One pitch can change everything from a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth in game seven of the World Series to keeping a young Iowa junior high school team from going to the state tournament.
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Iowa, unlike its neighboring states, of Minnesota, South Dakota, and Nebraska has run its baseball program in the summer. The Iowa High School Athletic Association feels it is necessary so young boys can participate in their summer months and run track in the spring if they choose so. In Iowa, I could play four sports.
I played baseball in the summer, football in the fall, basketball in the winter and ran track in the spring. I only did that one year as I started going to school in Worthington and commuted with Dad who had started coaching and counseling at Worthington State Junior College in September 1968. That was in my eighth grade year. We stayed in Sibley until our house was completed in February 1969.
The first picture I want to show you is when we were getting ready to go to the 9th District Tournament Championship game to qualify for the Iowa State Tournament:
The next picture is the rundown of our game as it appeared in the Sibley Gazette:
The next picture [at the top of this page] was our practice picture and does not have all the team members at practice.
I want to show you our team of student/athletes at our practice field, which doubled as a demolition derby on weekends at the Osceola County Fairgrounds. It was an all dirt field with very little grass in the outfield. My dad was our coach, bus driver, groundskeeper and third-base coach. He had to reinstall the pitching rubber every Monday after a demolition derby that weekend and performed any other tasks deemed necessary. He is standing on the far right. [See photo at the top of this page.] He also coached the high school team.
Our loss came on one pitch in the bottom of the seventh when Mark Huisenga hit a smash up the middle and the pitcher blindly snagged, which abruptly ended our rally and our season. It was a sad ride home that day.
Baseball was fun to play and watch. I miss being able to play catch with my dad with a baseball, football or shoot baskets with him teaching and mentoring me all the way.
The regulations that govern Iowa baseball state your birthday has to come before a certain day to be eligible to play on that team. We were lucky because our three best players all have the same birthday falling into the parameters in the rulebook. Bob Wahl, Dan Pomerenke and Mark Huisenga were those players.
I built lifelong friendships with that team and still keep in touch through Facebook with a few of them, their friends, sisters, wives and other people from Sibley. We only lived in Iowa for two and one-half years; but it was an active, carefree, fun existence for a young boy in a quiet, little town in northwest Iowa in the late 60s!
I often think about what other memories we would have made if that pitcher had not made that one pitch!
Now, I get my coaching and mentoring fun by watching the Minnesota Twins and the University of Minnesota’s Gophers men’s basketball team. Both of them have been hard to watch lately.
As always, I look forward to your comments.
Later,
Mike
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This article was originally posted on the author’s blog, “I’m Not Done Yet” and is republished here with the author’s permission.
Photos courtesy of the author.
