One Shot at Forever (25 page)

Reading it again, Heneberry couldn't either. He'd just answered honestly. He didn't mean it to sound like that.

If the Ironmen were supremely confident in their chances, they were the only ones. At the press reception the night before, the Peoria
Journal Star
had asked twenty-six writers, baseball luminaries, and radio and TV reporters who they thought would win the state tournament. Not one had picked the Ironmen. Judging by the votes, only a handful thought they'd even win one game.

Here's how it broke down:

1971 State Tournament Poll by Illinois Sports Writers

(Number of first-place votes in parentheses)

So unexpected was the Ironmen's tournament appearance that even the organizers appeared to be caught off-guard.

The
official tournament program
was a handsome booklet. It cost twenty-five cents, was forty-one pages long, and was chock-full of photos. Inside, there were portraits of IHSA administrators, each as serious and clean-cut as the next. There were scorecards and tournament records and pages and pages of ads. Peoria Motors hawked a car called the Pinto, advertising it as “for the Young at Heart,” while the Ramada Inn offered “Resort Atmosphere in Downtown Peoria.”

Nearly every tournament qualifier had its own page, complete with a team photo and a roster listing each player's height, weight, position, age, and batting average. Except for Macon, that is. For the Ironmen there was only a half a page of information and no team photo or stats. The players' heights, weights, and ages were listed, but a casual reader could be forgiven for thinking that the school had mistakenly submitted its jayvee roster. The team boasted more underclassmen (eight) than upperclassmen (seven) and had no one over six feet or 160 pounds (and only Shartzer at both).

The rest of the tournament field was littered with figurative and literal heavyweights, teams with twenty-plus players, a handful of whom were built like men at six-foot-one or six-foot-two and 180 to 200 pounds. Quincy High entered the tourney with a 25–9 record and boasted a six-foot-five, 195-pound catcher named Craig Kroeter who'd hit .365. Rockford West was 25–4 and had an enrollment of 2,750. Waukegan High was making its eighth appearance at the tournament, and its photo looked more like a class reunion than a baseball team; including coaches there were thirty faces staring back.

Piasa Southwestern, Kankakee Eastridge, and Nashville were all making inaugural trips to the tourney, but their lineups were stacked. Eastridge had a junior ace named Jeff Scott who sported an ERA of 1.69 and had already pitched four shutouts, two no-hitters, and a perfect game during the season. Nashville had one of the top five major league prospects in the state, a speedy center fielder named Rick Keller. And then of course there was Lane Tech, which was now tied with Peoria Manual for the most trips to state, with ten.

If Tech won, it would continue a staggering run of dominance for Chicago-area schools, which had triumphed in twenty of the thirty-one years the IHSA had held the tournament. Across Illinois sports, the Chicago stranglehold had become even more pronounced of late. Of the twenty-six state titles in all boys' sports over the past three years, only three had been won by teams outside the Chicago metro area.

By most any measure, Macon got lucky in the first-round draw. At 405 students, Nashville was the second-smallest school in the tournament, though it still had nearly twice Macon's enrollment. The two teams were scheduled to face off in the tournament opener, at 9:30
A.M
. on Thursday. The winners of the four first-round games would advance to the semifinals Friday morning, from which two teams would survive and battle for the state title at 4:30 on Friday afternoon.

For two days, the eyes of Illinois would be upon Peoria.

It was already warm when Sweet headed out to his car at 7:30
A.M
. on the morning of Thursday, June 3. Outside Jumer's he met up with a bleary-eyed Shartzer and the two headed to the campus of Bradley University. Tournament officials required that Shartzer get his hand taped prior to the first game.

Not that the mandate did much good. Within half an hour Shartzer had cut off the tape and gauze with a pocketknife, a move he would later explain to tournament umpires as necessary because the tape was “restrictive.”

Later in the day, when Lane Tech took the field, the stands would fill with fans and the scouts would come out en masse—
twenty-two from major league teams
as well as fifteen college coaches. Meinen Field would take on the air of a college game. At 8:45
A.M
., however, it was still relatively quiet, the grass still dewy from the night before. Upon arriving, the Macon boys walked out and, much as they had a year earlier at Fans Field, took a minute to revel in the surroundings. The infield was combed dirt, the outfield flat and well-groomed. Bleachers lined either foul line, and stanchions of lights looked down on the field. The fence was deeper than any they'd played on all year and seemed miles away: 337 feet in left, 373 feet in center, and 335 in right. Appraising it, sophomore left fielder David Wells turned to Stu Arnold. “Hey Stu, how far are we supposed to play from that fence?”

Arnold peered out, thought for a moment. “I don't know. I think I'm going to play back. It's easier to run in than out.”

Fifteen minutes later, at a little after 9
A.M
., the sounds of
Jesus Christ Superstar
filtered into the morning. It was almost time.

