It has been another banner summer for baseball in the Twin Cities, with Legion and Babe Ruth teams doing well in state tournaments.
In my nearly half century here, the Twin Cities has always been known as a baseball community, with the finest of facilities in the Northwest in Fort Borst Park, and with a solid youth baseball program that assures that by the time the youngsters reach the Legion level, they will have several years of good coaching behind them.
What might have been the best Centralia Legion team of all time in this area showed up for the 1958 season. They were lads who a few years before had won the state tournament as Little Leaguers.
Included were Ray Butler, Ron Seimers, Dennis Rohr, Pat Bates, Paul Conzatti, Bill Lohr, Doug Lohr and Bruce Jacobson.
To this were added two Chehalins, Alan Allie and Dave Dowling; Joe Suter, Morton, and Kenny Anderson, Rochester.
Three of these — Dowling, Jacobson and Bill Lohr — later played pro ball, Lohr finishing with the Reno team and Dowling pitching briefly for the St. Louis Cardinals.
To coach them, the Legion post brought in a pro-baseball scout, Jim Robinson.
Their regular season was successful, and they swept through postseason play rather easily. In August, as Washington state champions, they headed for Billings, Mont., for the regionals, taking on the best from Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Alaska.
Early, it became obvious that the class of the tournament was Centralia and the home team, Billings. Billings' ace pitcher, Dave McNally, would later have four consecutive 20-win seasons with the Baltimore Orioles, and there were other future major leaguers on the team. The two teams first met in the second round, and it might have been the game of the year in Legion ball, with Dowling pitching against McNally. Centralia managed to knock McNally off the mound in the seventh. But it wasn't enough, and the Montana team, with three runs in the eighth, won, 3-2.
Both teams won again, setting up the championship games, with Centralia having one loss, Billings none. It was another memorable game, extra innings, with Billings winning 2-1. The crucial play came in the seventh inning, with Bill Lohr on second base and two out. Suter hit a liner to the outfield, which a Billings fielder named Henderson took with a remarkable shoestring catch. Out No. 3! Centralia managers rushed out to argue that he had trapped it, but the umpire was adamant. Billings went on to win in extra innings, 2-1, and was on its way to the World Series.
Had the ump ruled it was trapped, Lohr would have scored and the Centralians would have won in regular play, to face Billings again for the championship.
Bill Lohr is now a scout for the Minnesota Twins.
Now here is something that is not generally known: We wuz robbed! Seven or eight years ago Lohr's duties took him to a game in Billings. He sat next to McNally in the stands, and they had a great time reminiscing about those games. During a pause, McNally confessed, softly, "When Henderson came back to the dugout at the end of the inning, he told us he trapped the ball."
So there it is — a season ended and a possible World Series spot gone, 46 years ago. Is there a statue of limitations on bad umpire calls? Is it too late to organize a protest bus to head for Billings?
"Dadgammit, anyway, Ump!"
(More about this team next week.)
Gordon Aadland, Centralia, is a longtime Centralia College faculty member and publicist.
