This is the Irish Yards baseball diamond which is the home of the Milroy Irish amateur baseball team. The Dolan family built this field in 2010 out of family cropland. The small town of Milroy, population 252, 6 miles down the road, also has a baseball field which hosts the Milroy Yankees.
Below is an article that appeared in the Marshall Independent regarding the Dolan family and the field.
MILROY – Amateur baseball is a ubiquitous force that brings communities together throughout Minnesota. For the Milroy Irish, however, it’s the community that brings together the team. “That’s easy, it’s family,” Anthony Dolan, the current manager of the Irish, said. “It’s the people we’re doing it with, right? I mean, we got what, eight of us on the squad? And we’ve got a son-in-law, it’s the people. We obviously all love baseball, but the people we’re doing it with is what makes us special.” The Irish are a team built around family. Brothers Neil and Bob Dolan established the team in 2009 and remain with the team today. Neil’s sons – Isaac, Moses and Zeke – and Bob’s sons – Anthony, Lucas and Dominic – all are a part of the team, putting eight Dolans on the roster. “It’s a different dynamic because you want your sons always to do well. When they don’t make that big hit or whatever, you feel a little bit more, maybe, disappointed. Not because they didn’t do it, but because you’re always rooting for them so hard,” Neil said. “That part of it as coaches is there’s no feeling like playing with your sons… that’s why Bob and I decided to start the team, and Bob’s really kept it rolling, is because there’s no feeling like that.” Still, the family aspect of the team goes beyond the field. Peggy fronts the concession stand with her father, Clair Kelly, manning the grill; Camille works the camera and Linda helps with the tickets. Grace and Margaret Dolan help with the concession stand while Andrea, Jenna and Jennie – Anthony, Lucas and Dominic’s wives – help out as jacks of all trades with concessions, tickets or whatever else is needed. Family is the name of the game for the Irish. “It’s a complete village that we have, and that’s cool because you can support each other because of that and it makes it that much better,” Bob said. When Bob and Neil established the Irish in 2009 after some management differences with the cross-town rival Yankees, playing their first season of home games at Legion Field in Marshall. Shortly thereafter, however, they looked to put together their own field, the Irish Yard. Year after year, they kept building new additions, whether it was seating, lights, the scoreboard in left field or the video board in right field. Aside from the light and electrical, the team’s hardly hired outside work to do the labor, Anthony said. “There’s a huge sense of pride out here from all of us,” Dominic said. “When you play a game out here in the field, sometimes I just sit back and look back and go, ‘wow. Everything around us, we’ve created over the last 15 years. Here’s something we built.’… and we just want to keep getting better and better every single year.” Neil described Bob as the heart and soul of the fundraising efforts, which he estimated at $500,000, and emphasized the importance of the community’s support in building the field. Peggy said that the team wouldn’t exist without the ‘“Irish Family” in the community, describing the stadium’s construction as something out of Field of Dreams where if you build it, they will come. “This is much more than Dolan history… it’s the Dolans and the Irish family that includes so much more,” Bob said, citing the Zwaschka family’s land donation, the broadcast team of Josh Goblish and Cody Welu [a cousin of the Dolans], the parents of players that help with ticket-taking and other helpful community members, such as Brianna Duscher working the scoreboard. While the Dolans and the community put plenty of work into constructing the stadium, the brick-and-mortar isn’t what makes the Irish Yard special. “It’s the atmosphere. You can put the playing surface anywhere, but it’s the atmosphere [that makes the Irish Yard special],” Neil said. Bob added that the community support around the team every game day is something that makes the culture around the Irish something worth taking in. “We’ve got some people that are season-ticket holders that I’ve never even met and it’s unbelievable,” Bob said. “They’ll call me up and say, ‘Why isn’t there a game tonight?’ ‘Who are you?’ ‘Well I’m from Cottonwood and we’re a season-ticket holder for the last five years.’ There are people that we don’t even know that come to our games because they love baseball, they love the field and they love our team. To me, that’s the most important thing when you get a culture like that. That’s pretty special.” As important as the surrounding community is to the team, though, the concentration of Dolans on the roster is what makes it unique. Some teams have a group of brothers, maybe a father and son, but you’ll spend a long time looking before you find a pair of brothers and their six sons all on one Minnesota Baseball Association team’s active roster. On the team’s opening day, seven of the eight started in the lineup. Some of the younger generations of Dolans have been around the team nearly as long as they could swing a bat. Most of the brothers started as bat boys. Watching their dads and older brothers playing baseball growing up was a point of their love of baseball, a passion that grew even more once they started their own team, Lucas said. “They’re built-in mentors,” Moses said. “We’re a big family and I get to watch them all the way since I could pick up a baseball, so I got to just grow up being a bat boy and getting the privilege to watch all these guys play baseball.” Lucas described grabbing a bucket of balls and throwing soft toss to his uncle Neil before games during warm-ups. Dominic said Moses would play catch with his strong-armed older brother, Isaac, from 30 feet out before games to get warmed up. Isaac would be throwing the ball as hard as he could, but Moses would still catch the ball without flinching. “I really thought Moses was developed to catch the ball or be hit with the ball,” Anthony said as the brothers laughed. As much fun as the family has together on and off the field, they’re still competitive on it. Neil and Bob played for the Yankees years ago with fierce rivalries against teams such as the Granite Falls Kilowatts. That same intensity translates to their passion for the Irish today. “All those rivalries are still there. We were very intense, we’re still intense now as 56 and 59-year-olds,” Neil said. “We see that in our sons now and it’s fun to watch. There’ll be that intensity of wanting to win and playing as hard as you can, win or lose.” In a game against Worthington on June 14, Bob started at first base at 56 years old with Moses on the mound, Dominic at shortstop and Anthony in the outfield. “Football and basketball, you maybe go to 25 years old, maybe if you’re lucky. We can still play until we’re 50, 60 years old and still be intense with it and have fun with it,” Bob said. “To me, that’s so important. We come together as a family, win, lose or draw.” The Irish are still yet to play the Yankees since being established, but there’s no bad blood between the families. Neil emphasized that they love their cousins on the team to death. Anthony added that they’d still love any family members that jumped sides, but that he doesn’t see that ever happening because of the strength of the bond the Dolans have within the Irish community. “This group here, we go to Florida every year and it’s the best 10 days of our life,” Neil said. “Our families, just all these two families and all the grandkids and wives, it’s just the best week of our life. So taking that to heart and transferring it to baseball, that just doesn’t happen.”