Minot Magicians
The Minot Magicians, based in Minot, North Dakota, won the only pennant the North Dakota League ever awarded, going 48-21 in 1923 to finish 15 games clear of the field. The nickname drew on Minot's own civic label, the Magic City, earned for how quickly the town grew up around the Great Northern Railway.
The league existed largely because of the man who managed the club. Herb Hester, a recent arrival in Minot with fifteen years of minor league managing behind him, proposed in March 1923 that a circuit could be built from Bismarck, Jamestown, Carrington, Valley City, Fargo and Minot. A four-team version was approved without Fargo or Valley City, and Hester took the Minot job and recruited aggressively. Abe Kemp of the San Francisco Examiner later wrote that fighting "was a religion" with him.
Governor Ragnvald Nestos threw out the first pitch on May 24. Two days after that, in the third game of the league's existence, right-hander George Dennison, who had come to Minot from Seattle, no-hit the Bismarck Capitals at Bismarck in a 2-1 win. He walked seven and struck out three, and Bismarck's only run came on an error and the walks. Five Magicians batted over .300 and the team hit .294 as a group. Fred Gunther tied for the league lead in hits with 88, George Coleman led in runs with 72, and Henry Oliver tied for the home run lead with six.
Winning did not fix the finances. On July 30, nearly 2,000 fans filled Minot's Northwest Fairgrounds, drawn in part by a Ford touring car given away in the seventh inning as a fundraiser. The Minot Daily News noted at the time that the crowd was a relief after the small groups that had been turning out. The league folded before the season was out, and Minot's business community threw the champions a celebration ahead of a final exhibition against Bismarck.
Minot's first professional club had been the 1917 Why Nots, whose season ended early when World War I emptied the rosters. The Minot Mallards later played from 1950 through 1962 and again from 1995 through 1997.
