan was right.

#5 Leader

#5 Dynasty

John Gagliardi and St. John’s Win Their First of Four National Football Championships

John Gagliardi was St. John’s football coach for 60 years with a 465-132-10 record and 27 MIAC titles. His career total of 489 wins, including four years at Carroll (MT), is the most ever by any college football coach at any level. The Johnnies played in the post-season 24 times and his 1963, 1965, 1976 and 2003 teams won national championships in the NAIA or NCAA Division 3. 

Gagliardi won his first MIAC title in his first year at St. John’s in 1953, but then did not win again until 1962, when his 9-0 Johnnies die not get a post-season invitation. They repeated in 1963 and this time they got an invitation to the NAIA playoffs where, in the first round, St. John’s hammered Emporia State 54-0. They drew unbeaten Prairie View A&M, who was chosen by the Pittsburgh Courier as the black national champions and featuring future all-pros Kenny Houston and Otis Taylor, in the final. After watching their film, Gagliardi is reported to have said, “Well, they may be big, but at least they’re fast.” But, the Johnnies had outscored their opponents 29-5 and they, too, were pretty good. In fact, they defeated Prairie View 33-27 for their first national title. 

St. John’s returned to the top of the MIAC in 1965, and the NAIA could hardly exclude them, and indeed the Johnnies beat Fairmount State 28-7 and Linfield  33-0 for their second national title. The Johnnies gave up just 20 points in nine regular season games, and against Linfield they gave up just 28 yards rushing and each of their four starting defensive backs intercepted a pass. 

Still, the Johnnies were not yet the juggernaut that they would become, failing to win an MIAC title again until 1971. But, they won six conference titles in the 1970s, and won their third national title in 1976, beating Augustana, IL, 46-7, Buena Vista 61-0 and Towson State 31-28. St. John’s led Towson 28-0 before a furious Towson rallied tied the game at 28 with just 30 seconds remaining. But, Johnnies QB Jeff Norman threw a 56-yard pass to Jim Roeder, which allowed Norman to kick a 19-yard field goal on the last play of the game.

There were three more MIAC titles in the 1980s, then seven in the 1990s and seven more in the 2000s. The fourth championship came in 2003 with wins over St. Norbert, Linfield, RPI and then over perennial power Mount Union 24-6 in the final. Mount Union had won seven NCAA D3 football titles in ten years, including 2000 when the edged the Johnnies 10-7. The Johnnies led Mount Union 7-6 at the half, but pulled away in the second half as Blake Elliott gained 114 yards rushing and 51 yards receiving. His 51-yard run made it 17-6 in the fourth, then Mike Zauhar ran back in interception 100 yards for the 24-6 final.