Keebirds, Glorious Keebirds

Despite the brief mountain summers, Fraser has had its own little league baseball team since at least the 1920’s. In my day we were called the Keebirds, and the team logo was an igloo with a strange looking bird on top of it. The name came from the sound that this bird would make: “KEE Kee Kee Khrist its cold!”, or so we were told. Our uniforms consisted of a red t-shirt and a red and white cap, usually worn with standard blue jeans. Sometimes we’d tuck our pant legs into our socks in an effort to get that big league look, and eventually the plain shirts came with the Keebird logo, but overall our uniforms were spartan and practical.

But none of this mattered to us, for we just wanted to play baseball. Starting at age 7, our first few seasons were as tee ballers, a variation of coach pitch where the ball was placed on an adjustable rubber apparatus on a stand and the batter just swung away as the umpire and county judge, Larry Peterson, would yell “SOCKO!”. Games were two innings long, and every kid got a chance to bat once each inning. No one sat on the bench, and if the team consisted of 20 kids then every one of them would be out there somewhere waiting to catch a fly ball. For us Fraser kids, home games were on Tuesdays, away games on Thursdays, but no matter where we played, games started at 5 and ended at 6, when the big kids would take the field for 6 innings or 2 hours, whichever came first.

During my first two seasons, home games were played at a makeshift field up the Church’s Park road next to the Morrow’s garage and storage yard. The field was all gravel, with some scattered weeds making up the outfield, and a pine forest serving as the outfield wall. No dugouts or fancy fences either, just splintery wooden benches and a backstop, with splintery red bleachers for the parents. In 1979, I became eligible halfway through the season when I turned seven, and during the last game, part of a tournament, I hit my very first homerun. Really it was a comedy of errors, and all I remember is running into home where all my teammates were cheering for me. I don’t think I even knew what happened, cause the exact rules of the game were still a bit confusing to me.

Next season I was ready. This was the last year at the Morrow’s field, the dry and dusty diamond made even more so by a drought which caused a trio of large forest fires around the state, creating some amazing blood red sunsets. The big town back then was Granby, and they had enough kids to field two teams, the Warriors and the Lions. The Warriors were always hard to beat. They had a reputation for being bad asses, for in addition to their banana seated bicycle gangs and fancy sod field, they had an intimidating pitcher named Kevin Schmuck. He wore clean white cleats and could throw a mean fastball, a daunting combination that made me glad to still be a mere teeballer. The Lions, on the other hand, were never very good, and in the most memorable game of the season we beat them at home in the final inning, just before dark. This was little league, so we teeballers were mere spectators, but I remember the lump in my throat when the homerun was hit and we won the game. Elation! Then Glenn Smith, a pillar of our youthful community and an all-star center fielder, walked into the midst of the celebration and said “time for a little cheer”, so we chanted in unison:
TWO FOUR SIX EIGHT WHO DO WE APPRECIATE?
LIONS LIONS LIONS!
It felt like something right out of a movie, maybe the Bad News Bears, and it was the first and last time I ever saw it happen.

The next season was a real milestone, for we now had a brand new field right next to the brand new school, complete with cinderblock dugouts and a concession stand. In addition to the new field, this season was to be 20 games long instead of the usual 10, the only time this happened, and our shirts and hats now had the actual Keebird logo on them, icing on the cake of a grand summer of baseball.

This was the final season for some of the big names, such as Jeremy Wheeler, Glenn Smith, and Mark Eichler, and all three of them hit over the fence grand slams that season. It was a community affair, as parents cheered from the bleachers or sat in cars along right field, honking their horns with each home team hit and hoping no foul ball would take out their windshield. Not to mention old Tater rolling by real slow in his blue truck for a look-see. A crew of moms, especially Iva Tucker and Donna Morrow, worked the concession stand, selling hotdogs, sodas and candy, and awarding all Fraser home run hitters a free dog. Bill Edwards was the head coach, with his bully son Mike and Greg Tucker coaching teeball, but a new kid from New York was now on the team, and his mom Pam became our real coach, organizing 3 practices a week and eventually guiding us to a championship.

This was my last year of teeball, and since we had too few kids to make a team, the league made an exception and a slew of 6 year olds got to play for us...Buchheister, Shelton, Lorton, Childers, pretty much every boy from my sister’s first grade class. This put a lot of pressure on the more experienced teeballers, but that was fine, cause we now got to practice with the heavy hitters and even got to play an inning or two of regulation ball. Greg Smith and Darrell Woods wanted to become pitchers, but I decided I wanted to be a catcher, and on practice days I would bury my pint-sized self in the bulky gear and step behind home plate, barely able to see, and rarely able to throw to second base.

The super extended season came down to the last game, the Keebirds against the Badgers, in Grand Lake. Despite their baby blue uniforms, the Badgers were even more bad ass than the Warriors. Their names were printed on the backs of their shirts, and they even wore the black face paint under their eyes like the pros. To make things worse, two of the meanest of Fraser’s bullies had moved to Grand Lake and were now Badgers, which made the team all the more intimidating. BUT WE BEAT THEM! Or tied them anyway, in a game in which I had my first little league at bat (grounded out). In the end we tied them for league champions, and celebrated with a big party at the balcony house, complete with unlimited free alpine slide rides for all, and team pictures too.

