The Somerset Ball: From Wiffle Ball to Brooks Stadium: a Journey to the 1970 Khsaa Tournament

By Mikel D. Smith

The 1970 Tilghman baseball team was a conglomeration of students from all over Paducah, a town of about thirty thousand in West Kentucky. The Blue Tornado already had a proud history of success in football, basketball, track and baseball.

However, little was expected from this years team. Fielding a starting roster and coaches with limited experience, the team began with a mediocre record, but became a tough opponent as the season progressed- ultimately surprising everyone by making it to the finals of the Kentucky State High School Tournament. The tournament was one of the most memorable in Kentucky sports history, including teams from Madisonville, Louisville Trinity, Lexington Lafayette, Somerset, Russell, Covington Catholic, Elizabethtown and Paducah Tilghman.

This is a story about growing up in a small Midwestern town - remembering life in Paducah and a tribute to the great players across the State as told through photographs, statistics, news accounts and memories of the 1960s.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491774373

Mikel D. Smith

Mikel D. Smith, MD is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. He grew up in Paducah, Kentucky, and was a 1970 graduate of Paducah Tilghman High School, where he played baseball in his senior year. The great memories of his childhood and his love of sports inspired him to write this book.

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Copyright © 2015 Mikel D. Smith.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-7435-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7436-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7437-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015913344

iUniverse rev. date: 10/08/2015

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part 1

Growing Up with Baseball in Paducah, Kentucky, in the 1960s

Chapter 1 Barnstorming in ’66

Chapter 2 Baseball at the Brooks

Chapter 3 Equipment of the Day and Campbell’s Sporting Goods

Chapter 4 Noble Park and the Khoury League

Chapter 5 No Pepper Games: Learning the Skills of Baseball

Chapter 6 A Small Town in Middle America

Chapter 7 Paducah Tilghman: Best in Show

Part 2

What’s Happenin’ Now?

Chapter 8 A Snapshot of 1969

Chapter 9 Beginning a New Decade: The Sexy Seventies

Part 3

The 1970 Tilghman Baseball Season

Chapter 10 A Rookie Coach at the Helm

Chapter 11 Prospects for the 1970 Season: Who’s Out, and Who’s In?

Chapter 12 The Ghosts of the Past: Tornado Baseball, 1958–1969

Chapter 13 A Slow Start to the 1970 Season

Chapter 14 Stumbling Home in the Regular Season

Chapter 15 Captain Turmoil

Part 4

Tournament Time

Chapter 16 The District: Trying to Find a Way to Win

Chapter 17 Regional Tournament: A Chance for Revenge

Part 5

The Final Act

Chapter 18 The Age of Aquarius: Prom and Commencement

Chapter 19 The State Favorites: Lafayette, Bryan Station, Trinity, and Madisonville

Part 6

State Tournament Games

Chapter 20 Passing through Possum Trot

Chapter 21 Practice on Transylvania’s Field: A Bad-Luck Day

Chapter 22 Day One: The Longest Game in State History

Chapter 23 Day Two: A Complete Washout and Boredom at the Eldorado Motel

Chapter 24 Day 3: Covington Catholic Colonels vs. Russell Red Dogs

Chapter 25 Madisonville Maroons vs. Paducah Tilghman Tornado: A Semifinal Nail-Biter

Chapter 26 Elizabethtown Panthers vs. Russell Red Devils: Russell’s Luck Runs Out

Chapter 27 Day 4: The State Finals

Chapter 28 The Nontriumphant Return

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Preface

The original idea for this book was inspired by a chance acquaintance at a University of Kentucky basketball game in January 2011. During halftime, I met Dr. Mark Troutman, who was sitting behind me in the rafters of Rupp Arena. Mark is an optometrist in Morganfield, Kentucky, who grew up in Owensboro. He shared his last name with my high school baseball coach, Robert Troutman of Paducah, but they were of no relation. He had played baseball for the Owensboro Red Devils and Legion teams during the late 1960s. As it turned out, we knew several players in common. A week later he sent me a photocopy of a box score and the accompanying news story from a 1968 Paducah versus Owensboro American Legion game that included the names of Seltzer, Page, Lichtenberg, Gipson, and other guys I had played with.

