As he walked to the front of the pitcher’s mound at Wheeler Field on Saturday evening, Ken Anderson admitted to the two squads lined up on the baselines that he didn’t quite have enough juice in his right arm to throw the full 60 feet, 6 inches.
Everyone in attendance was happy to cut him some slack.
“I think he did great for our age,” Ray Butler said with a smile. “We’re 82 years old.”
Anderson, Butler, and Bill Lohr were on hand representing the 1958 Grant Hodge Post team from the Twin Cities, who took home the American Legion state title. Sixty-five years later with Centralia hosting this year’s state tournament, the three were given the chance to throw out the ceremonial first pitch before I-5 Toyota/Mountain Dew took on Gonzaga in a first-round matchup.
Butler and Lohr spent most of their playing days at the corner infield spots. But Anderson, one of the team’s pitchers, stepped to the mound to throw to Tumwater’s Graysen Reveal.
“I’ve done this three times at Little League (Opening Day),” Lohr said. “The last time, I told them ‘I’m not throwing anymore.”
It was a mini get-together for the three former teammates, before a much larger one will take place later this year. Come October, the entire 1958 Centralia Legion team will be inducted into the Washington American Legion Hall of Fame.
Currently, every member of the team who is still alive is set to be there, coming in from all across the country.
“I was sitting out on my patio in the evening when they called,” said Butler, who flew in for the weekend from Arizona. “I tell you, I went about 6 feet in the air.”
It’ll be a celebration of a team that was historic, even before it brought home hardware.
After years of fielding a team from just Centralia that had trouble competing against squads from bigger cities, 1958 was the first time branching out to make a true Lewis County squad. The bulk of the players still came in from the Hub City, but they added Anderson from Rochester, and Joe Suter came west from Morton.
There were Bearcats, too, with Chehalis’ Dave Dowling and Alan Allie joining in. With that, of course, came the Swamp Cup rivalry that needed to be overcome.
“Alan and I never had met each other, and the word was around and we both felt it, we didn’t care for each other,” Butler said. “That first practice that we had together, I offered to drive him home, and we became like brothers.”
Dowling was 15-year-old playing on a team of 17-year-olds, but immediately became the team’s ace. Allie took over center field and may have been the only player who could hope to match Butler — the starting third baseman — in a footrace.
For his part, Lohr started at first base. He was one of three players to move onto the pro game — along with Dowling and Bruce Jacobson — and became a scout after a few years in the minors.
“It’s hard to compare now to then,” Lohr said, as he watched I5TMD begin a 10-0 rout. “But we were a good team.”
The newly-combined team was certainly the class of the area, blazing through all local competition en route to a state title. That moved them onto the regional tournament in Billings, Mont., going up against the top teams from Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Alaska.
After winning its first game, Centralia went up against the hosts from Billings — led by future MLB pitcher Dave McNally — after losing a late lead in a pitchers’ duel.
Centralia came all the way back through the loser’s bracket for another crack at the Montanans in the finals. McNally and Dowling matched scoreless frames for nine innings before Billings came away with a 2-1 win in the 10th, punching its ticket to the World Series.
For the boys from Lewis County, though, there’s an asterisk on the result that’s stayed on the page for 65 years. With one out in the top of the seventh and Ron Seimers standing on second base, Butler came to the plate and laced a liner to left field. Billings’ outfielder came rushing in to make a catch just above the grass (maybe) before doubling Seimers off to get out of the inning, still tied at 0-0.
Years later as a scout, Lohr was watching a game in Montana and ran into McNally in the stands.
“We talked for quite awhile,” Lohr said. “He remembered the game, and says, ‘You know that play out in left field? He didn’t catch the ball.’
That might be the most memorable moment for a side from Centralia that nearly hit the national stage, but there’s plenty more that made that summer in 1958 what it was.
And there will be plenty more time for reminiscing come October, when the entire Grant Hodge Post team comes together in Poulsbo at the ceremony in their honor.
Sixty-five years later, they’re still a team of the Twin Cities.
“It was a team that just knitted, we came together,” Butler said. “Our personalities and our love for the game just meshed.”
