Reservoir of memories: Blythe Bullets teammates reminisce over city baseball championship win in 1971

It seems like every year there is a 50th anniversary of something.

No kidding!

This summer marks a special 50th anniversary for me. In 1971, I had my first experience in organized sports, barely contributing as the Blythe Bullets won the city championship of Mustang League baseball.

The Bullets, with the exception of one player, were a collection of third- and fourth-graders from Sacred Heart School. We practiced at The Reservoir, the large grass field that covers the city’s reservoir near 11th Avenue and Southeast Boulevard.

“It was a ball. It was a great time,” recalled our coach Wayne Walther, a baseball player at Lewis and Clark High School (class of 1963) and nephew of LC’s longtime coach Art Walther.

The Reservoir was not designed for baseball.

“We didn’t even have a backstop or anything where we practiced, and we’d have to chase balls down that hill. I’ve driven by there recently, just remembering some of that,” Walther, 76, said.

The investment firm Blythe and Co., where teammate Craig Hart’s father worked, was our sponsor. Other teams, I remember, were the SF Pavers, Aetna Adjusters and Cal Smith Athletics. Uniforms were pullover jerseys and a cap. We played in jeans.

Although nobody was named Stockton, Sandberg or Rypien, our South Hill division that played games at Hutton Field included several kids who would be prominent athletes in high school and college.

The Pavers were led by Jim “Chico” Carnell, who later starred at third base for the Gonzaga Bulldogs. In 1981, his 25 doubles were a Gonzaga record that lasted until 2009 and his 242 career hits stood as the school record for 20 years.

Pat and Dan Lynch were two more rivals who would be college standouts. They played football at Washington State – Pat a defensive lineman, Dan an All-American guard.

Our team featured Dick Lloyd, who pitched three seasons in minor league before becoming a rocket scientist. Another minor leaguer was Darryl Stephens, a walk-on at Stanford who played in the College World Series next to right fielder John Elway. Joe Keogh, who died in a car accident in 1981, was a football player for the Idaho Vandals at that time. Craig Hart was first-team All-Greater Spokane League in baseball his senior season at Gonzaga Prep and had a tryout with the Washington Huskies. Matt Manning, a teammate of the Lynches at LC, played football at Boise State.

Other Blythe teammates included two Boeing engineers in Andy Hammer and Geoff Miller. Mark Barbieri is a commercial real estate executive in Seattle and Jim Huber has been a successful entrepreneur. John Witter lives in Spokane and is court administrator of the Spokane County District Court as well as a co-founder of cougfan.com. I worked for The Spokesman-Review for 22 years and now live in Ecuador.

I’ve had some difficulty recalling the rest of the roster, but I believe Phil Eggers and Phil Roberg wore the Orange and Black and both live in Spokane. Kevin Perry, whereabouts unknown, was the one teammate who did not attend our small Catholic school.

Yes, Dick Lloyd became a rocket scientist. He was a recognized warhead expert for the U.S. defense industry and a volunteer inspector for the United Nations group assigned to search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003. Lloyd died of cancer in 2014.

Craig Hart shared some memories of Lloyd, the 10-year-old star.

“At that age he could throw the ball hard. He was a heckuva baseball player and the best pitcher on our team,” said Hart, an investment adviser in Spokane and the other pitcher on the team.

“He was a big eater,” Hart continued as he recalled the enormous party-sized bag of popcorn someone gave us after we won the championship at Franklin Field. “We all got to just chow down on popcorn after the victory. Dick ate more than anybody.”

We defeated Doyle’s Sundae Sluggers 11-6 in that championship game at Franklin Park. I know that to be true because John Witter still has the one-sentence clipping from one of the Spokane newspapers.

Perhaps more so than Dicky Lloyd, Darryl Stephens was a special athlete, even at 10 years old.

“We would put him in the outfield and he could catch anything, any place,” Walther said. “At that point he used my glove. … He might have had one, but I said, ‘Use this, it will treat you better in the outfield when you’re diving for the ball.’ ”

Stephens appreciated the outfield assist from his coach.

“It was actually a magic glove because I think everything I touched I caught,” he said.

Seeing Stephens dive for the ball – and catch it – is something that has stuck in people’s minds through the years.

“At that age he was doing a full sprint, diving for the ball, catching it and doing a somersault afterward,” Hart said. “Such impressive athleticism at that age.”

Stephens said he practiced making diving catches over the hill at The Reservoir.

“I used to have a couple of my friends throw me balls that were just a little beyond my reach and I would dive and catch them and roll down the hill,” he said. “People thought I was crazy, but it was fun. It was a good thing I never rolled all the way to the road.”

Baseball for kids is not only fun for the kids but a joy for parents, too. Now that we are all either in our 60s or approaching that milestone, many of us have lost our parents. One memory that will always last is that of us playing – and winning – while our parents watched from lawn chairs. In that regard, the championship game took on a special meaning for Stephens.

“That was the first game my mother saw me play,” he said. “My father couldn’t come because he had a stroke, in 1969, I believe.

“It was wonderful for me to have her be there because she had never seen me play before. It was a blessing to have done that in front of her.”

It was a special time and a wonderful start to the summer. After the victory at Franklin Park, parents, siblings and a bunch of little baseball stars celebrated like World Series champs.

And Dick Lloyd ate a lot of popcorn.