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LAKE NORDEN, S.D. — The South Dakota Amateur Baseball Association recently announced its 2025 inductees into the SDABA Hall of Fame which is housed in Lake Norden.
Lee Heimes, long-time Wynot Expos player and manager, was named to this year’s class and what a deserving honor it was.
“It’s very humbling and I am truly honored,” said the normally stoic coach and player. “I really didn’t know what to say when they contacted me. It’s just truly an honor.”
Heimes has been playing every summer for the Expos since 1994 and has been the manager since 2013.
Well, every summer excluding 2018, when he fell off a ladder at his home and missed a good share of the season.
But in true Lee Heimes fashion, he recovered to be named the Mark Mehlhaf Memorial Award winner for the SDABA’s Comeback Player of the Year in 2019.
“I was really determined to come back and play, I didn’t know at what level I would be capable of playing, but I knew I had to get back to play, it just means so much to me,” Heimes said. “I thank God everyday I’m out there playing. He had a plan for me I guess.”
And play he did, before and after the accident.
His ability as a player may be best defined by two numbers — 62 and 26.
He once stole 62 consecutive bases without being caught and he once homered 26 times in one season.
Heimes played college baseball for Dana College in Blair before coming back to Wynot to teach, coach and farm…and play for the Expos.
In the early years, Wynot was in the old Cedar County League and also in the South Central League in South Dakota. The Cedar County League folded in 2010 after a very long and successful run.
Heimes has played in the South Dakota Class B Amateur Baseball Tournament every season, two as a pickup player and the rest as a member of the Expos.
“I feel really blessed to have been able to play for so long and to still play pretty well,” he said. “I have met so many great people and great friends over the years playing baseball. A lot of great kids and a lot of just good, good people.”
He got his start in baseball from his parents and brothers to begin with, then had some other wonderful coaches and people boost him along the way.
“My dad was always outside with us playing catch and our mom supported everything we did,” he said. “My brothers, Ryan, Steve and Scott, we were always playing catch or a game in the yard. If we weren’t doing chores, we were playing something and in the summer, it was usually baseball.”
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know Lee Heimes’ success on the basketball court as a coach. Taking the Wynot Blue Devils to Lincoln a dozen times, finishing as a champion in 2013, runner-up in 2023 and third in 2024, 2017 and 2012.
As the manager of the Expos, they have won two state titles and finished second twice.
“Those accomplishments are everyone’s accomplishments, not just mine,” Heimes said. “Like I said before, I have been around some really great people over the years, on and off the diamond or court or whatever we’re playing on at the moment.”
He has also been named Manager of the Year twice by the SDABA and received the 2020 Tony Young Award As far as specific memories about playing, he remembers few.
“They kind of all jumble together,” he said. “I do remember the guys though. I’ll even remember some of the amazing things they did, it’s just not my nature to remember my own things and accomplishments.”
But he did recall a couple of hits.
“I remember hitting a double off of the wall at the 420-mark in 2006, when we were the runnerup,” he said. “Then I remember hitting a homerun off of a pitcher who pitched for Oklahoma State in the semifinals back in 1999.”
He also realizes the fortune of playing with and for many people who have increased his abilities and his baseball knowledge.
“Probably all started with my dad and Terry Foxhoven. Those are two pretty great people right there,” he said. “Paul Davis, who played in the College World Series, Jerry Heine, there are a whole bunch of people. I learn something new every year from someone.”
And, he has no timeline for when he will stop.
“I guess I’ll keep playing until I can’t or I feel I can’t contribute,” he said. “My wife and kids say they like to come and watch me play and when you play for Wynot, it’s really a social event for a lot of people around town. It’s very rewarding.”
And, if you’ve never met Lee Heimes, you don’t know, he has “it” figured out.
“It’s kind of like that movie ‘Love of the Game’ said, the game is bigger than you,” he said. “When you start thinking you’re bigger than the game, and not just baseball, but anything in life, that’s when you lose perspective and you’ll probably end up failing. God has the big plan and I believe in him and his plan.”
