Miller Climbers
The Miller Climbers, based in Miller, South Dakota, played a single Class D season in 1920 as charter members of the eight-team South Dakota League, hosting home games at Crystal Park. Miller was among the smallest towns in the circuit at under five thousand people.
The season went badly. Miller finished last at 30-64, 29 games behind the champion Mitchell Kernels and ten games behind the seventh-place Aberdeen Boosters, playing under managers Showboat Fisher and Frank Gurney. Fisher went on to the major leagues and hit .374 for the pennant-winning 1930 St. Louis Cardinals. The Miller club was also referred to as the Jugglers during the 1920 season, and both names turn up in the record.
Miller did not field a team when the league reorganized and continued, and the town has not hosted professional baseball since. In the 1800s and first half of the 1900s, teams existed in thousands of small towns across the United States, as Americans looked for recreational activities and entertainment in the era before TV.
