1978 – The Weird Year

I mentioned on Monday a writing project I’m working on, and this is part of it. I’m writing a Post-Season section for the Tacoma Rainiers media guide, which is something we have never had before. This has involved going to the library and researching old Tacoma playoff teams. I’m writing a few paragraphs and keying-in box scores for every Tacoma team to reach the PCL Championships – win or lose – since 1960.

Eventually the whole post-season section will be available as part of the media guide PDF on the Rainiers home page. But in the meantime, let’s take a sneak preview of the section on the 1978 Tacoma Yankees – who were named PCL “Co-Champions” when never-ending rain in the Pacific Northwest prevented the series from being played. As it turned out, the Tacoma News Tribune was there for the raindrop-by-raindrop coverage. I read all of the stories at the library, and wrote this summary:

The 1978 Tacoma Yankees, along with the Albuquerque Dukes, were named Pacific Coast League “Co-Champions” in one of the stranger episodes in league history. Foul weather in the Pacific Northwest delayed the proceedings for so long that the league – under threat from Albuquerque – decided to cancel the playoffs.

The close of the Yankees regular season at Cheney Stadium provided a glimpse of what was to come, when the final two regular season doubleheaders were both washed away.

The weather cleared for the Yankees to face the Portland Beavers in the first game of the best-of-five Northern Division playoffs on September 2. Tacoma won the opener, 10-8, and then took the second game 5-4 in conditions that the Tacoma News Tribune described as “wet, muddy, and otherwise awful.”

The third game was rained out in Portland – but the Beavers were able to win the next two games, forcing a decisive Game Five on Thursday night at Civic Stadium.

Meanwhile, the Dukes had swept the Southern Division series with a win in Salt Lake City on Monday. The Albuquerque club was waiting in Salt Lake City to see if they would fly to Tacoma or Portland to open the PCL Championship Series.

Thursday night’s game was rained out, and on Friday night the stadium in Portland was booked for another event. When the game was rescheduled for Saturday, September 9, the Dukes and their parent club, the Los Angeles Dodgers, threatened to forget the whole thing and go home. The Dodgers were in a pennant race in the National League West and needed to call up players.

Albuquerque was convinced to wait until Saturday night. When the Yankees and Beavers met at Civic Stadium, PCL Umpire-In-Chief Randy Marsh walked the grounds and declared the field unplayable.

At that point, PCL President Roy Jackson ruled Tacoma and Albuquerque “Co-Champions,” much to the public dismay of Portland owner Leo Ornest. The league favored Tacoma over Portland based upon regular-season record: the Yankees went 80-57 compared to Portland’s 76-62.

Once the series was cancelled, the New York Yankees called up Tacoma’s Brian Doyle, Larry McCall, and Jerry Narron for the now-legendary pennant race against Boston.

Tacoma Yankees fans got a bit of revengeful satisfaction when Doyle helped the New York Yankees beat the Dodgers in the World Series.

I was interested to see that Paul Miller was the young up-and-coming sportswriter who covered this series for the TNT. Well, now Paul is one of the Sports Team Leaders at the TNT, so I emailed him to see what stuck out in his mind, 32 years later. Miller delivered:

Hi Mike,

Yup, like Forrest Gump, I was there.

Art Popham (Tacoma R.G. that year – ed.) and I spent the better part of a week in some sketchy downtown Portland hotel with the team waiting for the rain to stop. It never did. I remember one night everybody showed up, and to determine whether the crappy, drenched turf at Civic Stadium was playable, the umpires had somebody smash ground balls at the 20-year-old phenom Beavers shortstop, Alfredo Griffin. After he was almost killed by skidding line drives, they called the game off again. Back to the hotel we went.

Of course, the vaunted Tacoma Yankees eventually were declared PCL co-champions with Albuquerque after Nacarrato sent some guys with names like Rocko and Sluggo to visit Roy Jackson.

One of the things I most remember was killing time in the hotel bar with Art and some players, including Brian Doyle, who told us all about the baseball school he and his brothers were dreaming of starting up in Florida. And a few weeks later he was a star for the Big Yanks in the ‘78 Series.

Can’t make that stuff up.

I found researching these old PCL playoff series to be fun – there were entertaining side-stories that I did not know about in each year I looked at:

• 1961 Tacoma Giants – had a stretch where they went 57-10. Not a typo – they won 57 out of 67 games in July and August.
• 1969 Tacoma Cubs – sign-stealing episode I wrote about here.
• 1971 Tacoma Cubs – lost to Salt Lake City, who’s roster was stocked with several former 1969 Tacoma Cubs.
• 1978 Tacoma Yankees – see above.
• 1981 Tacoma Tigers – were wiped out in finals after a travel nightmare – I’ll post that story once I write it.

