Chapter 31
Jeffee Goes to U of A Baseball Games
Like I said I was very low-key and one thing me and Dennis like to do is go to the baseball games when spring rolled around. Actually the weather in Tucson was so nice the baseball season actually started in winter. When I first got there my freshman and sophomore year, the baseball field was maybe two blocks away right in the middle of the campus. Back then it was a pretty low-key college ballpark and maybe would hold 300 or 400 people to watch a game. I still remember my freshman year we watched this really good player. I believe he was an infielder named Eddie Leon who wound up playing professional baseball with the Cleveland Indians. He was the first of many University of Arizona major leaguers I actually met and watched play baseball during college.
In fact the current coach of the Boston Red Sox named Terry Francona played for the University of Arizona and I watched him play college baseball he was a very good college player. I think he played professionally before he wound up managing he was a great player.
I still remember one mean thing I did. I regret what I did so I'm baring my soul a little bit in this autobiography. I'm certainly not perfect and I went to you know a bad thing I did with this very good player at the University of Arizona.
To this day I don't know why it started or why we did it but there was his player who had the nickname of the Hawk and we were really degrading and insulting to this player and I'm sure he heard what we were saying because it was a very small ballpark and we were very close to the Arizona dugout and I still regret to this day all the belittling and insulting things I said. So Hawk if you're out there somewhere, the Hawk who played at the University of Arizona in the late 60s, there is from there please forgive me for being mean to you in I'm sorry I did it.
One nice thing that I liked about Arizona was that we had a very good nationally-ranked baseball teams. We were usually in the top 10 of the college baseball teams in those years and we certainly couldn't say the same thing about our football team or our basketball team.
A graduate student assistant (forget how I met him probably at the game we hit it off) and I always sat together at the games. I had really had a great time at the baseball game with him and he loved baseball like me and he planned his whole life around baseball like me. He was like in his 30s, student teaching for over 10 years, working on his PhD or something and he wasn't married. He lived in small little room but that didn't bother him in the least. Very happy and he just brought his backpack and we had a good time together.
I have to say some of the best times I ever had was watching baseball at the University of Arizona. One nice thing was that all the schools in the frozen North say like the University of Michigan, would come out to Tucson, Arizona say in February for like two or three weeks and literally that was their spring training. They would train at the University of Arizona at our two baseball fields and of course we would play them in several games of real baseball and we would just about win every one of those games as those guys were still thawing out from winter and by the time they got there in February or March, we had already played 15 or 20 games. Arizona was pretty well into the season and those northern schools really didn't care if they lost those games as they use those games for practice and those games didn't count against their records when they went back to Michigan or wherever but we were able to take credit at the University of Arizona for winning those games.
I still remember one incredible inning that I'll tell you about. I forget who the team was but we wind up scoring like 10 runs in this one. The whole U of A team just kept getting hits over and over. And the ending of the inning could not have been more dramatic.
I still remember the U of A had this little guy who was maybe 5’6’ or 5’7’ but he was a very good baseball player. There were two outs and the bases were loaded. He really rocked one of the pitches sending it very deep into the outfield. Of course all the guys on the bases immediately took off the second he hit the ball because there were two outs and that's what you do in baseball, you immediately take off. The inning ended in the most dramatic fashion it could have ended; our illustrious batter tried to stretch that hit into an inside the park home run and he was thrown out at home plate for the final out, unbelievable.
What good would be going to a school if you didn't have an arch rival that you always wanted to beat. Our archrival at the University of Arizona was Arizona State University. Arizona State University was located in Tempe, Arizona maybe 90 miles north and just south of Phoenix, Arizona. Naturally they had to have a super top-notch baseball team so all the games between us and Arizona State were very competitive. In fact to this day I have never forgotten that the alumni office telephone number for the University of Arizona is 1 – 800 – beat ASU.
Of course some of the greatest games ever were Arizona State versus Arizona games. And because those games were so popular they used to play them at the Cleveland Indians spring training stadium called Hi Corbett Field located on Randolph Park where I worked as a Park Ranger later on.
