American Legion Memories

I look back on my only season of American Legion baseball as one of the most enjoyable summers I ever experienced. I also look back on my only season of American Legion baseball as one of the closest encounters with death I ever experienced.

Boy, do we have the memories from American Legion baseball. My husband, Ron Jackson, coached Legion ball from 1960 to 1984. Those were 24 years of great kids and great baseball.

My special baseball legion story will be a memory check for my 88-year-old brain. In 1937-38 I played for the Cannon Park Legion team with all city parks sponsored teams. We played against Audubon, Underhill, Libby, Hillyard, Mission, and others. Our coaches were standout football players from Gonzaga. Yes, I said football players. (I'm sorry they dropped football as they were such good players.)

I have made my home in Spokane for 35 years. How I came to be in Spokane is my American Legion Baseball memory. My sophomore and junior years at Pasco High School, I was the starting third baseman on the varsity baseball team. My senior year the coach and I had a “difference of opinion” and I didn’t play baseball at all. Had it not been for American Legion Baseball the summer after I graduated from high school, I would probably still be working on the farm in the basin near the Tri-Cities.

In 1980 I was coaching the Shadle team (Barstone) on which my younger brother, Bradd, was an All-League player, and Mark Rypien was playing. Two stories come to mind regarding that campaign. Rypien was in a batting slump. We were playing the North Central team and I am coaching third base.

There are many favorite moments in my one-year Legion season, but the one that stands out above all was winning the city championship of a Major League Baseball city, that being Detroit. The year was 1955 and the Detroit Tigers were in the midst of a so-so year in fifth place in the American League. That being the case, many of the die-hard baseball fans turned to the American Legion for some exciting and excellent baseball. Detroit in the ’50s was a hotbed for sandlot baseball with many excellent Legion teams scattered throughout the city.

It was late July, 1959, around 5 p.m. when we left Chino, Calif., on a balmy day of around 80 degrees, for Barstow, Calif. Now you have to understand that in late July the average temperature in Barstow is around 120 degrees.

I graduated from North Central in 1970 and played four years of baseball for North Central and two years of Legion ball with Barstone Fuel Company, a company owned by Jim Gillogly, who loved baseball. We drove to Lewiston for a doubleheader on a Sunday in 1969. Back then we drove in parents’ cars without air conditioning. The temperature in Lewiston was 101 and it stunk like crazy entering the town.