They kept coming. As gametime approached, cars pulled up, honking as they unloaded friends, parents, and siblings. Even though it was a workday, more than two hundred people had made the drive from Macon. As always, Dale Otta scanned the faces from his position at shortstop. And, as always, he hoped to see his father.

In Dale's entire playing career, from Little League to his senior year, his father had never attended one of his and Dean's games. Dwight Otta worked on commission as a milk truck driver for Meadow Gold, leaving before 6
A.M
. every morning and returning around 8
P.M
. At night, he'd sit at the kitchen table for another hour punching away at his adding machine, making sure the day's receipts totaled out. On weekends Dwight worked all day on Saturday and spent the bulk of Sunday sleeping. In his free time, he also managed to be a pillar of the Macon community. He served on committees, joined the city council, and was later elected mayor and, after that, town fire chief, which required him to sleep at the firehouse every other night (because someone needed to answer the phone). One thing he never found time for, however, was his youngest sons' games.

Dale had never played catch with his dad, or talked baseball, or pored over a scorecard together. In the mornings, his mother made breakfast and then he and Dean walked to school from their house on Front Street. If it was winter, they trudged through the snow in the dark. When they needed a lift somewhere, or someone to teach them to throw a curveball, they looked not to their father but to their older brother, Ron. When Dale went sledding, it was on an old car hood that Ron hooked up to his bumper and pulled around town, and Dale still proudly displays the chipped tooth he got when he once went sailing off the sled. As much as his brothers took care of him, though, Dale saw the roles the other fathers played and tried not to be disappointed. He knew his father was a busy man.

Now, Dale looked up and recognized teachers, townspeople, and a handful of Macon students, and then he saw him, sitting in the back of the bleachers and wearing a dress shirt. Dwight Otta had asked for a day off from Meadow Gold, apologized to his customers, and left the house early to make the two-hour drive from Macon. His sons were in the state tourney. He needed to be there. He smiled at Dale, who smiled back, nearly bursting with pride.

On the mound, Shartzer slipped on his glove, wincing as he did. He thought about keeping the glove in front of him to knock down balls if he needed to. He thought about the asthma attack the night before, worrying that it would drain his stamina. He thought about the fans. And then, as he always did, he cleared it all out of his mind and thought about one thing only:
Here it comes boys, the best that I got
.

Eighty miles from Peoria,
Dick Snitker lay propped in his hospital bed
, a transistor radio tuned to the game. Two hours later, at exactly 11:30
A.M
., the nurses at St. Mary's heard a strange noise coming from Mr. Snitker's room. It sounded like … cheering.

He had good reason. In the first round of the state tournament, propelled by a two-for-three day at the plate from a sophomore named Brian Snitker, Macon had defeated Nashville by a score of 5–0. The Ironmen were headed to the semis.

In Peoria, Shartzer walked off the mound. Teammates and parents swarmed, patting him on the back. He'd thrown seven masterful innings, allowing four hits and striking out eight.

As elated at the other boys were, Shartzer felt more relieved than anything. His fastball had been off all game, so for the first time in ages he'd had to rely on his curve, telegraphed grunts and all. Despite his injured wrist, he'd been able to field the ball and even gotten one hit. He'd made it through.

While the players gathered their gear, an IHSA official shepherded Sweet to a makeshift tent area for a postgame press conference. The state tournament was big news in Illinois, and treated as such by the media. Papers from across the state sent reporters, as did radio stations. It wasn't uncommon for results to merit banner headlines in the sports sections, even in papers as large as the Chicago
Tribune
, which regularly put tournament stories ahead of Cubs games.

As Sweet began taking questions, a cluster of reporters gathered around—Charles Chamberlain from the Associated Press, Phil Theobald from the Peoria
Journal Star
, and a half-dozen others. It took only one quote to start them furiously scribbling.

“I guess you could say I'm more of a sponsor,” Sweet said when asked about his coaching strategy. “I'm not a coach, and I don't intend to stay in coaching.” Asked about his background, he claimed that he had “watched a lot of baseball on TV.”

The hair? “If the kids want long hair, I let them grow it,” he said. “We're a team of individuals and I don't see that we have to look alike. I don't see what long hair has to do with playing baseball anyway.”

The scribbling became more frantic.

What about fundamentals, someone asked.

“We don't emphasize fundamentals,” Sweet said. “We just let them have fun. There is really not much I could tell them. They've all played a lot of baseball and know the game as well as I do.”

And on it went, Sweet covering his personal style: “Yes, I've had some static about my long hair and mustache. Not everybody understands.” His team's chances: “Actually, we had a better team last year because we had more pitching. But this one will do. We may be living on borrowed time, but we're not scared of anyone.” His attitude: “I don't like the win or die attitude. We set our goals to have a good time and learn some baseball.” His disciplinary style: “I would never bawl out a boy for making a mistake. I've seen coaches chew a kid out right in front of the fans. I don't go for that.”