Cards with a Story - Jim Perry

My very first job was as a caddie at a local country club.  I was in middle school at the time.  The club was called Minnehaha Country Club, and it's still there today.  Minnehaha sometimes made Golf Digest's list of best golf courses in the country, and they always were tops in South Dakota.

 

There were certain nights of the week that very few of the club members golfed, and we caddies were allowed to golf on those evenings.  This was a regular occurrence for some of my caddie friends and me.  One evening my friend Doug and I were golfing a round.  A couple holes into the round, a club member who was playing as a onesome came up behind us.  We stepped aside to let him play through.  That was the rule, caddies always had to let the members play through.  When he caught up to us, instead of playing through he asked if we'd mind playing the rest of the way together as a threesome.  We said sure.  Since it was his idea we certainly couldn't get in trouble for that.

He introduced himself to us as Jim Perry.  That was it, just Jim Perry.  Not Jim Perry, brother of hall of famer Gaylord Perry.  Not Jim Perry, former Cy Young Award winner.  Not Jim Perry, former major league all-star pitcher.  Just Jim Perry.  Well, having been raised in a Twins household, I knew full well who he was, but didn't let on.  My friend Doug didn't know Jim Perry from Adam, and had no clue as to the significance of who we'd golfed almost a whole round of golf with until afterwards when I filled him in.  Jim Perry was very friendly and treated us caddies like average joes.  I remember thinking how tall he was.  He was the only club member over my two years there who actually played golf with us caddies, and I golfed a lot of rounds and let a lot of members play through.  This was either in 1985 or 1986, so about ten years after he retired from major league baseball.  Jim was a businessman in town (Sioux Falls) at the time, and his son Chris was a professional on the PGA tour.

When I received my father-in-law's collection a couple years ago, I obtained for the first time Jim Perry baseball cards.