Let me tell you about one of the greatest games I've ever seen in my life that burned an impression in my memory that I will never forget. Arizona had the knack of finding not only incredibly good pitchers, but these pitchers were also incredibly good batters which is very rare. Look around the pros and you don't see too many pitchers that are also good hitters anymore.
One Friday night we played Arizona State at Hi Corbett Field. Normally Hi Corbett Field could hold maybe 7,000 people which is a pretty good crowd for a college game. This game was so popular something like around 9,000 or 10,000 people showed up for the game. And unlike today probably when they would turn you away at the ticket counter, they basically let every single person buy a ticket and watch the game. It was so crowded they did something I have never seen before or since at a baseball game.
They started letting people sit on the field next to the fence next to the grandstands in foul territory. They probably let people sit 10 or 15 deep so they were basically occupying a lot of foul territory.
That would be unusual in itself but they went one step further. They actually let people sit in fair territory against the outfield wall all across fair territory from left field to right field; I've never seen anything like it. I guess neither coach objected because that's the way they played the entire game with people sitting in foul territory and people sitting against the outfield fence in fair territory.
The game lived up to the expectations to put it mildly. Once again both Arizona and Arizona State were nationally ranked in the top 10, two of the best teams in the United States. Pat O'Brien is pitching for Arizona. And he pitched one of the greatest games I have ever seen in my life at either the college or the pro level.
The game was tied 0 to 0 going into the ninth inning. Somehow or other Pat O'Brien loaded the bases in the top of the ninth inning so Arizona State had runners on first, second, and third. Somehow or other Pat O'Brien pitched out of that jam and got Arizona State out in the top of the ninth without Arizona State scoring a run. So the game goes into the bottom of the ninth inning tied 0 - 0.
The game couldn't have ended in a more dramatic fashion. Arizona got a runner to first base I forget if it was a hit or a walk. And wouldn't you know the next batter at the plate was Pat O'Brien. Hi Corbett Field was a very big field and to dead centerfield was maybe was 430 or 440 feet, a tremendously big ballpark. It was very hard to hit a home run in that ballpark even in left field and right field that had very high fences maybe 50 or 60 feet tall so you really had to hit the ball a long way and very high to get a home run there.
Pat O'Brien did not hit a home run at his turn at bat but he did the next best thing. Pat O'Brien hit the hell out of some pitch. Pat hit it so hard it went maybe 420 or 430 feet and hit the outfield wall maybe 30 feet up from the playing field so of course the outfielder could not catch it. The guy from first base was flying around the bases and the guy from first beat a throw to home plate so Arizona won the game 1 - 0 and Pat O'Brien stood up on third base with a triple. As you can believe the place went absolutely bananas. I have never seen a crowd goes so crazy in my life. That game was just an incredible experience. The hometown fans couldn't have gotten any better a game in their life. It was a game none of the people at that park will ever forget.
That wasn't the only incredible game. I can remember at Arizona there were at least two others. I'll tell you about the first one. If you remember in 1969, the New York Mets won the World Series. One of the winning pictures for the New York Mets that year was an Arizona State pitcher by the name of Curt Gentry, a very good pitcher. This is one game where Arizona did not win but even as a loyal University of Arizona fan, I have to applaud Curt Gentry for that game. This game was played up at Phoenix Giants Stadium which was a AAA minor ballclub park like Hi Corbett Field. It was a very large baseball stadium that could hold 9,000 or 10,000 people. My roommate Dennis and I had to go up there and see that game and so we drove up to Tempe from Tucson about a 90 mile trip.
I forget who our starting pitcher was but in the fifth inning, our starting pitcher either got a hit or a walk and was on first base. The next batter hit a ball to the shortstop and the shortstop started a double play. So the shortstop threw to the second baseman as our pitcher is running from first base to second base. The second baseman threw the ball to first base and promptly hit our pitcher in the head knocking him down even though he was wearing a helmet. Of course they didn't complete the double play but our starting pitcher was not getting up after lying on the ground.
Finally the trainer and the coach from Arizona go out and start talking to the pitcher still laying on the ground between first and second base and after maybe five or 10 minutes they help him up and assist him back to the dugout. Likely he wasn't seriously hurt but he was hurt enough that Arizona had to take him out of the game.
