Abandoned - Chapter 1: We Just Can’t Get Them Out

 Quincy College vs. University of Iowa (DH) April 1, 1989

 
The six baseball seasons immediately prior to the 1989 campaign had been tough ones for the Hawks as they went a combined 63-165 from 1983-1988. Ron Clark was the QC coach for the last four of those years and the 1988 club put together a 20-30 mark, the only 20-win season during those six seasons. 

The only player who was in the 1988 starting lineup for Quincy College and now was a member of the ’89 group was senior catcher Bud Mcginnes.

 
After the end of the 1988 season. Pete Mcginnes (Bud's twin brother), Pat Schmidt (the #1 pitcher on the 88 squad) and one other QC player transferred to Division 1 universities. Ten other players who had eligibility to play in 1989 remained at Quincy College, but did not play baseball. Several of them had been everyday players during the previous season.

Without a head baseball coach, an assistant coach or even an assigned faculty member since mid- May there were no high school or junior college players recruited for the ‘89 season.
 
 We were nearing the halfway point of our 1989 campaign when we met the Hawkeyes on April Fool’s Day. I guess that should lead to a clever anecdote, but I think the members of that Quincy College team have heard them all. We had played 11 games in the last eight days, nine of those on a short swing through some southern states during spring break. Our ten-man pitching staff had turned into a 12-man group as we tried to navigate our team out of swirling waters.

When I recently began contacting the players who made up our 1989 squad and we began launching into memories of that season, half of the team brought up the Iowa doubleheader within the opening five minutes of our conversation.

 I don’t think they were necessarily having nightmares about that day thirty years later. I think their thoughts were more in line with 'Let’s initially talk about that embarrassing Saturday afternoon so we can reminisce about some of the less painful times and more enjoyable memories of that year.' If they wanted to talk about it or not, no player had forgotten about that doubleheader.

Iowa defeated us in game one, 10-0. Both coaches had agreed to the ten-run rule after five at bats for the trailing team. Junior Don Hargis pitched the entire game for us. Don was 6 '3, 200 lb. right-hander from Effingham (Il.) and like most of the guys who stepped on the mound for us, he was also a position player. He was one of three pitchers who had thrown innings during the 1988 campaign. Combined, the three hurlers (Dave Mikolaczak and Elvis Turkovich were the other two) threw a total of 40 innings that entire 1988 season.

I was not dissatisfied or displeased with our opening game loss to a solid Big 10 team. I was confident we had played enough games during the season for me to have formed an accurate assessment of our players individually and as a team. Of course, it was our goal that we wanted to continue to get better as the season progressed and, in many ways, I felt we had been doing that. I also internally recognized those aspirations would rarely be evident in the game results and box scores.

Hargis threw strikes for us in the first game. We handled the routine plays and if someone had proposed to me a repeat of game one as we readied for the second game, I would have accepted it. There’s absolutely no way I could have anticipated what took place in game two. But there had been enough indicators during the season that the wrong combination of variables coupled with a worn-down pitching staff against a good Iowa team that went 37-20 in 1989, could unlikely, but possibly put us in line for our worst defeat of the year and probably the worst in the school’s history. Maybe the worst in the modern history of 99 percent of every college team who ever stepped on a game field.

The Iowa Hawkeyes qualified for the Big Ten Tournament that season and with infielder Tim Costo (the 8^th overall pick in the 1990 draft), Chris Hatcher, an outfielder who was selected in the third round in 1990, and pitcher Cal Eldred, a 14-year ML veteran-picked in the first round in 1989, they were the most formidable opponent we would face in that ’89 season.

Game two got under way and we simply could not get them out. Oh, eventually we did, but so many hitters came to the plate between outs you almost forgot there had been any outs made. The opening inning went something like this-single, walk, triple, double, error, deep flyout for the first out. That was followed by a walk, double, walk, home run, ground ball for the second out and then single, home run, double, single, error and mercifully out number three was made.

The Hawkeyes scored 12 runs in the first off Turkovich and 20 in the second inning off freshman Brian Allen and sophomore Tony Preall. Iowa went to their backup position guys very early and we still had trouble finding a way to gather more outs. To their credit, Iowa just played ball. They did not intentionally run up the score. Their substitutes didn’t hit and run or steal bases-they went up to get their hits and they did not make it more embarrassing by taking wild swings and purposely striking out or running into outs.
As terrible as it was to be in that position, it would have been twice as demeaning if they had faked their way to a conclusion. We were defeated 32-0 in game two. Iowa hit six home runs on the day with Costo and Hatcher hitting two each. We had five hits combined in the two games, scored no runs, and gave up 42.

