One Shot at Forever (32 page)

Sweet doesn't hold on to memories of that '71 season. There is only one photo of the team in his house, in an upstairs room, and precious few mementos. He shows up at the annual benefit in memory of Mark Miller, who died of cancer in 2006, but other than that he doesn't see “the kids,” as he calls them, too often. Asked about that season, he says, “I know it's a good story. I lived with it. You know why it's a great story? It can never happen again.”

The more Sweet talks, though, the more
he seems perplexed
. Even if he tries to let go of that season, he finds he can't. “Why does it mean so much?” he asks out loud at one point. “I don't know. It means a lot to me but I don't dwell on it all the time. You can't do that. I'm not defined by that. I don't know…” He pauses, looks at the table, looks back up. “Some of them, maybe they still are.”

The man who answers the door is still trim, with neatly parted white hair. He is wearing glasses and a crisp white button-down shirt that he has carefully tucked into his jeans. Thirty-nine years later, Dale Otta still looks eerily similar to the boy who once played shortstop for the Ironmen.

His modest home—where he lives with his high school sweetheart, Sherrie—sits less than a mile off Route 51 in Macon. After graduating from Macon High, Dale played one year at Kaskaskia Junior College in central Illinois. He intended to become a coach and a history teacher, but then got a job at Caterpillar and never had a good reason to leave. Now fifty-seven, he has worked there thirty-five years and hopes to retire when he turns fifty-nine.

Dale's feelings about Macon have changed. From his backyard, he can see the water tower and the grain elevator. If he wanted, he could drive to town in under five minutes, but he rarely goes in anymore. “Back then, you knew everybody there,” he says. “Now I hardly know anybody.”

On his dining room table, Otta has spread out mementos of the 1971 season: newspaper clippings, a peace sign, yellowed photographs. On his TV, he's cued up a video he made about the team, with footage of the old ballpark in Stonington where the postseason run began. He can get lost in the memories, and often does. He is jarred back to the present by the ringtone on his cell phone. It is the chorus of John Cougar Mellencamp's “Small Town,” in which he sings of being born in a small town and intending to die in one—of expecting that a small town is “prob'ly where they'll bury me.”

Dale excuses himself. There on the table, the faces stare back: Glan and Shartzer and Heneberry and Snitker. Presently, Otta returns and apologizes. The call was about tonight, he says. The group is getting back together again.

Whit's End diner is easy to find. The only restaurant in Macon, it occupies the building where Cole's Arrowhead Tavern used to be, in the heart of town, and offers prime rib dinners on Friday night and cold Bud Lights for $2. Just in back are the railroad tracks and, shadowing them, the grain elevator. Up the road are a couple vacant storefronts where the Country Manor once stood.

Other than a few families near the front of Whit's End, the grayhaired men are the only ones in the diner on this night. They sit around a long table in collared shirts, jeans, and denim jackets. A stack of gray-and-purple T-shirts that read M
ACON
: 1971 S
TATE
R
UNNER
-U
P
rests nearby, next to a signed baseball.

It's the first time some have seen each other since Sweet held a reunion at his house, nearly twenty years ago. That afternoon, they stood around drinking beer and telling stories until someone convinced Shartzer to put on a glove and air it out a bit. So Dean Otta wedged himself into that familiar crouch and Shartzer, being Shartzer, couldn't help himself. He started rocking and firing and pretty soon he had sweat running down his forehead. There's still a dent in Sweet's barn from where one got away from Shark.

Even after all this time, most of the players are easy to pick out. Heneberry looks remarkably like his high school self, still lanky, with combed-down hair that's now slate instead of brown. He played a little at Kaskaskia as well, married, and took a job as a salesman at a lumberyard, where he's been for thirty-six years. He lives seven miles south of Macon in Moweaqua, just down from the Dollar General store and across from a field of soybeans, in a small one-story house with aluminum siding. These days he can't throw a snowball without his arm throbbing. “It's OK, though,” he says. “I wouldn't trade that season for anything.” Sitting next to him, wearing a baseball hat and drinking a Bud Light, is his father, Jack Heneberry, who is still going strong at eighty-five. All those years of walking eight miles a day on his mail route paid off. He's the last living father of the Ironmen.

The men settle in, ordering $3.50 burgers and sharing stories. As they do, the lives unfold. They talk of how Barb Jesse ended up being cast in an orange juice commercial that ran on national networks, how cranky old Ed Neighbors went on to become a coaching legend at Mt. Zion, how Dave Wells grew into a star pitcher at Macon. They talk of Doug Tomlinson's dental practice, and the change in Bill McClard—how he got his degree at Ball State and ended up at Lincoln High a different man, popular and well liked by the students, before later becoming a proponent of educational reform. They talk about how Jeff Glan was the only one of the starting nine who didn't play college baseball, instead getting an English degree from Millikin with the intention of becoming an English teacher and coach, just like Sweet, only to wind up as a contractor for an agribusiness in Clinton, Illinois. And, in due time, the story comes out about how Miller, Heneberry, and the Ottas gathered around a transistor radio while at Kaskaskia, listening to the lottery results for the military draft. Almost immediately, Heneberry drew 112, prompting the rest of the boys to break into Army songs until Miller, who'd been the most amused by Heneberry's new “career,” drew 4 himself. In the end, Miller traveled to St. Louis for a physical but that's as far as it got; none of the Ironmen players deployed.

