Baseball Hall of Famer’s Superior home converted to an Airbnb

SUPERIOR — Nearly 50 years ago, Bud Brand was looking for a place to live after marrying his wife.

His soon-to-be wife still lived with her parents and Brand was renting a one-room apartment in Superior, but a co-worker had a solution. Brand worked with Dottie Semborski in the same department at the Douglas County Courthouse and her uncle, Dave Bancroft, had recently died. His widow, Edna, was moving to an assisted living facility. Semborski suggested Brand rent Edna’s fully furnished home on Tower Avenue.

After moving into the house, the young couple started buying their own furniture “one piece at a time,” according to Brand. When they purchased a new piece, Brand would move the Bancrofts’ corresponding piece into the attic.

During one such task, Brand found a replica of Bancroft’s plaque at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

“I knew he had been a Major League Baseball player, but I had no idea he was in the Hall of Fame,” Brand said.

The Brands lived in the house for just 10 months and after the deaths of Semborski and her husband, he lost track of other members of the family and it seemed Bancroft slipped even further out of the city’s collective consciousness.

Bancroft was born in Sioux City, Iowa, and began playing minor league baseball in 1908 at the age of 18. After being cut by the Waterloo Lulus of the Central Association, Bancroft made the trek north to try out for the Duluth White Sox. He was released after just a handful of games, but he was almost immediately signed by the Superior Blues.

Bancroft spent three seasons in Superior before moving on to the Portland Beavers of the Class AA Pacific Coast League, before moving on to play for Major League Baseball’s Philadelphia Phillies beginning in 1915. During that time, he met and married Edna in 1910 and the pair would make the house on Tower Avenue their home for nearly 50 years.

Bancroft won two World Series with the New York Giants — sweeping a New York Yankees team that featured Babe Ruth in 1922 — and revolutionized the shortstop position, according to Tom Alesia, author of Bancroft’s biography, “Beauty at Short.”

“He was Ozzie Smith without the flips,” Alesia said.

Bancroft managed the Boston Braves for three years as well as several minor league teams and even spent three seasons coaching two teams in the All-American Girls Baseball League before returning to live in his home on the corner of Tower Avenue and 23rd Street in Superior. After his career in baseball, he worked as a supervisor with the Interprovincial Pipeline Co. for several years before retiring in 1956.

Even after his playing days, Bancroft would occasionally give a few people a show, according to Alesia.

“I heard a great story that one day, some of his coworkers didn’t know his background until he had flung a rock across the water,” Alesia said. “He threw it so far and with this velocity that they realized a superstar baseball player working alongside them.”

By the time Alesia was researching his book in 2021, he said the Bancroft home appeared ready to be “condemned.”

“It looked unlivable,” Alesia said. “The house was in unbelievably bad condition. Someone told me that it’s such a shame what happened to the house and that was before I had seen it. But wow, when I first saw it, the neighborhood was just fine and then you have this blighted house that was right there.”

About 18 months ago, the property was purchased by Joe and Alicia Ligman of Ligman Properties in Superior and Joe didn’t mince words about what they found.

“The place was just in a wreck,” Joe said. “Really, you had walking paths through areas there was so much garbage and debris in here.”

The property was under renovation when Alesia stopped back by, but he was able to learn exactly where history happened in the Bancroft home.

“He lived there almost 50 years,” Alesia said. “I thought, ‘Oh my god, in that room right there is where he took a phone call, completely not knowing that the Veterans Committee was meeting that day, in the middle of dinner. He told a Milwaukee reporter, because that’s who called him in Superior. Since it was being remodeled, I asked ‘Is there a land line?’ One of the construction workers pointed right away and said that’s the only one. I just thought that was very cool.”

During his visit, Alesia stopped by Ligman Properties and asked if they were aware a Hall of Fame baseball player once owned the house and dropped a copy of his book off with office manager Kathy Beede.

“We were shocked when Tom gave us this information,” Beede said. “I didn’t think about it too much in the beginning, but I took the book home and I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to find out about this.’ He was very nice to talk to and to come personally to the office and drop off the book and everything, so I read it and I found it absolutely fascinating.”

Beede was enthralled with Bancroft’s story, his struggles at the plate early in his baseball career to his greatest triumphs in back-to-back World Series wins in 1922-23.

“One of the most fascinating stories in the book — it doesn’t really say for sure how true it is,” Beede said. “But, apparently, when (Bancroft’s) pitcher was throwing a really nice pitch, he’d call it a ‘beauty,’ and that’s how he got his nickname, ‘Beauty at Short.’”

In fact, Beede found herself so enthralled with the book she asked the Ligmans if she could decorate a corner of the basement to baseball and Bancroft’s career.

“It was just so fascinating and they said go for it,” Beede said. “So I took pictures from the book and some pictures online and made different collages in frames and p\ut them in an area next to the bar. On the bar, I have different memorabilia that I found at Hobby Lobby and stuff like that regarding baseball, so that area is pretty much dedicated to (Bancroft).”

The Ligmans were thrilled to let Beede spend some time making the basement a tribute to the home’s most famous resident.

“I thought it was actually a pretty neat piece of history,” Joe said. “It was nice to know that somebody actually got somewhere, he made it and from what I hear, he was a pretty humble and honest guy. It’s nice to know the history of the house and the history of the player.”

Beede and the Ligmans even asked Alesia for permission to name the Airbnb “Beauty at Short.” Alesia was only too happy to agree and include another tribute to a Hall of Famer that sometimes it feels like time has forgotten. Alesia compared Bancroft’s stature to 2023 Hall of Fame inductees Scott Rolen and Fred McGriff. Like McGriff, Bancroft was also a Veterans Committee selection.

Bancroft wasn’t “one to really brag” about his career, according to Alesia, but his presence made an impression on some of Superior’s oldest citizens.

“He always popped up on best-of lists once in a while, but people these days don’t know,” Alesia said. “One of the things I loved best when the book came out is that some of the older residents had vivid memories of of walking home from school and seeing Dave and Edna sitting on the front porch waving to them. I thought that was just fantastic, that’s such a wonderful memory.”

Alesia also provided several copies of the book for those staying at the Airbnb to take home after their stay. All in all, the house has been booked solid most of the summer and Alicia thinks Bancroft’s story is part of its success.

“Guests have really shown appreciation for it,” Alicia said. “It’s really cool that there was a book to learn the history and we’ve had some really positive guest feedback.”

Alesia said the property has been “redone magnificently” by the Ligmans and is “thrilled” they’ve already seen some success with the property.

“When I looked at the number of reservations, I said, wow, there’s a lot of people coming in here,” he said. “What blows my mind is on Nov. 3, 1921, he returned with Edna to Superior and they knew beforehand he was coming in. His popularity was at its peak or just about it — he won the World Series when baseball was king — and thousands of people showed up at that train station and they were taken along Tower Avenue to a hotel…I thought ‘My gosh, then a half mile down the road is his home.’ It’s the kind of thing that would never happen these days but it’s also a wonderful part of history.”