Beier was recently chosen as this year’s Minnesota Twins’ Terry Ryan Play Ball Minnesota Award for his contributions to the game of baseball.
This story originally appeared at St. Cloud Live and is reprinted with permission
FOLEY — When Mike Beier came on board as Foley High School’s head baseball coach in 2005, he was walking into a program full of apathy and a baseball field that was barely playable.
Beier, a Regal native who had been an assistant coach at Yellow Medicine East (YME) High School in Granite Falls, moved back to Central Minnesota with his family after his teaching job at YME had been cut to part-time.
Plus, his wife is a Melrose native and they both had wanted to get closer to family.
“Enrollment was dropping out west and (YME) didn’t need two social studies teachers for junior high anymore. Working half time and being the JV baseball coach doesn’t pay the bills,” Beier said with a laugh. “When I interviewed for the Foley job, I saw the fieldhouse and that sold me on coming here. I knew we could have practices in there if the weather was bad in the spring. I haven’t regretted my decision to come here.”
However, the first few years weren’t easy on Beier, who teaches seventh-grade social studies at Foley. The Foley baseball field didn’t have dugouts or even a bench to sit on in the spring of 2005.
“I’d say it was easily one of the worst fields around. One of the worst I had ever seen,” Beier said bluntly. “It’s hard to believe that was 20 years ago. The atmosphere around here now is just incredible. We had 100 kids in our baseball program last summer.”
Beier remembered when one of his players in 2005 told him — during a game — that he had to leave early so he could get to a slow-pitch softball game in Gilman.
“Our team is obviously better now, but that was a first and last for me,” Beier said with a laugh. “I just looked at him and said ‘you’d rather play slow-pitch softball than varsity baseball for your high school team?’ The slow-pitch game started at 7 and it was really important to him, I guess? Our game wasn’t even over yet!
“That fired me up. And, yeah, he didn’t play after that.”
As Beier noted, things have changed for the better since 2005. So much so that he was named this year’s recipient of the Terry Ryan Play Ball Minnesota Award from the Minnesota Twins.
Beier was honored, along with former Twins manager Ron Gardenhire (this year’s recipient of the Twins’ Herb Carneal Lifetime Achievement Award), at the 20th annual Diamond Awards on Thursday, Jan. 23, at The Armory in downtown Minneapolis.
“I didn’t know much about it and then I got a call from Terry Ryan one day. I was really excited. I always enjoyed him when he was the (Twins) general manager,” Beier said. “After the press release came out from the Twins, I got a lot of text messages and emails. It definitely makes you look back on how this all started.”
Beier, 54, leads four teams at different levels in Foley, including high school, VFW, amateur and American Legion. In the 20 seasons since then, Beier has helped transform the Falcons into a state power while also helping upgrade the community’s baseball facilities.
The team installed old seats from the Metrodome in the grandstand and rebuilt the field into a top-notch playing surface. Along with his high school duties, Beier took over the city’s American Legion team and started a team through the Minnesota VFW league while beginning another youth amateur team.
The Falcons have won eight Granite Ridge Conference championships (2015, 2017-19, 2021-24) under Beier and guided them to a second-place finish at the Class 2A state tournament this past June at Target Field. He’s been named section coach of the year three times (2019, 2023-24) and was the Class 2A state coach of the year in 2020. Beier also coached Foley to a second-place finish at the VFW state tournament this past summer.
“I’ll never forget my first game here when we lost in 90 minutes on a 10-run rule at Melrose,” Beier said. “We didn’t even get a hit. And now this past year, we took second at state. It’s been a complete 180.
“I grew up around baseball with my dad in Regal — he ran the amateur team. I could see something could be done here, but I couldn’t have done it without everyone’s help. I just have a passion for the game. It’s not really work when you enjoy what you’re doing.”
Beier, who was nominated for Terry Ryan award by FanDuel Sports Network coordinating producer Trevor Fleck (a Paynesville native), was a little nervous to sit next to Gardenhire and Twins shortstop Carlos Correa at the Diamond Awards.
“I’m just going to sit there, listen and take it all in,” Beier said. “I’m not going to have to speak too long. I just want to hang out and soak everything up.”
