Justin Daniels Hitting .628: Babe Ruth Baseball Stats, 1958

I am not sure who put together these statistics, but I found them in a pile of my parents papers. One page shows the top batting averages for the 1959 Babe Ruth League. The other page has batting and pitching statistics for the Abshier Bryan team.

It seems that these statistics might be for the entire season: the Abshier Bryan statistics show that the team had won 8 games and lost six.

The names on these two sheets include many players that I looked up to.  At the time I was 12 years old, in Little League, and I had been watching these older players for years. Many of them, I knew from neighborhood games at the baseball field at Jefferson School.

Two of the players with the highest averages were my cousins. Justin Daniels led the league with a phenomenal .628 average. He had three home runs. Jerry Durning had a .500 batting average. Other familiar names on the list of top batting averages, Winston Wheeler, who lived on S. Washington Ave, near my cousins Justin and Morris, had a great record collection and was a fan of Ronnie Hawkins; Kenny Terry, who also lived on Washington Ave not far from Justin and Morris; and J.D. McConnell and George Faucette, who teamed up with Justin to make Fayetteville a formidable basketball team during the 1961-62 season; and . Several on the list were only a year or so older than me, and i played baseball, basketball and/or football with them in coming years, including Robert Wilkes and Harold Downum.

American Legion Baseball, Season Ticket, 1965

I did not recall that admission was charged to attend American Legion Baseball games. The games were held at the baseball park at the old fairgrounds, and it was fenced off, so it was possible to channel people through an entrance gate and make sure they had a ticket.

Over the years, I watched and played lots of games at the fairgrounds baseball park. My first memory of it was when I, aged 9, tried out for a little league team. I vaguely recall a flock of kids being divided into groups, then going from station to station where we were tested on our ability to field a ground ball, catch a fly, and hit some soft tosses.

I was pleased when I heard at the end of the day that I had been selected to play on McIlroy Bank team and I remained on that team for the next four years. Among my coaches during those four years were Tony Adam's (FHS '65)  dad, Charles Crittenden's (FHS '65) brother, and Steve Halliday (FHS '65) data.

During the last four years I played oranized ball, the home games were at the fairgrounds park. Three of the years were playing American Legion ball; the fourth year was playing on the Razorback's freshman team.

I was sad several years ago to find out that the park had been demolished.

Pitching for Big State Baseball Camp in Monterrey, Mexico, 1963

Stolen from Gran Hotel Ancira,
Downtown Monterrey, Mexico, 1963

In late July, 1963, after the baseball season ended in Fayetteville, Bubba McCord and I went to Dallas to attended the Big State Baseball camp. It was a blast: baseball all day long in the hot Texas sun.

The camp brought together boys of various ages from throughout the United States to learn more about the game. Typically, the mornings were spent on instruction, then the afternoon was devoted to playing games. Both Bubba and I liked the head coach, Ogletree. And it was fun living in University of Dallas dorms and eating in the college's cafeteria.

Both Bubba and I did well at the camp and impressed the coaches. We were invited to join the Camp's All Star team that was going to Monterrey, Mexico to play some games against local teams there. After getting the o.k. and some cash from my parents, I was able to the make the trip, as did Bubba.

We were scheduled to fly out one night, but when we got to the airport, the airplane had engine problems. After a long wait at the airport, the group of 30 or so boys was taken late in the night to a nearby motel, then we were awakened very early to get on the repaired airplane. Because of these circumstances, I slept through most of my first airplane flight.

We stayed in downtown Monterrey, which was an exotic experience for most of us. The hotel was nice: the Gran Hotel Ancira. The most impressive part of the hotel was a large marble stairway from the ground floor to the mezzanine. I thought it was very classy.

I remember three of the games, in three different parks. We played teams whose players were older than us. As a pitcher, I got into only one game: I was the starting pitcher and that afternoon I threw the only no hitter of my "career."

The trip was a rich experience and, I think, it whetted my appetite for travel. I enjoyed walking around the town to see how people in Mexico lived and to experience the things there that differed from my normal life.

In 2003, forty years later, I returned to Monterrey on a business trip for the University of Georgia. The purpose of the trip was to continue efforts to establish a relationship with the University of Monterrey to facilitate student exchanges and other joint projects. I stayed at a hotel in Monterrey that had a large marble stairway, though its name was no longer Gran Hotel Ancira. As we drove around the town, I kept looking for the baseball park where I pitched my no hitter, but never spotted it.

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For more about Bubba and baseball, see Bubba's Nemesis: The Battle for the 1962 Championship of the Fayetteville Babe Ruth League at this link:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/59006218/Bubba-s-Nemesis-The-Battle-for-the-1962-Championship-of-the-Fayetteville-Babe-Ruth-League

McIlroy Bank Little League Baseball Team, 1959

Front row
Jackie Smitherman, Tony Adams, Willy Bryant, Charles Crittenden, ??, ??, ??
Back row
Dean Halliday, Steve Halliday, Louie  Bryant, Pete Benton, Danny Durning, Mike Fitzhugh, Larry Parnell