It’s been an enlightening off-season project, with the eventual benefit of filling in a few unwritten parts of Tacoma baseball history.

The Wait Goes On, And Other News

We’re still in a holding pattern throughout baseball – and especially in minor league baseball.

Leagues are making all kinds of plans to prepare for many different contingencies, any of which may or may not happen. There is absolutely no way of knowing when baseball will start up again in the minor leagues.

It is especially frustrating for leaders in the sport, because it’s completely out of their hands. Even with a rain situation at Cheney Stadium there is a decision making process that ends with a result. Not in this case – we are in charge of nothing.

So all we can do is wait, follow our local government’s lead and stay safe, and hope for the best.

It’s also comforting to remember that it is only April 17th, and there is plenty of time to get baseball going again this year if our situation improves enough to allow it.

—

Damaso Garcia passed away the other day, at the age of 63.

Garcia was a two-time American League All-Star second baseman with the Toronto Blue Jays in the 1980s, typically hitting for a strong average with lots of stolen bases.

Prior to that, he was a Pacific Coast League Co-Champion with the Tacoma Yankees in 1978.

Tacoma was a New York Yankees affiliate for just one season, and it was a memorable one for those who were here to see it. The major league Yankees were defending World Series champions going into the season, and they won it again in 1978.

Meanwhile, the Tacoma club went 80-57 and was named PCL Co-Champions along with Albuquerque when rain washed away the playoffs in one of the stranger episodes in league history.

Garcia missed the PCL playoffs drama, because he was in New York for the MLB drama. Garcia spent most of the 1978 season in Tacoma, appearing in 102 PCL games at the ripe age of 21. He was blocked in the Yankees organization by Willie Randolph, so they eventually traded him to Toronto.

—

Speaking of the late-1970s Yankees teams, I recently watched another of those old World Series games on MLB Network. This time it was Yankees-Dodgers from 1977, and the national TV broadcast team was Keith Jackson and Howard Cosell. That was a duo!

Links:

• The Seattle Times has a two-part series on the upcoming MLB Draft, how it will be different this year, and how the Mariners are adjusting. Here’s the first part and here is the second part which includes names of potential first round picks.
• M’s new pitching coach Pete Woodworth talked about what the pitchers are doing during the break, and remains optimistic about his staff.
• The Mariners PR blog caught up with a few of their minor league pitchers to see what they are doing right now. Potential future Rainiers Aaron Fletcher, Wyatt Mills, Brandon Williamson, and Penn Murfee chime in.
• Wednesday was Jackie Robinson Day. The Seattle Times has a brief history of the event, and the Mariners put out a video of a roundtable discussion featuring several of their players along with host Dave Sims.
• ESPN has a story on the passing of Damaso Garcia, which includes the details of the 1979 trade of Garcia from the Yankees to Toronto.
• Baseball America lays out the worst case scenario for Minor League Baseball. Gee, thanks a lot guys.
• In the PCL, the Rainiers were supposed to be the visiting team for Sacramento’s home opener on Tuesday. The River Cats had some fun with it, setting up a drive-thru ballpark concession stand in the parking lot and simulating the game via MLB The Show. Sacramento claims they won, 5-4, although we are officially protesting the results due to what had to have been excessive cheating.
• Here’s a story from Omaha detailing how the Storm Chasers are handling the financial problems caused by the shutdown.
• It snowed in Albuquerque the day before their previously scheduled home opener but hey, no one cared. They’re just waiting to see what happens like everyone else.
• Here’s a feature from Oklahoma City on the Dodgers groundskeeper and his dog. It seems that at many PCL ballparks the groundskeeper is the only person there.
• Fresno Bee columnist Marek Warszawski wandered around outside the ballpark on what should have been the Grizzlies home opener.
• And we have a story from one of the Salt Lake City newspapers on the Bees cancelled home opener.

The 1969 Tacoma Cubs – PCL Champions

When the Tacoma Rainiers won the 2010 Pacific Coast League championship on September 17 in Memphis, it was Tacoma’s first outright PCL title since 1969.

To clarify, Tacoma had teams that were named “Co-Champions” in 1978 and 2001, when the championship series was unable to be played due to rain (1978) and the 9/11 attacks (2001).

But Tacoma had not celebrated a championship on the field since the Tacoma Cubs defeated the Eugene Emeralds in a best-of-five PCL Championship Series in 1969. I decided to spend some time researching the 1969 team, and learn how they won the title. Little did I know how dramatic the series was, with accusations of cheating and a stunning Tacoma comeback after dropping the first two games.

