"1983-84 Tigers"
The next three Fridays will be double blog Fridays. Each upcoming Saturday I will be out of town for roller derby so I will be doing those blogs on Friday. Friday nights a great night for blogging!
First, 2 post scripts from yesterday. One, Suzy's parents will be celebrating their 40th anniversary on June 17, 2012. That is the party date anyways. As far as I know they are not planning on blogging about their 40 years of experiences. Two, Suzy and I's wedding day was quite special for a myriad of reason, but two of them are no longer with us. Shirle Huth, our pianist and our close family friend Cindy Hendrickson have since passed. They rearranged plans and treatments and their life to be in ours and it means the world.
Ok, so on to today's subject. No, not the same '84 Tigers that won the world series. We are going to talk about the Newton Little League Tigers. As a kid going growing up, I played all sports. I would even put my baseball glove on a baseball bat and play lacrosse against myself. But as sports go, the main ones I played as a kid was baseball, football and basketball. Of those the one I had the most skill in was baseball. I could field ok, couldn't run a lick and I could hit real well. When I say I couldn't run, I mean it. My Dad would yell, "Uncouple the coal car." I had a net in the back yard that I would toss a ball at which aided my fielding. Coach Stoffers baseball camps helped that, too. I still use those techniques when playing softball.
Hitting, Well I had a keen eye due to spending hours in the backyard throwing up a ball and hitting it to various places in the yard. I was pretty self sufficient as a youth. A bat, a ball and a yard. I was set. Sometimes I would be lucky and there would be a game going at Callison Park, Sandlot style. Bo Hollar ran that field.
In Newton in the 80's, Little League baseball was pretty big. Maybe not like sports as they are portrayed in movies, but pretty big. When one was ready, they could be drafted into the "majors" little league which was for 5 years or through the age of 12. I did a year of tee ball and 2 years of "minors" before hitting the majors. I was drafted onto the Tigers.
We were pretty good, as guys like Doug Sorenson, Ron Wylie, Chris Froah, George Selbher, Gary Etter, Scott Carpenter, Chad Burton, and Eric Brown were on the team. We managed to stay around .500 all year.
I had 2 events that are things I still think about. I through a no-hitter, which 6 innings against little leaguers, hey I will take it. Doug's older brother kept our stats and even tried to make sure no one mentioned it so I didn't get jinxed. On the other end of the spectrum, I gave up the only home run in my days of organized baseball. Jay Birchard took me deeeeeeep at Sunset Park which was all of about 100 feet. Still a legit dinger. For years I had wished I had never given up that blast over a tuft of grass that was to look like a fence. Anymore, its like, Hey, There are greater tragedies dude. Who cares.
So that was 1983. The Most fun night was after the Sunset Park games because that meant a grillout at the Sorensons.
Now, 1984 was a different story. We did lose Doug and Ron and Chris, but pretty much everyone else returned and added some new blood like Rob King and Greg Waggoner and Brian Cool. The Tigers were a force. We won the City title that year going 12-3. On top of that, we cherry picked Rod Mitchell and Lloyd Pickett and travelled to tournaments in Melcher-Dallas and Chariton and won those. The Melcher-Dallas one was especially cool as we got our first exposure to Chris Street. I am pretty sure he was 6 feet tall then and played for Mormon Trail. This was definitely before he was moved to Indianola.
It was great times, and I don't care how young we were, but winning championships at any age is a good thing. Some people say it shouldn't be about winning. Well, we played the game hard and with sportsmanship and hey we won. I had been on plenty of other sports teams (mainly basketball) that lost. I will always remember that team and those guys. It was a special summer.
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