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Box score of Paducah versus Owensboro in an American Legion Sectional Tournament game played in Paducah, Kentucky, on August 1, 1969. The copy was sent to me by Mark Troutman, OD, from an article printed in the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer, with permission.

I searched my basement for pictures and articles to send back to him. The treasure trove of black-and-white photos and cut-out newspaper stories that my mother had saved (many of which are included here) led me to the idea of writing about our 1970 Kentucky high school baseball season.

After writing the first few chapters of this book, serendipity again led me to meet Dr. Carl Marquess (one of our pitchers), who performed cataract surgery on my mom in Paducah on June 28, 2011. With his help, I subsequently found Coach Troutman online, and we reunited through e-mail.

From 2010 to 2012, I went to Murray, Kentucky, monthly to visit my mother, who was suffering from heart failure. During one trip, I was able to visit Coach Troutman in his home in Lone Oak. While we exchanged memories of our season, he announced that he still had the Somerset Ball. (Front Cover)

The ball—a memory of his first season and our 1970 state tournament team—was one of several souvenirs he had kept from his successful coaching career. He had kept it in a drawer with other memorabilia for more than forty years! It is amazing to me that a ball used in a game in June 1970 would surface four decades later, during a chance meeting between a former teacher/coach and student/player.

He kindly offered me the signed ball from his first win at State as head coach. This gift and our conversations have made me even more proud of our team and the people I grew up with. The ball further inspired me to continue writing and researching this book.

In order to ensure accuracy in the story, I read the accounts of the games and events from all available newspapers across the state. This research involved numerous trips to the libraries at Murray State (Pogue), the University of Kentucky (both Young and King), Eastern Kentucky (Grant), and Paducah Tilghman. The staff at those institutions were remarkably helpful, and I was astounded to find that most of Kentucky’s history from daily newspapers is preserved on microfilm—a result of a project started in the 1970s by the US National Archives.

By another coincidence, I discovered that one of my cardiology fellows, Dr. Michael Faulkner, is the son-in-law of Bob Bowland, a former classmate and 1970 graduate of Paducah Tilghman High School. Bob still teaches in the McCracken County system and had access to the Tilghman library. He was kind enough to find a 1970 annual for me and told me that the library kept copies of the Tilghman Bell newspaper—another great source of history and memories.

A visit to the Tilghman library and review of those old newspapers from 1967 to 1970 made me realize how different times were back then. As a result, I decided to include chapters, lyrics from popular songs, and stories that describe life at PTHS as seen through the eyes of a teenager in the 1960s. The lines from popular songs of the era may bring back memories for some. It was a unique time, with the Vietnam War and protests, a racial divide, and rapidly changing sexual mores.

The following year, I reconnected with Trigg Render, a longtime friend and brother to my high school girlfriend, Marty. This motivated me to include the memories of my high school friends too.

The book is a bit like Forrest Gump—it’s a tale of a part of my life spent in the town I grew up in and loved. However, every part of it is true to the facts and memories as I know them. I hope that those who grew up in that era will identify with the stories, the characters, and the baseball. It is intended as a look back to a bygone era. It is a story about growing up and playing baseball in Kentucky.

Introduction

Walk around in my neighborhood in the summers of the 1950s and1960s, and you could hear the distant sounds of a radio broadcast of a professional baseball game through the screen doors. The game itself had a tradition, rhythm, and pace that provided an escape from the problems confronting the world. America’s pastime—baseball—thrived in cities and towns alike. Each year, fans closely followed the baseball season and were mesmerized by the World Series on radio and television. Families spent their summer evenings at kid-league parks watching children and teenagers play baseball.

