AN 8-YEAR-OLD IS INTRODUCED TO BIG-TIME BASEBALL

  

                                                        

A rainy Wednesday in Davenport, Iowa. No games will be played out here today. It's a good time to share some baseball memories.

My first experience being up close to men playing baseball was as an eight-year-old in Eldred and I saw our "town team." I didn't know what league they played in or how old the guys were. They could have been 20, 30 or 40. I didn't know and I didn't care. It was a Sunday afternoon and I stood behind the bench and watched with wonder. They were the best players I ever saw. And they were playing with enthusiasm and intensity. 

I knew a few of them in the sense I knew some names. My brother and/or my parents probably filled me in during the game. I wished I could remember all the names and give proper credit to all of the guys who were an inspiration. I didn't even know it was the McKean-Elk League. Again, didn't know, didn't care. This was so much better than the only games I ever saw on television's Saturday Game of the Week. 

I had listened to games on the radio and always watched that Saturday game and pictures of Bobby Richardson, Willie Mays, Bob Gibson, and countless others were scotch taped in a collage in my bedroom. I knew the Yankees had won the Series in '61 and 62, the Dodgers in '63 and the Cardinals in '64. Okay, I even knew the Pirates won it all in 1960 on Mazeroski's homer in game seven vs. New York.

I understood those guys were major leaguers, but here in Eldred these older (at least older than me) were right in front of me and throwing harder and hitting balls further than I've ever seen. Jim Lasher, Dave Wright, Vince Acre, Andy Lathrop, Ron Rahr and George Lathrop was the skipper- just a few of the players and I'm quite sure I might be able to name several more if I was a bit more confident of being on the mark.

I hope someone will forward me or post on FB more names and information about players in the league during those years. 

The following clips are from around that 1961-1965 time frame. They are a little bit frayed around the edges and showing their age, but so am I. I'll try to bring a little clarity to some of the write-ups.

Warren picks up a forfeit win over Portland Mills to go 8-0 in the league. Shingehouse takes two from Sheffield.

East Smethport defeats Crosby 4-3, Ken McNeil allowed only two hits for E.Smethport- home runs by Jim Thomas and Bill Eckstrom. Sheffield split a DH with Shinglehouse. Dunsmore homered in game one and Brian Shepherd went 3-3 in game two.

Jim Woodard shut out Emporium 1-0. Steve Kudlock gave up only two in the loss. Bob Dunsmore drove in the game winner. Butch Stilson's squeeze bunt gave East Smethport a win over 6-5 and a split for the weekend. Emporium beat E. Smethport 5-3 the day before.

Dick Lindamer of Olean pitched a four hit shutout for Warren as the McKean-Elk champs played in the NBC tournament. Bolivar folks will know the Lindamer name.

Top: Portland Mills beats Shinglehouse 5-1. Evingham has two hits for Shinglehouse. Crosby beats Johnsonburg 4-0 behind Eckstrom's one hitter. G. Shirey and Kennedy have five of Crosby's 11 hits.

Emporium defeats Johnsonburg, behind Steve Kudlock's five hitter. Kudlock had two hits and Febring three for Emporium.

West team roster. At eight or nine years old, my northwestern Pa. geography was pretty weak and there's no way I knew where any of these towns were, especially Portland Mills. The internet map placed it west of Ridgway and Johnsonburg and north of Brockway. 44 miles from Clarion. That would make it a pretty long Sunday road trip and back for the Smethport area clubs.

Some all-star game information including names of several teenagers in game- four from Crosby and four from Shinglehouse. 

Top: Headline of Woodard's tough loss in Johnsonburg game. Emporium beat Crosby 4-3. Johnsonburg leads the league at this juncture.

Top: Box scores-Johnsonburg defeats Shinglehouse 3-2 in 16 innings. No runs were scored from the fifth inning until the 16th. Johnsonburg had only four hits off Woodard. Phillips and Dunsmore had two hits apiece for Shinglehouse. East Smethport beat Sheffield 11-1 with Danny Fuss picking up the win and adding three hits as did Maynard and Stilson.

Bill Goodwill picked up the win in E.Smethport's split vs. Warren. Crosby beat Shinglehouse 6-3. Eckstrom was the winning pitcher for Crosby and Evingham had two hits for Shinglehouse. D. Shirey and Eckstrom had two hits apiece for Crosby.

Insert mentions some all-star selections-Rote, Stilson and Ricky Faes for East Smethport. Warren defeated East Smethport behind Jack Sedecky. Danny Fuss (blog feature) took the loss. 

Crosby with a 9-6 win over Mt. Jewett. George Shirey was the winning pitcher. Brawand had 2 hits for Mt. Jewett. Ewing and Danielson pitched for Mt. Jewett. Wright scored three times for Crosby.

Bill Goodwill was the winning pitcher giving up only one hit (Ted Clark). Jim Acker went 3-4 for East Smethport.

The West Division built a 7-0 lead and held on for the win. Jim Thomas and Bud Moore had four of the West's six hits.

Ron Rahr was a former Pittsburgh minor league pitcher from Portville and came back to pitch for Crosby. Only 6 teams in the league this time around with Warren taking an early season lead. This is 1964.

 Area amateur leagues often had some, well, "you don't see it every day" decisions to make. The article says that league directors had to make one of those decisions when Eldred finished 15-3 and Crosby was also 15-3, but Crosby waited too long to reschedule two postponed games (Roulette and Lewis Run). Eldred was declared the regular season league champion and awarded the Chet Burt Memorial Trophy. Burt was a Smethport businessman and had been the league president for many years. Eldred would host East Smethport and Emporium traveled to Crosby in the league playoffs. And I'm still confused, but at least Crosby made the playoffs

Top) This may have been 1962 and the insert says that George Lathrop (Crosby) was named the manager of the East squad and Ed Wright of Lewis Run would engineer the West squad. The East team consisted of players from Crosby, East Smethport, Emporium and Austin. The West squad was represented by players from Lewis Run, Johnsonburg, Sheffield, Mt. Jewett and Lafayette. The M-E box score is Mount Jewett at East Smethport. It was an E. Smethport win.

Top: This season there were 11 teams in the league including Mt. Jewett (7th place at this juncture), Eldred (in last place) and E.Smethport led Johnsonburg and Crosby. Crosby had a forfeit win over Roulette and the clip said that Roulette might be finished for the season. I'm assuming that would be due to a lack of players. It was not rare in amateur baseball leagues to come up short of fielding nine players at various times or being unable to put together enough players to join or stay in a league year after year.

Top: East Smethport split a DH with Austin and fell into second place. Roulette and Eldred both, as the clipping said, "threw in the towel,"-forfeiting the rest of their games. Sheffield beat Mt. Jewett in game #1 and the second game was called (darkness) 10-10 after 11 innings.

East Division All-Stars-6 players each: I have written blog stories or mentioned in detail several of these all-stars: Jim Thomas, Bob Dunsmore, Steve Kudlock (former minor leaguer), Butch Stilson and Ed Maynard.

Apologies for not zeroing in better on dates-safe to say we are looking at some action just over or under 60 years ago. I hope there are folks out there (friends, children, grandchildren) that might enjoy picking out a familiar name or two. This would be right around playoff time for amateur baseball league playoffs back home in either the McKean-Elk or later, the Alle-Catt League. 

This was another "anything can happen in amateur baseball." Warren won the title despite not even having a team when the season got underway. I don't know if they were late returning home from spring training in Arizona, but they clinched the title with a doubleheader win over Johnsonburg. An eight-team league with East Smethport, Emporium, Shinglehouse and Crosby finishing 3,4,5 and 6 respectively.