Baseball
in the late 1960s and early 1970s holds a special spot in the athletic history
of McNeese State University.
It
was a time of growth at the school both for the college (increase in enrollment
and elevation from college to university status) and for the sport.
It
was also the time of double duty for coaches in the athletic department. Assistant coaches in football were also
head coaches of spring sports.
Hubert Boales, who had joined McNeese in 1967 as linebacker coach, also
became the head baseball coach in 1968.
It
was a period when there were numerous two sport standouts at the
university. Athletes like Greg
Davis, Johnnie Thibodeaux, Jeep Colburn and Coco Rossitto went from football to
baseball in the same school year and Bobby Barnes pitched not only the baseball
but also the javelin.
Others,
like Cecil Heard and Paul Young, came back to play the game after serving in
the Vietnam war.
The
Cowboys became a consistent winner during this period, moved out of the Gulf
States Conference into the
Southland Conference (1973) and settled their field of play at the
current Cowboy Diamond, although
then there was little more than a four foot chain length fence in the outfield,
a makeshift press box that would go with the wind if it blew hard enough and
temporary bleachers that would seat up to 500.
Out
of this program came teams that Boales regarded as those that he "loved to
coach.
"Not
only were they great players but they were a group of great individuals," he
noted. "We had guys on the team who truly loved the game. They were easy to handle and all of
them were solid competitors."
Recently the former McNeese coach, who
is now a member of the university's Hall of Fame after having been the only
coach in school history to serve as head coach of three sports (baseball, golf
and football), and former players Young and Martin Byrley got together to
relive memories.
Some
of it was factual, some of it legendary and a lot of it comical.
Young,
out of Groves, TX, had enrolled at McNeese for the 1967-68 school year and
played on the '68 and '69 teams.
He was drafted in 1969 and spent two years with the U.S. Army in Vietnam
where he was injured by enemy shrapnel. Out of the service he returned and finished his career at McNeese, leading
the team and the conference in batting and winning what was then known as the SLC's
George Kell award in 1973.
"There's
a great story about PY (Young's nickname)," said Byrley. "We're playing Northeast Louisiana (now
UL-Monroe) at home. PY is playing
leftfield and the batter hits a long fly ball his way. He's
running back to catch the ball.
Right at the fence he jumps up and the ball lands in the web of his
glove. His momentum carries him
over that fence (remember it's only four feet high) and he falls outside the
fence into a bunch of trucks that students had lined up out there so they could
watch the game.
"We
run out there to check on Paul and he's just coming to. He'd been knocked out and the ball had
fallen out of his glove. A home run.
He asks 'how's the crowd reacting.' We tell him that we're not hearing much from them so he says
that maybe he had better lay there a little longer.
"Anyway,
when the inning is over and he comes to the dugout. Coach Boales says to him, 'Paul,
you never could make the big play could you."
Young,
now retired from Bell Telephone (AT&T), played four years for the Cowboys,
posted a league high .354 batting average in 1973 and was named the team's MVP.
He played in 118 games and was one
of the top fielders on the squad in those four seasons, not making an error in
his freshman and junior seasons and winding up with a career fielding mark of
.962.
He
had an exceptional arm and threw out nine runners at home plate during his
career. One he remembers came in
the 1968 season.
"Ronnie
Breaux was playing catcher then and Lamar had a runner trying to score on a fly
ball hit to me in right field. I
catch the ball and make a straight on line throw to Breaux at the plate. The runner collides with Breaux and
both hit the ground. I see the umpire motion with his arms straight out like he
was safe. So, I run in from right
field to contest the call. Breaux
is on his back, knocked out cold but he still had the ball in his mitt.
"The
umpire had called the runner out and then he was also signaling a time out
since Breaux had been knocked
out."
In
his rookie season of 1968, Young threw out three runners at the plate to three
different catchers, Breaux, Zeb Johnson and Sam Ivey.