Paducah, Kentucky, was the kind of town in Middle America where the Khoury and Little Leagues developed young athletes. The Paducah youth leagues had produced outstanding all-star teams, American Legion teams, and even one high school state champion.

However, not much was expected for our 1970 Paducah Tilghman high school team, which had few returning players and a new coach. But despite a season of inconsistent play and some untimely bad breaks, our team scrambled its way through the competitive district and regional play-offs and into one of the most interesting Kentucky state baseball tournaments in history. If we could find a way to defeat the higher-ranked teams, we could become a most unlikely champion. This story is a snapshot from the 1960s about growing up, navigating high school, and playing baseball.

Part 1

Growing Up with Baseball in Paducah, Kentucky, in the 1960s

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Chapter 1

Barnstorming in ’66

Well I’m flyin’ ’cross the land,

Tryin’ to get a hand

Playin’ in a travelin’ band

—Travelin’ Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival; 1970

My dad drove us into the parking lot of J. Polk Brooks Stadium and continued around to the right to a stand of large old maple trees. We parked and walked through the trees to a vacant area of grass outside the right-field wall and beyond the stadium’s foul pole. This was going to be our practice area today. Several players and coaches had already arrived and were playing catch.

In the 1950s and 1960s, baseball was truly America’s pastime. Families spent their summers at the ballpark. Even after our organized leagues had ended their schedules and tournaments, we couldn’t get enough of it. At the end of the summer, in the dog days before school began, teams were still playing pickup games and barnstorming to other towns for arranged games.

The practice my dad and I were headed to was for our barnstorming team, comprised of thirteen- to fifteen-year-old boys from all around the Paducah area who just wanted to play for another month. The Pony and Colt League season traditionally ended at the end of July, allowing for the play-offs and tournaments to finish in August, but school didn’t start until after Labor Day. The stated purpose of this educational hiatus was to allow some time for parents and kids to go for the classic summer vacation—maybe on a car trip to a family reunion or to the beach.

However, for many of us, a vacation wasn’t economically feasible, so we just continued to play ball. This year’s traveling squad included Brent Gregston, pitcher and third baseman from Heath; David Roof, pitcher from Saint Mary’s; Ray Bagwell, pitcher from Lone Oak; and Mike Severns, catcher from Reidland; along with Steve Seltzer, Mike Gipson, John Golliher, brothers Joe and Bob Page, and Gerald Barnette, from Paducah. I played second base in this year’s travelin’ band, and Gerald was our center fielder and leadoff hitter.

For a barnstorming effort, the practices were loose and difficult to arrange. They often required a lot of phone calls, and then rounding up the team. Sometimes that meant driving around to pick the players up.

On that sticky, hot Sunday afternoon in August 1966, we had made a side trip to pick up Gerald Barnette prior to practice. The temperatures had climbed to around ninety degrees, the humidity was thick, and the air didn’t move. Yet this was typical weather for midsummer in West Kentucky. The sweat beads popped out on my dad’s and my forearms as we sat waiting in our tan 1965 Pontiac Bonneville with both front windows open.

I don’t see him, I said.

Well, go knock on the door, he said.

I climbed out of the big car with the bench front seat and walked between the apartments of Elmwood Courts. I had been here before to pick up Gerald for a practice or game.

Gerald was an exceptional athlete, a star in basketball, football, and track at Jetton Junior HS. But I’d always suspected his passion was baseball.

He stood about five feet nine, so baseball also presented his best chance of playing professionally, something we all dreamed of doing. In our view, Gerald was the Curt Flood or Lou Brock of our league. He had blazing speed and a great eye, drew a lot of walks, and was never caught stealing. When he got on base, it nearly always meant a run.

My metal cleats clacked loudly on the concrete sidewalk behind the row of one-story apartments. The Courts were a low-budget government housing complex that resembled army barracks. The apartments were all connected in a U shape, with a row of clotheslines running up the middle, which the back of the houses faced. The clotheslines were rusty and little used but representative of the times. The small apartments had screens on the doors and windows but no air-conditioning, which was a luxury in cars and houses then. This neighborhood produced some of the best athletes (black and white) in the 1960s ever to play for Paducah Tilghman High School.