Arizona had this really great relief pitcher by the name of John Osmer. Normally when John would pitch, would just be pitching at the most maybe two or three innings, but not tonight. The game was tied in the ninth inning I can't remember exactly what the score was. The game did not end until the 15th inning. And guess what? Curt Gentry pitched the entire game for Arizona State, all 15 innings, again that's one of the greatest pitching performances I have seen in my life and Curt was pitching just as good in the 15th inning as he was in the first inning.
John Osmer was also pitching well. John Osmer had pitched that game from the fifth inning to the 15th inning so John had pitched 10 innings, a pretty good accomplishment too; neither pitcher has allowed a run in 10 innings. It was getting around midnight or one o'clock in the morning and I think everybody was pretty tired including the players.
I think the game ended when somebody from Arizona State hit the ball pretty deep to right field and I think our outfielder misjudged it or lost it in the lights and the ball dropped in and Arizona State scored the winning run and I think they won 3 to 2, again one of the most incredible baseball games I've ever seen.
Here's another great game I saw. I don't believe it was the same weekend but it could've been. This game was played on a Friday night at Phoenix Giants Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. Again we had a great pitcher who is also a great hitter by the name of Rich Hinton. Rich Hinton totally baffled one of the best college lineups you've ever seen. Bob Wills, the son of Maury Wills, was one of the players that night for Arizona State against Arizona. Both Maury Wills and Bump wills played many years of major league baseball and were outstanding players. There were many other players on Arizona State that I'm certain went on to the pros.
Again that Friday night, Rich Hinton pitched one of the greatest games I've ever seen. He wound up pitching a one hitter at Phoenix Giants Stadium in front of 10,000 screaming Arizona State fans and a few Arizona fans. And actually the one hit they got went through the infield and all of us thought that should've been an error on the shortstop but it was ruled a hit.
I think Rich struck out 10 or 11 or 12 batters that night and these guys are some of the greatest batters probably that ever played for a college team in the history of college baseball. Even the Arizona State coach the next day was completely impressed and he said Rich Hinton had some of the best stuff he'd ever seen because my players only swing at good pitches in the strike zone and they could not hit the sky that night. He pitched an incredible game and deserved the win. Then again their pitcher was pretty good and we only won the game 2 to 0.
The next day Arizona was going to play a doubleheader with Arizona State and the outcome of the first game was a little different. Rich Hinton again was such a good hitter that after pitching a one-hitter Friday night, he was playing center field for Arizona Saturday afternoon.
Unfortunately our pitcher that day was not quite as good as Rich Hinton and we proceeded to lose that game when Arizona State scored at least 14 runs in the game. Arizona State had this Incredible Hulk by the name of Paul Ray Powell. He was a really big muscular, maybe 6 foot six 240 or 50 pounds and extremely athletic. I still remember Phoenix Giants Stadium had this incredibly large green centerfield wall with the numbers on top of the wall showing that that wall was 450 feet from home plate. And that wall I swear to God had to be at least 75 feet high. And it was an incredibly high wall with no fans behind it; was just an empty outfield wall with nobody sitting in the outfield.
I saw the hardest hit baseball I have ever seen in my life that inning. Paul Ray Powell hit one of our pitches so hard that that baseball was still rising when it hit the wall at 450 feet in dead center field and that ball missed by maybe 5 feet going over the centerfield wall which were probably been the only baseball in the history of that park ever hit over the centerfield wall. I think that ball would've gone another 150 or 200 feet. That baseball was still going pretty hard when it hit the top of that outfield wall. That baseball looked more like one of Tiger Woods drives than a hit baseball.
As soon as that ball left the bat of Paul Ray Powell I saw Rich Hinton immediately turned his back to home plate and just start running backwards as fast as he could go. He had no chance of catching that ball it was hit that good. Even though the base ball was at 450 feet away, Paul Ray Powell was not exactly a leading speedster running about the bases because he was pretty big and bulky and muscular but he still got a triple. W would rate that the hardest hit triple I've ever seen in my life.