January 10, 2000

Josh - Please accept my congratulations for going to the fantastic effort of putting together such a comprehensive statistical record of CHS baseball. I have thoroughly enjoyed perusing the information, although it is disturbing to recall how horrible we were in the 1977 and 1978 seasons. We must have been suffering from the side effects of disco. Following are some of the stories that come to mind when I think back to those glorious squads-

1977: One of our few, if not only, victories came at Milton with Dave Prescott on the mound. Dave, who could be somewhat liberal with regard to school rules, pitched a fine game after an early afternoon of breaking any number of both school and team rules. What made it more fun was that he taunted a rather arrogant Milton squad from start to finish and we didn't collapse late in the game, as everyone except Dave fully expected.

I remember being at Mt. Abe, and one of our outfielders (whose name I cannot recall, thankfully) broke after a ball hit well to right center. He raced gracefully after the ball, and never broke stride even after the ball landed about 30 feet behind him.

During that same Mt. Abe game, I believe two runners stole home on the same play while the ball rested on home plate and our catcher searched for it.

Dave Santerre, one of my very best friends and an excellent athlete, once jumped in the air, was hit in the foot by the pitch, and at the same time swung for strike three.

1978: I had the unique combination of over 50 innings caught with less than 10 plate appearances. I took some pride in the fact that during those 50+ innings behind the plate, only three balls got past me. Unfortunately, the fact that I caught most of the balls meant I had to throw on all the stolen base attempts, of which there were many. I must confess that the infielders had a much greater challenge catching my throws than I did the pitches.

After looking at our scores that season, I can't believe my parents actually watched every game. Now that I'm a parent, I realize how painful it must have been.

As you can guess, these stories and all the other memories of those seasons concerns the absolute futility of our teams. It was too bad for the coaches that aside from being bad players, most of us were much more into the winter sport we played than baseball. At that time, the strongest sport at CHS was wrestling, and all of us who played basketball were quite dedicated to that sport. It's unfortunate that too many of us treated baseball like something to pass the time after our real sport was done. That and the fact that we sucked.

Tim "Glass Arm" Maynes