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A recent photo of the Elmwood Courts housing area, near Brooks Stadium in Paducah. The apartments did not have air-conditioning units in the 1960s.

As I knocked on the screen door, somewhere down the row a baby cried, and then a dog barked in response.

Then he came to the door barefoot, cleats and socks in hand, dressed in an old white oversized sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off and gray sweat shorts. As he pulled on his shoes, I noticed how much more muscular his shoulders were than mine. By comparison, I was just a skinny kid. Although he probably only weighed 140 pounds dripping wet, at age sixteen, he had already developed a man’s build. He grabbed his glove, said, Hey, dude, and slipped me some skin by sliding his open hand across mine from wrist to fingertips. This was the usual greeting then, like that era’s high five.

Gerald was black. In 1966 the country was about to be involved in its greatest battle over race since the Civil War. But for most of us in Paducah, it didn’t seem unusual for black and white children to play together. By this summer, before I entered high school, I had already noticed signs of racial inequality, but I didn’t think it unusual for black and white players to be on the same sports teams. Sports seemed to allow for common ground.

Yet the housing projects were a stark reminder of our economic differences. That summer, my family lived in a rented house on Kentucky Avenue near Western Baptist Hospital. The following year we moved to Lone Oak Road, directly across the street from Brazelton Junior High. That area was located at the bottom of the Hill, an upper-middle-class section of Paducah.

Both my mom and dad had jobs—Mom worked for the health department and Dad taught at Paducah Junior College. Gerald’s mom and dad also worked. His mom was a nanny for the Crounse family, who owned a barge and towing company based on the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers. Gerald’s parents also ran a small restaurant near the Beltline. Since the war, it had become increasingly common for both parents, black and white, to work in order to get by, to make life better for their children.

As we headed back toward the car, waves of heat rose off the melting asphalt. Two young men, one black and one white, were going to a baseball field while the country was in turmoil over race. As for my dad, he was just giving one of his players a ride to practice.

I said, "Dude, it is hot."

Gerald agreed and broke into a smile when he saw my dad. His grin revealed a prominent gold front tooth.

My dad said hello and smiled, also revealing a gold tooth. Dad had had the gold-plated tooth for years, having been told by a dentist that it would last a lifetime. It was unusual for a middle-aged white man to sport a shiny gold tooth, and maybe this is why Gerald liked and trusted him. Perhaps it gave them an unspoken bond. Or maybe they just shared the closeness and mutual respect that came from playing and coaching baseball, as teammates and adversaries, on a dusty, grassless field. Gerald and I had known each other for the past two summers while playing baseball on opposing teams in the Pony League.

My father, Charles G. Smith, had been the coach of many Little League and Khoury League teams in Paducah in the 1960s. He had a lot of baseball experience having played for the legendary (College Hall of Fame) coach Abe Martin at Southern Illinois University after the war. That was when he had the full use of both arms.

In 1948, my father was in a near fatal accident while riding a motorcycle home from college on spring break. He was hospitalized for nearly a year, and after a number of surgeries, was left with a paralyzed left arm.

Today, as always, that left arm was tucked into his front pocket. He was so skilled with his right hand, and putting his left in his pocket had become so natural, that many people didn’t know he was, as he said, a one-armed bandit. He was dressed in a thin, long-sleeved, light tan shirt with the right sleeve rolled up. His summer shirts were so light you could see through them, so he always wore an undershirt. Light khaki pants and tennis shoes along with a maroon baseball hat completed the look.

Gerald and I jumped in the backseat of the boat-sized Bonneville and off we went driving the three short blocks to Brooks Stadium to meet the rest of the team for practice. Gerald didn’t need a ride so much as he needed a reminder about practice.

