One of the things I discussed with the Minnesota Twins delegation this past week during their visits here was the history and longevity of minor league baseball in Cedar Rapids.

The Twins and the Kernels signed a four-year working agreement Wednesday.

In the mid-1930's, my father became a member of the Cedar Rapids board of directors and we have had a member of the Brooks family on the board for more than 75 years, since my son Rob is now the treasurer of the ballclub. And during that time, yours truly has seen a few unusual things that we will try to write about today.

I have to go back to my father's time, because in those days with the Depression in full swing, baseball was about the only recreation that was affordable.

Cedar Rapids at that time in the late 1930's had a working agreement with the St. Louis Cardinals, who were operated by Branch Rickey. Rickey's idea about signing players was to sign a lot of them and let the cream rise to the top.

He had more players and more minor league agreements than anybody else in the game at that time. In fact, he was trying to become a baseball czar with players.

His methods caught the attention of the commissioner of the game, Kennesaw "Mountain" Landis, a former federal judge who had been put in the job after the Black Sox gambling scandal. Landis was the real czar of the game, and he proved it one night to Branch Rickey.

Landis signed an order that made every St. Louis Cardinal ballplayer a free agent. Here in Cedar Rapids, the club was run by a judge named Henry Johnson, and with my dad on the board of directors, the group woke up that morning without a team.

They had to scurry around and try and get some players and also go up and down the street and pass the hat to try and get enough funds to continue baseball in Cedar Rapids. Knocking on doors and campaigning at the Belden Hill cigar store, they finally got that done.

A few years later, in the 1940's, the Cedar Rapids directors were saved by the elevation of Cy Slapnicka, the man who signed Bob Feller, to the job of general manager of the Cleveland Indians.

Being a Cedar Rapids native, Cy immediately got a working agreement set with Cedar Rapids - then called the Raiders - and lo and behold, with "Slap" sending players here the Cedar Rapids club won a couple of pennants and had some great ballplayers playing in old Hill Park, below Roosevelt High School (now the middle school).

That saved the franchise until World War II, when play was suspended.

Another critical time for Cedar Rapids baseball came in the late 1950's, when Cedar Rapids had some working agreement failures and needed a winner. All of a sudden the Boston Braves moved and became the Milwaukee Braves, and with it came an opportunity for a working agreement.

It so happened that the great Cedar Rapids ambassador, Howard Hall, knew the brothers who owned the Boston Braves. He invited them out to Brucemore to a luncheon to persuade them to put a minor league club in Cedar Rapids.

And with Howard's persuasiveness, and the luncheon of Iowa corn-on-the-cob served in silver bowls, the Bostonians acquiesced and influenced the Milwaukee group to put a team in Cedar Rapids. And with it came the likes of Bob "Hawk" Taylor and Jack Dittmer, an Iowan who was an excellent baseball and football player, and many other high-class players who delivered a pennant to Cedar Rapids.

Now let's hope that with the synergy of the Minnesota Twins that they can deliver a pennant and a playoff team to the Parlor City that has embraced baseball for more than 120 years.

(Bob Brooks is sports director at KMRY and has been one of the leading voices of college and prep sports in Eastern Iowa for more than 65 years. He is a 10-time winner of the Iowa Sportscaster of the Year Award, and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Indiana in 2004. His sports reports can be heard weekday afternoons at 4:30 and 5:30, and Saturdays at 6:40 for the Hawkeye football wrap-up.)