St. Paul PeeWee Baseball team--then and now

Then, they were in sixth grade and played PeeWee baseball in 1955 at Scheffer playground in Saint Paul. Now, 53 years later they still get together every couple of months or so for breakfast at the Coffee Cup on Rice Street. Dick Miller, Jay Allen, Jerry Sinna and John Brodrick attended the old Scheffer grade school, while Bill Braeker and Derrill Lambert went to St. Adalbert’s. All lived near the playground and came together to play under the late Coach Joe Sullivan. Brodrick describes Sullivan as “ an icon in the neighborhood.”

Brodrick, a retired teacher and now a member of the Saint Paul Board of Education, says the team wore hand-me-down old-style white flannel uniforms with baggy pants and their shirts read “Public Safety Post 449.” That year the PeeWees played against Front, Rice-Lawson, Sylvan, and Valley playground teams. Brodrick laughs as he recalls that the “only hit I got all year was against Front.”

In those days the boundaries of the North End/Rice Street and Frogtown neighborhoods were not as clearly defined. Today the Scheffer playground, which is the oldest playground in the city, still exists as Scheffer Recreation Center at Como Avenue and Marion Street in Frogtown. Brodrick, who lived just off of Rice Street, says, “I always considered myself a Rice Streeter. I guess you could say we were a hybrid team.”