In that moment, we didn’t know it, but Barnette, Golliher and I would be teammates four summers later on the 1970 Paducah Tilghman Tornado team and playing against Gregston, Severns, Bagwell and Roof.

The collection of players on our freelance team ranged in age from fourteen to sixteen with a mixture of players from Pony and Colt Leagues from all over McCracken County. Our late-summer teammates would later become rivals during the high school season from March through June.

Coaches and parents arranged the barnstorming games through phone calls, and they provided a venue for players from each region to gain experience and notoriety by traveling to nearby towns. At that time, there were no additional organized teams or camps for players to participate in.

That summer we had already traveled to southern Illinois for games with Ridgway and Golconda. Since our teams were billed as all-star teams, the towns we came from had community bragging rights at stake. Therefore, fans were in abundance at these winner-take-all matchups. Our Paducah-area team had already lost to Golconda with a dramatic grand slam hit in the last inning by their cleanup batter. Golconda supporters stormed the field afterward.

Another big turnout was in Ridgway, Illinois, during the local Popcorn Festival. Ridgway was the center of a popcorn-growing area and the self-proclaimed Popcorn Capital of the World. A giant tub of popped corn sat beyond left field along with various amusement-park rides brought in just for this special event.

During that game, Steve Seltzer hit a massive home run that reached a combine tractor parked in left field—there was no fence to stop it! The left fielder stood nearly motionless as it rocketed over his head, and he walked the last hundred feet to retrieve it.

Our barnstorming idea had taken root two years before, in the 1964/65 season, when Mr. Stanley McMurtrie and my dad had arranged a series of games with Marion, Illinois, another with a county team from nearby Bardwell, Kentucky, and then a memorable game in Metropolis, Illinois.

Metropolis is a small town across the Ohio River and locally famous as the Home of Superman. The Massac County team was sponsored by Grace Gas Company, and rumor had it that they were loaded with talent, including Larry and Lanny Grace, for this game. They had won the Metropolis League and had been undefeated for three straight years (1964–66).

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Little League team sponsored by Grace Gas in Metropolis, Illinois. The team finished its third consecutive undefeated season in 1966. Photo reproduced with permission of Paducah Sun-Democrat.

Many parents of players on both the Grace Gas team and our team worked at the Atomic Energy Plant in Calvert City and (reportedly) made a lot of bets on the game. This Paducah team was at a disadvantage because most of the best Pony-age players were still playing in the regional and national all-star tournaments.

However, a few solid players from the Midget League (which included twelve-to-thirteen-year-olds) were around on August 19, 1965, including Tom Brazell, Mike Bagwell, Eddie Hank, and Mike Driver, some of my best childhood friends. Since we had no uniforms (we had turned them in after the season), we had to borrow some old ones from the Khoury office. Mr. William M. Bill Switzer, the Paducah Khoury League commissioner, procured some that read TVA, for Tennessee Valley Authority, on the front. That was fitting since we were representing neither Paducah nor one of the leagues.

The game was tight throughout and attended by several hundred fans from both sides of the Ohio River. We (Paducah-TVA) won that one 6–4. Greg Hite was the winning pitcher, and I played third base and recorded a save by pitching the last two innings.

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Official score book of Paducah’s TVA barnstorming team vs. Grace Gas in summer 1965. Many of the players on both teams later played against one another in high school.

One vivid memory of that game came from our disastrous fourth inning, when Grace Gas scored four runs to tie the game. They had two runners on and were threatening to blow the game wide open. Larry Grace, their leadoff hitter, hit a bullet of a ball just in front of my feet at third base. I was able to smother it on the short hop, and it bounced forward off my shoulder. I scrambled to recover it, and knew I would have to hurry the throw to get him since he was a fast runner. I gunned it over to Mike Bags Bagwell at first base to nip Grace by a step for the third out. I had thrown the ball so hard that I fell face first! Back in the dugout, Bags shook his glove hand as if in pain and showed me the red spot on his palm, saying, "Man, that