Old baseball memories make the game great

John Wathan, a former catcher and manager of the Kansas City Royals, loves that there is no clock in baseball.

“It’s truly timeless,” said Wathan, now an assistant to player development for the organization.

It’s one of dozens of reasons he’s never left the game.

“Here we are 37 years later, and I’ve done just about everything but sell peanuts,” said Wathan, who played on the Royals’ squad with George Brett that won the World Series in 1985.

And the magic always begins simply enough — in the spring, on a diamond.

“There are dead trees and dead grass when you come back to spring training, but it’s that time when everything starts budding,” Wathan said.

And for the first few weeks, Wathan said everyone feels like they can win the title.

Many local coaches consider themselves lucky to still be in the game, too.

North Douglas’ Jeff Davis used to throw a baseball back and forth with his dad on slow Tuesday nights outside the family barber shop in Wren, Ohio. He’d run home and play games on a diamond he and his friends built long past when the street light kicked on next to his parent’s house.

Nat King Cole blared on the radio during those dog days of summer at one-day four-team tournaments.

“We didn’t have a whole lot to do in the summer besides ride bikes and play baseball,” Davis said.

The things Davis, a self-proclaimed purist, appreciates most about baseball are its simplicities — a well-executed sacrifice, the squeeze bunt.

“I appreciate the things that don’t show up in the paper the next day or in the scorebook,” Davis said. “A 1-0 pitcher’s duel is a great way to spend an afternoon.”

For Yoncalla coach J.J. Mast, baseball evokes feelings that are hard to describe, but that have kept him coming back to the field after every cold winter.

He loves the history. Mast watched the Eagles win state titles in the mid-1980s as an 8-year-old and still remembers the names.

“Watching the old guys gave us something to shoot for,” Mast said.

Mast has perspective — he blew out his right shoulder on his throwing arm before he could play college baseball at Western Oregon University — so he can’t help but enjoy watching Caleb McDaniel, a first-team MVC football and basketball selection, take to the sport.

“He hadn’t played since he was eight and is having the time of his life,” Mast said.

Baseball’s got that effect on people, he said.

“There’s something about the sunflower seeds and camaraderie,” Mast said. “It is the relaxed sport at the end of the year.”

Roseburg coach Troy Thompson grew up in a baseball family in La Grande. His dad coached his Little League team, and Thompson later played at Eastern Oregon University.

To him, those moments within the boundaries of the field represent singular opportunities to do something special.

“(The opposition) is a group of guys who are playing the same game you are,” Thompson said.

Sutherlin coach Steve Perkins cherishes the memories baseball has created in his life. During his junior year at Roseburg High, the Indians lost to a North Eugene team led by a young man named Danny Ainge, known more for another sport. Perkins also played on several wildly successful Dr. Stewart’s American Legion teams in the mid-1970s.

Perkins has been a baseball and softball coach, switching to the latter to instruct his three daughters at Myrtle Point. This will be his third and final year as head coach of the Bulldogs, and Perkins is convinced the team will be better.

So count optimism as another reason for baseball’s undiminished popularity.

“Last year we didn’t have a good year, and I think it’s gonna change,” Perkins said. “You know, it is gonna change. We are much better.”

Baseball’s universal really. You can be short and scrawny, heavyset and slow, but you can still be successful.

“Anybody can play,” Mast said.

And unlike football and basketball, very young kids grow up playing on the same teams together, Douglas coach Ryan Hunter said. He played whiffle ball and strikeout with tennis balls in Tenmile with guys he still knows today.

“You run into each other and it’s funny how many of us are coaching teams now,” Hunter said.

Hunter has a daughter, 3-year-old Whitney, and a son, Ty, who’ll be 1 this month.

“She’s grown up around Legion Field and my wife has toted Ty to plenty of games,” Hunter said.

The game — its storied names, curses, duels and dates — also offers a reprieve from the complexities and complications of life’s struggles.

And it’s a relief to know that baseball’s value to us — in its purest sandlot, back-yard-with-dad form — will never be tarnished by scandals or steroids.



• You can reach sports reporter Dan Jones by e-mail at djones@newsreview.info, or by phone at 957-4219.