The next season was anything but stellar, as we struggled with a new coach and a small team. Ronnie Morrow and Marc Tucker were playing again, part of a long tradition of Tuckers and Morrows playing for Fraser. Jessie Smith and Justin Sharp were on the roster as well. Chris Berquist and I traded off as catcher, with Jayce Elliston and Larry Muskoff as starting pitchers and Darrell and Greg in the nonexistent bullpen. We also had a girl pitcher that year named Tami Olson, who schooled the scoffing Badger boys by striking them out. I dated Muskoff’s sister Kristin that summer, but she was an experienced Jr. High girl who dumped me when I showed more interest in bikes and games than smooches. One memorable moment of this summer, 1982, was when she got a trampoline for her birthday. Most every kid in town showed up to partake in the moment, and we bounced and listened to a top 40 countdown that culminated with the Go Go’s at number 1.

One of our last games of the season was scheduled to take place in Walden, a remote town a couple hours north of Fraser. A carload of kids and two moms showed up at the field but it was utterly deserted. Turns out it was haying season, and every available hand was out in the golden meadows helping with the one harvest of the year. On the way back we stopped to watch some ranchers stack hay with a team of horses, the old fashioned way.

The next baseball season was our best, for we were all veterans and were ready to win. Hoot Maynard’s uncle was the official coach this year, although his assistants Gregg Tucker and Chad Burnbeck were the real leaders. Both of them were 16 or 17, drove muscle cars, and liked to remind us that if a shortstop stands in the base path then you have a right to run him down, football style. They also believed in reinforcing the classic “get in front of the ball, its not gonna hurt you.” Which we knew to be false, since a ground ball hit by Holgar, a German exchange student, had knocked out Glenn’s front teeth just a year earlier. We lost our first game to the Warriors in Granby, but we went on to win the next 9 in a row to take the title. We were tough this season, starting our winning streak against the Badgers in Grand Lake: last inning, last batter, all we had to do was get one more out and we win. I called a time out and trekked out to the mound in my oversized gear to confer with the pitcher, a big guy with a big arm, Wade Weinel. The Badger’s final batter was a rookie of small stature, obviously nervous to be facing such a daunting pitcher. I told Wade to throw it as hard as he could and just a wee bit inside for the psychological edge. The whole team at once, as usual, trying to throw off the hitter’s concentration with the mantra of “HEY BATTER BATTER BATTER HEY BATTER BATTER SWING!” That poor kid never had a chance, as Wade’s fastball was a blur that walloped my catcher’s glove and made my hand hurt for days. Later that season, we whipped ‘em again, 29 to 3 in a rainy game that turned our clay field into a gumbo quagmire. We celebrated at the Dairy King (now the Thai place) with ice cream and root beer for all.

The crucial game came midway through the season, at home against the Warriors, the only team that had beaten us. It was late in the game, and we were down by 2 with 2 men on base...Rally caps on, adrenaline on high, we tormented their pitcher from the dugout with taunts and plays on his name: “Come on Patty, you can do better than that!”. I took the plate, let a few pitches pass by, and then WHACKED a line drive right over the outstretched glove of the first baseman for a triple that tied up the game, which we went on to win. This was the finest moment of my baseball career.

We finished the season with a win in Hot Sulphur and a 9 and 1 record, the best of any team I ever played with. After the game, the Rec. District cronies demanded that we turn in our uniforms, but there was NO WAY we were going to do that. Keeping your shirt and hat was a rite of passage, especially after a championship season, and nobody was going to tell us otherwise.

Unfortunately, this incident with the rec. district was a harbinger of things to come, and my final season would be marred by a yuppie takeover. Back then there was no pony league or high school baseball, so when you got too old for little league then you could pretty much hang up your glove. This was to be the final year for a lot of us, including Emur Jensen, Darrell Woods, Justin Sharp, Greg Smith, Marc Tucker, and myself. Gregg Tucker and Chad Burnbeck were the only coaches this year, which meant lots of chaos and fun, especially at practice. We tried to roll their car over once, with them in it, but they saved themselves by throwing lit firecrackers at us. Although I wanted it to be a stellar season, I knew before it started that we would lose most of our games. Such was the Fraser curse: a banner year followed by a summer of losses. Not to mention that half of our championship team from the previous year were now teenagers and ineligible. Another sign that things weren’t quite right occurred after one of the first practices of the season. A few of us were just messing around on the field, and as Greg Smith caught a ball deep in center field I yelled for him to bring it on home. So he threw it with all his might...which was a bit too much, as I watched the hard rawhide pill arc high into the sky and then drop, but not before it cleared the whole backstop and hit some lady right on the side of the head. Just a slight concussion thankfully, for I’m sure it could have easily killed her.

We were halfway into a losing season when a group of concerned parents decided there were too many “four letter words” being spoken at practice, and that we just weren’t getting enough discipline and supervision. These were the same folks who tried to get us to return our uniforms the year before: rich folks from the ski area who didn’t want their kids exposed to any red neck offspring with potty mouths. So they forced the young coaches out, and the oldest of us quit the team in protest, never to play another game of baseball again. This was more than just replacing coaches however, for it symbolized the changes that had been creeping up on the town for years. Hippies turned Saab driving real estate agents were supplanting the working class families who had been there for generations, and Jazzercize was replacing cases of Coors.

Fraser now has a nice new sports complex, with multiple ball fields, volleyball courts, and even an in-line hockey rink. The fields are well manicured sod, the dugouts are quite nice, and it’s unlikely that a grounder will bounce off a hidden chunk of granite and knock some kid’s teeth out. Times have indeed changed, and while in my eyes it seems that something is missing, I’m sure that the magic is still the same as it ever was: the color of the summer sky beyond centerfield as the sun gets low and the score is tied; the satisfying feel of bat hitting ball; the thrill of the bike ride home following a hard game, ball glove on the handlebars, the chilly night air soothing sunburned arms. Kids will always be kids, and summer evenings of baseball will always be timeless, but I’m glad my baseball daze took place on a gravel field.