As I was looking through some old photos recently, I came across one of my fourth grade baseball team. That’s been a day or two since it was taken, more specifically several decades.
Not sure when we retrieved it from my parents’ house, but it was before my mother’s passing in 2013.
The team, although we would have started playing in late May, was comprised of students from Christ The King School in Oklahoma City. Some of us had just completed our fourth grade year and others had finished the fifth grade.
There are 16 kids in the photo along with my dad who was the coach and two of the other kids’ fathers who were the assistant coaches that year.
One was Tommy Morris’ dad and I really don’t recognize the other since that’s been so long ago.
Both dad and the other two were volunteer coaches, of course.
Our team was good enough that we made it to the state tournament and all the way to the finals.
Of the 16 on the team, 12 of us had just completed fourth grade and the remainder were about to enter the sixth grade.
The players I can still recognize from that photo are Tommy Morris, Frankie Dolf, Dwight Hyde, Jeff McKenzie, Mike O’Neill, Chet Long, Ronnie Hewitt, Greg Blanche, Tommy Mueller, Pat Streck, Steve Muse in addition to myself.
Since those days of grade school, not sure what profession most might have entered as adults. I do know Long became a doctor, Muse at one time was a manager of Van’s in Norman and Blanche a lawyer.
The state tournament was played in Norman that year. As I said we made it to the finals, where we were defeated by a team from Sequoyah School in Oklahoma City, 1-0.
My mother wasn’t able to make many games that summer because my brother and sister were small. But she did make the finals, only to see us lose.
Even though that was game was played in about 1958 if I recall correctly, there are a couple things I distinctly remember.
Our pitcher for that game was a kid named Jimmy Stinson who we borrowed for the state tournament. You could borrow two pitchers from other teams for the state tourney.
Stinson threw the first game that we won, another borrowed pitcher Alvin Tunnel hurled the second contest.
Then Stinson came back to pitch the finals. I think he gave up one hit. I remember that against Sequoyah’s borrowed pitcher I hit the ball deep to the first baseman who caught it and tagged the base.