Bernie Gerl slowed by 90 years and a pair of bad hips

John Gilbert

Bernie Gerl and his wife Bernadine. Photo credit: John Gilbert
Bernie Gerl and his wife Bernadine. Photo credit: John Gilbert

As baseball traditions go in Duluth, one of the warmest is the annual fixture of former Duluth Dukes catchersitting behind home plate and watching the Duluth Huskies play a couple of games.
Well, it’s not going to happen this summer. Bernie is doing just fine, but he is preparing for a little surgery in his home at Joliet, Ill., and doctors have advised him against making the eight-hour trip to Duluth this time around.
Gerl is 90, “91 in October,” he said, and he is the only living member of the  horrible bus crash that killed most of his Duluth Dukes teammates. That was 70 years ago. Gerl withstood long and painful recovery from burns, and made an amazing return to baseball with the Dukes. When I was a kid, I remember watching this lanky left-handed hitting catcher swat line drives and home runs at Wade Stadium.

So it was a treat to meet and get to know Bernie and his wife when they made their annual trip to Duluth, sometimes with his son, to see a lot of old friends.
 Last week, I was in San Diego, driving new cars at a Hyundai introduction event. With the 2-hour time change, I was still getting adjusted to jet-lag and getting ready to go to breakfast at 8:20 a.m. when my cell phone rang.
“John Gilbert?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Bernie Gerl calling. I called up to KDAL to talk to you on your radio show, and they told me you weren’t doing it any more. They gave me your number.”
I was flattered that Bernie called me, and gave me the official scoop.
 “I’m not going to be able to make it up to Duluth this year,” he said. “Both my hips are bad, and I’m going to have both of them replaced. I went in to get it done, and they found blood clots, so they can’t do the surgery yet. They put me on medication I’m going to have to take for eight months to get rid of the blood clots. Some kind of medication that’s a blood-thinner.

“I guess I got knocked on my rear end too many times,” Gerl said. Only he didn’t say “rear end.”
“When they found the blood clots, all of a sudden there were six doctors taking care of me. I have to go see each one of them every week, and each one has a different office. This will be the first time in about 15 years that we haven’t gotten up to Duluth.
“I feel bad. I have so many friends in Duluth, like Frank Bucar, the accordian player. Bernie and I have been married 68 years, and we have 18 grand-kids.”
Gerl jokes about his inability to run, and I asked him if maybe that was an after-effect from the bus crash.
 “Nah, I never could run. I never beat anybody,” he said. “I was at spring training with the Cardinals one year, and they always made us sprint. I saw one guy, who was really slow, and I said, ‘Let me race that guy.’ They did, and he beat me. So I shut up.”
After giving everything to return to baseball, Gerl moved on and went to work for Coca-Cola. “I worked for them for 39 years as a vice president in the Chicago area,” he said. “We lived in Joliet, and I traveled the world trying to find new customers for Coca-Cola.
 “You remember George Mikan?” he asked. Of course, I told him.
“Well, George Mikan lived five miles away from us in Joliet. He played baseball too, along with basketball,” Gerl said, and the two got to be good friends.
He also brought back memories of Don Larsen, the New York Yankees pitcher who threw a perfect game in the World Series.
“I caught Don Larsen once in an all-star game,” Gerl said.
“You know, everyone calls Bernadine ‘Bernie,’ and they call me Bernie too,” he said. “So when somebody asks for Bernie, we don’t know which one should answer.”
Yes, it’s going to be a little less interesting at Wade Stadium this summer, because Bernie Gerl is staying at home. But there’s always next year. Bernie will have two new hips, and at age 91, he’ll be ready to hit the road again. His many Duluth friends will be eager to see him.

TWINS READY FOR RUN
The Minnesota Twins are in good position to make a bid to stay in contention for the American League Central Division, as long as they don’t have to keep playing the Houston Astros.
The Yankees? Bring ’em on. The Twins engaged the Yankees at Target Field this week, and gave their heralded foes all they could handle. The series started Monday night, and the Twins beat the Yankees 4-2 in the opener.
Adalberto Mejia was the starter for the Twins, and for a fill-in starter, he pitched very well, going into the sixth inning while giving up five hits but only one run, walking none and striking out four. Tyler Duffey relieved, and gave up another run, but struck out three of the four outs he registered, while walking none. Taylor Rogers came in and had great stuff, walking a couple, but giving up only one hit in an inning and a third. That left it up to Brandon Kintzler, who lived up to his closer role with a perfect ninth, getting the save and lowering his earned-run average to 2.18.

So worried about pitching are Twins fans, that it was easy to overlook the solid clutch hitting of several of the getting-more-solid support staff. Eddie Rosario, far above support staff these days, doubled home a run in the second, and the Twins led 2-0 after two. The Yankees came back to tie the game 2-2, and we could all feel the roof about to cave in.

But in the eighth, Eduardo Escobar singled home Joe Mauer, and Rosario followed with a double to drive home Miguel Sano, breaking the 2-2 tie and giving the suddenly-stout Twins bullpen a 4-2 lead, which they maintained to the finish.
On Tuesday, it was Bartolo Colon night, and I was among a few thousand Minnesota baseball fans holding our collective breath. What’s a 44-year-old fat guy doing joining the Twins at midseason and, of all things, getting his first start with his new club against the Yankees?
But Colon was great for the first few innings. He struck out Aaron Judge, the Yankee superstar slugger, to end a 1-2-3 first, then the Twins gained a 1-0 lead without a hit, as young Yankee prospect Luis Cessa walked in a hitless run with a bases-full pass to Robbie Grossman. The Twins gave Colon a 2-0 lead when Sano cracked a home run to center field in the third, his 22nd.

After the Yankees got one back in the top of the fourth, Brian Dozier tripled home a run in the last of the fifth to make it 3-1. But in the top of the fifth, the Yankees stung Colon and the Twins for five runs. Three of them came off Colon, and the fourth was charged to him, but came when Ryan Presley relieved and gave up a big home run to Didi Gregorius to turn a 4-3 Yankee lead to 6-3. Game essentially over.

But the ageless Colon went into the fifth inning, walking none and striking out three, and maybe we shouldn’t have expected him to come out of mothballs and pitch more than four innings. Regardless, splitting the first two games meant the teams would meet for the third game at high noon on Wednesday, and the Twins are in not-bad position.