Brian Allen was a freshman from Clayton, Illinois, about a 30-mile drive from Quincy. He graduated from Camp Point Central High School, where former major league pitchers, brothers Paul and Rick Reuschel had attended. Brian also played against a couple of QC teammates in high school (Quincy Notre Dame’s Dave Schuering and Mike Egenes from Liberty H.S.)

Brian retained a significant recall of our ’89 season. He often rode shotgun in the van I was driving to our road games and was quite a conversationalist. It was enlightening to talk to him in 2024 and to hear his perspective of the season we shared.  He was one of three or four players listed on our roster as a second baseman, but it became apparent that he could garner more playing time and contribute more to our club as a pitcher. Brian was only 5’8”, but the young righthander always competed and he’d take the ball at any time, like he did against Iowa on April 1.

Brian told me, “I gave up several really long home runs that game. I remember your face when you came out to the mound. You didn’t yell, but your face said that we have to keep on playing. Despite the score and all the hardships, we couldn’t just give up.”

We were now 0-21 on the season. We lost one game 5-4, another 3-1 and one 9-6. Those were the closest margins of defeat we had posted during those 21 games.

Theoretically, baseball is designed to be played every day. It is rare that it actually happens, except at the professional level, but there are times when you just want to get back out there the next day and play again. Sometimes you feel you need a day or two away from it all. We had no choice after the Iowa doubleheader. We had another doubleheader against a Division 1 opponent, Northern Iowa, the following day.

I don’t think I immediately realized the importance of Sunday, April 2^nd as it related to our season and to our baseball program. The significance of that day wouldn’t be determined until much later in the 1989 campaign. 

Abandoned: Prologue

 The Quincy College Baseball Team opened their 1989 season on May 13^thwith a home doubleheader against the University of Missouri-Saint Louis.

Thirty-five years later I began a series of phone calls and social media connections with the Quincy College players from that ’89 squad. They were no longer the 19, 20- and 21-year-old young men from their collegiate playing days. Now they were men with mortgages, children, and several with grandkids. These 54,55, and 56-year-olds now had successful careers, many that were directly tied to their college studies.

Their baseball coach on that Opening Day was no longer a mustachioed 33-year-old with seemingly endless energy to hit fungoes and throw batting practice daily. I was now gray-haired, 69 years old, and still eager to swing a fungo bat and throw batting practice every day, but countless swings of the bat had become a no-no and my right elbow continually announced that tossing b.p. had been reduced to a once-a-week activity.

Contemporary technology had allowed me to stay in occasional contact with six or seven of the guys, but I had only seen two of them in the 21^st century. Yet, the first communication with each player in March 2024 and that initial, “Hey Coach, how are you doing?” immediately brought back vivid images of each player.  I immediately saw some in the batter’s box, on the pitcher’s mound or all 19 together posed for the team picture.

I passed along my writing plans detailing the complete 1989 season. I wanted to tell the entire story of what these players were forced to needlessly confront during the entire academic year and baseball season. For many it began at the end of May in 1988, continued through the summer and extended nearly through the end of the 1988 fall semester into December. Then there was a reprieve of a few months until the nightmare moved to the game field. 

The apathetic deportment of persons whose jobs were to supervise, oversee, and administer to all the Quincy College athletic programs guided the baseball team with a completely detached and plainly uninterested behavior. It was a classic example of the Peter Principle concept. Their inactions began to dismantle the baseball program brick by brick.

When I contacted the players from the 1989 squad, I told them their story would be written in the manner and context that I believed in then. Thirty-five years later, my respect for the 19 players has only gathered strength through all the years that have passed. Recent conversations and the baseball events that have followed the ‘89 season have only enhanced that belief.  These players would be written about individually and as a team from a commendatory viewpoint, simply because that’s the way it was.
 It is a story worthy of acute attention, identifiable by few and startling for most.

 The 1989 Hawks were not a championship team or a squad that played at the break-even level or within telescopic sight of that mark. It is not a story of amazing come-from-behind upset wins or a campaign filled with exciting nail-biting games that brought hundreds of fans out to watch their exciting brand of baseball. 

It is a chronicle of a collection of young players who were forced to break the game down to the grassroots level seeking to compete in conditions that had been unreasonably tilted against them. Unfair doesn’t begin to describe the inescapable position these 19 athletes were placed in. 

I consider it a long-awaited opportunity and a favorable time to relive that year with our 1989 team and inform others about a college baseball season that may have been almost inimitable in the treatment and challenges these young men faced. I’m very fortunate and grateful for having the right set of factors aligned that allowed me to coach the Hawks’ baseball team and now be able to affirm what they accomplished during their college years and over the last three and a half decades.