There are no true sides and most definitely no scorekeeping, but there is a lot of love and laughter every Thanksgiving morning when members of the Battis-Bohen family gather for their annual touch-football game in St. Paul.

Thursday marked the 90th year the assorted family members have come together to toss around a football and catch up with one another.

Mike Battis, 77, has been partaking in the tradition every year since he was 8 and his family played in an alley off Bohland Avenue in the Highland Park neighborhood. At the time there were only about 15 people playing, he said. “Lots of uncles. My dad told me not to let anyone get past the garbage cans. He told me I had to guard there so I said, ‘OK, Dad.’”

Soon, the team grew and they had to move to the street in front of the house. Battis’ father had seven brothers and one sister. That one sister, Carmela, married the kid across the street, Thomas Bohen, and that’s what meshed the two families, who still play together decades later.

All of his aunts and uncles had between five and 10 children, Battis said, so the family has grown quite large over the years.

Sometimes family members drive up from Illinois just to participate in the game.

On Thursday, more than 40 participants, from young children to seniors, all played at the same time on the athletic fields in Highland Park.

“We always let the little ones win,” Battis said.

He designed a commemorative coin this year marking the anniversary of the first game.

“They told me I have to design the 100th year coin and I told them I didn’t know if I was going to be around. They told me to design it anyway and they’ll pass it out!” he said, laughing.

Although the temperature was below freezing this year, it’s been much colder over the years. One year it was 10-below with snow, he said. When asked what year that was, Battis shrugged. “No idea.”

His daughter, Katy Battis, 43, said she’s been at the games ever since she was just a baby and her parents brought her. She said it was a great opportunity to catch up with extended family she hadn’t seen all year and to meet new additions to the clan.

It’s all about the camaraderie of being together, she said.

“No one cares about the score. It’s about having a good time.”

Her dad agreed. “When someone asks the score I say, ‘Who cares!’”

“The score is ‘A whole lot of fun to a whole lot of fun,’” Katy said.

“The beginnings of the Battis-Bohen Bowl (a.k.a. the Turkey Bowl) are shrouded in antiquity,” according to an email from family members. In fact, this may be the 91st year of the game, but since the 2020 get-together was lost to the pandemic, 2023 has been crowned No. 90.

According to family lore, at some point in the 1920s or early 1930s, Nicholas Battis was at his mother’s Frogtown house at 626 Virginia St. for Thanksgiving. His wife, Margaret, encouraged him to take his seven sons (George, Paul, Bill, Tom, Emmet, Dick and Larry) outside to play, and thus the annual family football game was born.

For many years, family say, the annual game was played on “St. Paul streets or alleys, with cars, curbs, trees and snowbanks as obstacles. The group was also smart enough to use a playground occasionally.”

The game was played for more than a quarter of a century on what is now the University of St. Thomas’ south campus. “The game has been played in snow, mud, bitter cold, and the occasional mild day,” family members say.

Amy Battis, 52, who married Steve Battis, said that 11 of her immediate family members were out playing on Thursday, including her six children ranging in age from 16 to 27.

“This is Steve’s holiday. This is what it’s all about for him,” she said.

She said the annual game brings all the different generations of family together.

“You know we’re big on family and it doesn’t matter what you are doing, you have to make family a priority,” Amy Battis said. “Life is so busy today and everybody is going a million miles an hour but (the game is a chance) to take a break and take a moment and celebrate just being together.”

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