The T-Cubs Shoot To The Moon

First, a bit about Tacoma’s opponent, the Eugene Emeralds. Aren’t they a short-season team in the Class-A Northwest League? Yes, they are today – but from 1969 to 1973, Eugene played as a Triple-A team, and in 1969 they were a Philadelphia Phillies affiliate operating out of Civic Stadium.

The PCL was a league in transition in 1969, having just lost several teams (Denver, Indianapolis, Tulsa, and Oklahoma City) to the American Association. The league added Eugene and Tucson in 1969, for an eight-team circuit divided into two four-team divisions. The two division champions would play for the league title.

Tacoma and Eugene each ran away with its division:

Final Standings from the official, hand-typed league stats (Bill Weiss FTW)

The best-of-five series opened with the first two games to be played in Eugene. The series would move to Tacoma for Games 3 and 4, and then back to Eugene for Game 5.

It didn’t even take one inning for the series to get interesting.

After Tacoma did not score in the top of the first inning of Game One, Eugene came to the plate in the bottom of the first against T-Cubs starter Archie Reynolds. With two outs in the bottom of the first inning, Tacoma manager Whitey Lockman called time out, and pointed out to the umpires that the man working the hand-operated scoreboard in center field was using binoculars to steal the signals of Tacoma catcher Randy Bobb, and relay the pitch-type by sending his own signal to the batter.

Second base umpire Paul Runge went out to center field and confiscated the binoculars from the scoreboard operator.

In the newspaper account the following day, Tacoma News Tribune writer Ed Honeywell stirred the pot:

“Did a ‘spy in the sky’ have something to do with the Emeralds’ amazing 52-21 home record this season?… Did Cal Emery get a little “extra” help in compiling that even .400 batting average? (ed: Emery hit .400 in 260 at-bats)… Discoveries of field glasses at certain vantage points in a couple of major league ballparks within the last 25 years have led to drastic action from the commissioner’s office.”

In the end, nothing came of the binoculars incident – and Eugene didn’t need them, anyway. The Emeralds won the first game of the series, 6-1. Emeralds top prospect Larry Bowa hit a leadoff home run on the second pitch in the first inning, and pitcher Gary Wagner went the distance, tossing a seven-hitter.

Reynolds was knocked out in the fifth inning, when Eugene took a 6-0 lead, and it was all over.

Game Two the next day (September 3) was a drama-filled contest – the first of four straight games to be decided by two runs or less.

Tacoma’s Jim Colborn won the regular-season ERA title, and he was tabbed for the start in Game Two against Eugene’s Jeff James. The T-Cubs played some shoddy defense and allowed a pair of unearned runs to score, with two more coming home on a misplayed fly ball that fell for a hit.

“We played bad baseball in this one,” Lockman told the News Tribune. “Such bad baseball that they shouldn’t have had any of their first four runs.”

Still, the T-Cubs tied the game 4-4 with a couple of runs in the top of the eighth. But Eugene’s Scott Reid ended the game with one swing – a leadoff home run to right field in the bottom of the ninth inning off Tacoma reliever Dick LeMay, giving Eugene a 5-4 win.

Eugene led the series, two games to none, and was just one win away from the PCL crown. After the game, the soothsayer Lockman asked the reporter Honeywell a question: “Won’t they be surprised to drop three in a row after taking the first two?”

Theater of the Mind, with Tacoma Hall of Famer Don Hill

The series came to Cheney Stadium for Game Three on September 4, 1969 – the first PCL Championship Series game ever held at Cheney. The Cubs needed a win, or else they were going home.

Tacoma starter Joe Decker got into a pitcher’s duel with Eugene’s Barry Lersch, and the score was 1-1 at the 7th inning stretch. T-Cubs right fielder Jim Dunegan – who had struck out in each of his two prior at-bats – led off the inning. After falling behind in the count one ball, two strikes, Dunegan launched a slider “far into the north parking lot” for a home run, giving Tacoma a 2-1 lead.

Eugene managed two base runners and had two out in the top of the eighth, but LeMay entered from the Tacoma bullpen and got Joe Lis to ground out to end the threat. LeMay then worked a scoreless ninth for his 15th consecutive save, and Tacoma had its first win of the series.

The win set off a bit of a stampede, according to the News Tribune:

“The exciting finish touched off a rush for the ticket office by fans anxious to reserve seats for (Game Four).”

Archie Reynolds got his revenge in Game Four. Working on two days rest after being roughed up in the opening game of the series, Reynolds pitched a complete-game, two-hit shutout as Tacoma evened the series with a 2-0 win.

Amazingly, not a single Emeralds runner reached second base against Reynolds. Reynolds walked one and struck out six, facing just three batters over the minimum.

Catcher Randy Bobb hit a bases-loaded, two-out, two-run single in the bottom of the first inning off Eugene starter Larry Colton – and that was all of the scoring in the game.