Byrley,
a righthanded pitcher out of Lake
Charles, was part of one the most momentous baseball games in NCAA
history. He hurled five innings in
a 23 inning one-run loss to UL-Lafayette (then USL) in 1971.
That
record for innings played in one game continues to reside in the McNeese and
Southland Conference record book but was one-upped nationally by Texas and
Boston College last year when the Longhorns beat BC 3-2 in 25 innings in a NCAA
regional playoff game.
Byrley
came on in relief of Cowboy starter Allan Ladd who had pitched the first 17
innnings of that record game. He
hurled four innings, giving up three hits and an uneared run. Jim Stanley gave up the winning run in
the 23rd inning.
In
a four year career with the Cowboys, Byrley, now owner of an insurance agency
in Lake Charles, started 13 games, hurled seven complete games and won nine
contests. In 1973 he led the team
in ERA with a 2.96 mark.
One
of his best performances came in a game that he did not win. He pitched the opening game of a
twinbill with Louisiana Tech in Ruston, gave up only one hit and dropped a 1-0
decision. Teammate Kenny LeBleu
came back in the second game and hurled a no-hitter as the Cowboys won the
contest.
"Can
you believe. We give up only one
hit to Louisiana Tech in a doubleheader and all we can get is a split," he
said.
Byrley
is also one of the few pitchers (pitching position only) who have hit a home
run for the Cowboys, that also coming against Louisiana Tech in 1973.
"Marty
was a great competitor," said Boales.
"He would take the ball in the clutch."
In
the 10 years that he coached the Cowboy baseball team (1968 to 1977), Boales and his squads won 190 games, the
second most by any McNeese coach.
"Perhaps
the best team that we had was in 1972, the year that we were an independent,"
he said. "We beat just about everyone."
That
year the Cowboys posted a 22-15 record and won 15 games against what would have
been Gulf States Conference competition, a mark that would have had McNeese
either leading the league or among the top two.
Boales
said that besides that 23 inning marathon with ULL, he also remember some other
outings against the team that had once been McNeese's biggest rival.
"You
remember Louisiana Lightning (Ron Guidry)? I don't think that we ever lost a game to him. We had Ron Riley (later to be the
Sulphur High baseball coach) on our team and he could hit Guidry like no one
else.
"Dickie
Wicks (a Lake Charles product who played in 1967 and 1968 and would go on to
sign a pro contract) may have been one of the hardest throwing pitchers we
had. He came as a first baseman
and that's where we had him until one day I was noticing him throwing the ball.
"He
had a great arm and I asked him if he had ever done any pitching. He said that he had a little when he
was younger. I began to work with him and later that season I put him into a
game. I think that it was against
Louisiana Tech but I'm not sure.
Anyhow we had a one run lead, Tech had the bases loaded and there was no
one out.
"I
was calling pitches and I called nine straight fast balls. He struckout three batters on nine
straight pitches to get out of the inning. When he came in he said 'Coach, with my arm and your head we
could make a million dollars."
Transportation
for the team back then was not the Greyhounds or the private coaches of today
but a selection of state owned station wagons that everyone called the blue
goose because of the color.
Having
to use three of the station wagons to get everyone and equipment to games,
Boales had to rely on assistant coaches (if he had one) or players themselves
to drive the other two wagons.
After
one particular road trip, Boales said that Dick Morris, the team's home run
hitter and first baseman, came to him with a problem.
"He
had gotten a ticket in Kinder and wanted to know if I could help him. I said sure. He gave me the ticket and it had him going 98 miles per hour
through Kinder. He said that he
had had to stop for a water break and was trying to catch back up with the team.
"I
said, son you're on your own."
That
was one of the few times that Boales wasn't completely behind his players and
they behind him.
"These
groups of players were as fine as they come. All have gone on to successful careers and now have children
who have gone on to successful careers. We stay in touch as much as we can," he
said.