After the game, Tacoma first baseman Roe Skidmore was told he would report to the Chicago Cubs – but only after the completion of the series.

Game Five was played at Civic Stadium in Eugene, in front of a robust crowd of 6,135. Tacoma’s Jim Colborn started on two days rest against Eugene’s Gary Wagner – who had started and won Game One, and was working on a normal (for 1969) three days rest.

Tacoma took a 1-0 lead in the fourth when Skidmore reached on an infield single and took second on a throwing error, before eventually scoring on Bobb’s long sacrifice fly.

Colborn battled through five tough innings without allowing a run. He was lifted after giving up a leadoff single in the sixth – the seventh hit he had allowed, but he didn’t walk anyone and six of the hits were singles, so he escaped.

Tacoma relievers Dave Lemonds and Len Church teamed up to get out of the sixth inning with the Cubs unscathed.

Tacoma added an insurance run in the top of the seventh, when third baseman John Lung doubled to the left field corner and eventually scored on an error after Roger Metzger’s single. Tacoma led at the stretch, 2-0.

Lockman decided to go to ace reliever Dick LeMay for the good old-fashioned, championship-clinching three-inning save. LeMay went nine-up, nine-down over three perfect innings to secure the game – and the trophy – for Tacoma.

Apparently, the celebration was a bit wild:

“Some of the champagne was used in lieu of shampoo,” wrote Honeywell, who made sure to note “a tour of the shower room several players conducted for club president Bobby Adams, who wasn’t ideally attired for the occasion.”

Some things never change. Too bad newspaper headline writers have changed:

Bag PCL Flag? Really?

The championship was big news in Tacoma – how about the front page of the paper, at the top?

Above the Fold

 Some additional notes on the series:

• Eugene had only been shut out three times in the regular season – and Tacoma shut them out in Game Four and Game Five.
• The time of game in each of the 2-0 games was a brisk 1:50.
• Tacoma starting shortstop Roger Metzger had turned pro just two months earlier after the Cubs signed him out of St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas. Metzger had a solid major league career which was cut short by… wait for it… a chainsaw accident.
• Tacoma manager Whitey Lockman is most famous for having been on base when Bobby Thomson hit his “Shot Heard Round The World.” Lockman was Tacoma’s all-time winningest manager for 30 years until Dave Myers passed him in 1999.
• Jim Dunegan – who hit the game-winning home run in Game Three – converted to pitching in 1970 and briefly reached the big leagues with the Chicago Cubs.
• Joe Decker – the Game Three winner – pitched parts of nine seasons in the major leagues, including an end-of-career stint with the 1979 Seattle Mariners.
• Game Five winner Jim Colborn would enjoy a fine major league career, and then leave a lasting impact on Seattle baseball: he was one of the men instrumental in the Mariners acquisition of Ichiro Suzuki.
• Relief ace Dick LeMay was in his second go-around with Tacoma. He had pitched for the Tacoma Giants in 1960 and 1962, eventually earning three major league seasons, and then he pitched many Triple-A campaigns – including 1969 and 1970 for the Tacoma Cubs.
• Game Four hero Archie Reynolds would pitch in 37 major league games over parts of five seasons, but he never earned a big league win. His career was over by 1974.
• Eugene shortstop Larry Bowa broke into the majors the following season, finished third in the NL Rookie of the Year voting, went on to play 16 seasons in the majors, and eventually served as a Mariners coach.
• Eugene pitcher Larry Colton reached the majors for one game, and then went on to success in literary circles – I enjoyed his book Goat Brothers, which is an entertaining memoir of being a jock (read: outcast) at Berkeley in the turbulant 1960s.
• Ed Honeywell covered Tacoma baseball for decades for the News Tribune. Another regular Tacoma baseball writer at the time was Stan Farber – but he missed the 1969 T-Cubs season, because he was travelling with the Seattle Pilots during their only season of existance. Farber was covering a Pilots road trip to the east coast during the PCL series – the Pilots were mired in a stretch where they lost 16 out of 17 games, while on the homefront they were threatened with eviction from Sicks Stadium.
• At the end of the season in the 1960s and 1970s, in the year-end wrap-up, the News Tribune would list what the players were planning to do in the off-season. It was a different era – most players went and got jobs, such as at the post office, or in a warehouse. Others would work on college courses, and a few would play winter baseball in Latin American countries.
• The big non-sports story during this week was the death of North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh. Political experts at the time predicted that his death would not mean the end of the war – or any real change in strategy.

Looking up the old stories was fun – I have to share this with you, from September of 1969:

King 5 was on to something!

Which part is better – the beer ad, or the fact that even in 1969, Channel 5 knew that an O.J. Simpson special would be a big ratings hit?