The tone changes when the topic turns to Stu Arnold, who as much as any of the boys seemed destined for greatness. Arnold attended Millikin, where he was a three-time All-Conference centerfielder and set a single-season record for punt return yardage that stands to this day. As the story goes, he tried out for the Dallas Cowboys as a punt returner but didn't make the team. “He was going to be successful at whatever he did,” says Heneberry, and, indeed, Arnold ended up in Indianapolis, a well-off stockbroker. Then one afternoon Arnold was coming home from work and, for reasons no one will ever know, his car crossed the center line and collided head-on with a semi. It was over in an instant, the impact propelling the steering wheel through his chest. The boy Sweet once called “the most graceful person I ever met” died at forty-one.

All the players who could make it to Arnold's funeral in Bloomington, Illinois, did.
Mitch Arnold
, Stuart's then-teenage son, saw how hard the loss hit his father's teammates, as if something integral within them was lost. He remembers seeing the pain in their eyes and how when they looked at him they saw Stu. “I could tell by the way they put their arms around me, by the way they shook my hand, that they'd lost a best friend,” says Mitch.

As the night continues and
the old names come up
, there are surprises: Jim Durbin, the tiny freshman, sprouted up and pitched a one-hitter to help Macon win the conference championship over Niantic-Harristown in 1974. Others struggled with alcohol. There were DUIs, lost licenses. There's one former teammate that none of them have heard from in years. He's somewhere in Decatur, the men say. Even his Alcoholics Anonymous friends can't find him.

Some ended up
doing exactly what you'd imagine
. Sammy Trusner sits at the end of the table with a shaved head and a goatee in an Under Armour shirt, talking in a serious voice. The equipment manager at Millikin, he was previously an assistant equipment manager at the University of Illinois and has twice been a finalist for a national award in his field. For ten years Trusner wore around his neck the silver baseball each member of the Ironmen received for finishing second at state. Then one night he lost it. “It's still a sore spot for me,” he says.

Nearby, stooped and white of hair, Bob Fallstrom trades stories. At eighty-three, he still writes for the
Herald & Review
and is occasionally in touch with Joe Cook, who ended up in Kansas City and finally retired after forty-one years as a newspaper man. Both men say that in all their years, they never saw a more improbable, unlikely outcome than Macon versus Lane Tech.

Indeed, the '71 season follows the Ironmen. Dean Otta, thinning of hair and still built like a catcher, talks about how he was recently at a dinner party and a guest became excited upon learning that Dean was on
that
team. “Around here, people follow high school sports more than college or the pros,” Dean says. These days when he does business or goes to church he still sees the boys from Mt. Zion and Blue Mound and the other teams he played against, and they still talk about that season. Like many of the Ironmen, he remains in many ways defined by who he was, and what he did, when he was seventeen.

There is one player from that team who validates the story of the Ironmen. He is the one the others point to. His success is their success.

It is an overcast spring day in 2010 and he walks through the Braves clubhouse. “Wanna do it here?” he says, pointing to a couple of chairs.

Brian Snitker's face is brown from the sun and he still has the build of the slugger he once was. He hit over .500 his final two seasons in Macon, then played at the University of New Orleans before being signed by the Atlanta Braves in 1977. He climbed the ladder from Single-A to Triple-A and then, in 1980 at the age of twenty-four, his career stalled. Snitker was a savvy player, though, and possessed unusual warmth. “Ever think of coaching?” his bosses asked. So again he started at the bottom and moved back up, from Single-A Durham to Double-A Greenville and Triple-A Richmond to, finally, in 2007, the big leagues, where he is now the third base coach for the Braves. There is talk, during the early days of this 2010 season, that Snitker may be next in line when Atlanta manager Bobby Cox retires.

As Snitker talks, the Braves players walk by on their way to batting practice—there is Chipper Jones and Jason Heyward. Sntiker does not notice them. He, too, gets lost in the past. He says he tells the story of the Ironmen to other major league coaches, as well as some of the ballplayers. He talks about how his experience in Macon formed the way he views life and treats people, how it allows him to keep things in perspective. “When you have that many good memories it stays with you,” he says. “It's hard to articulate it, but the thing I had growing up is something that I've never heard anyone else have in all my years since in college and professional baseball. I don't hear people talk like that and have the relationships and the friendships that we had. We cherish those.”

Snitker doesn't get back to Macon often, but he makes sure to see his old teammates when he's on the road. He leaves tickets and invites them into the dugout to take snapshots with the Braves and then meets up after the game for drinks. Snitker sees how much the other Ironmen cherish that one season. He does as well, but not in the same way. “It was a great time in our lives,” he says. “The experiences in that little town were unbelievable. I don't remember a lot and I remember a lot, if you know what I mean.”

After forty-five minutes, Snitker gets up. He has to prepare for batting practice. Before leaving, he stops to ask a question. There is one teammate he grew to be closer to than any other, and he thinks about him often but rarely sees him. “How's Shartzer?” he asks.

It all happened so fast after that junior year. As a senior, Shartzer led the conference in scoring as a running back, averaged 28.6 points for the basketball team, ran a 10.3-second 100-yard dash, and threw no-hitters while batting over .500 on the diamond. The letters poured in. In all, more than twenty schools were interested: Missouri, Colorado, The Citadel. Some wanted him to play football. Others wanted him to star in three sports. Eventually, Shartzer signed a letter of intent with Arkansas State to play football, then changed his mind when Itchy Jones at Southern Illinois offered a baseball scholarship. In the end, Shartzer says the decision was easy: He just loved baseball more.

From his first day on campus, Shartzer was a star. He finished second in the country in batting as a freshman and hit .348 during his three seasons at SIU. He
led SIU to a third-place finish
in the College World Series in 1974; twice led the team in home runs; and was drafted after his junior year by the St. Louis Cardinals, who projected him as a second baseman with twenty-home-run power. When it came time to negotiate a contract, Shartzer leaned on Sweet for advice. Once the negotiating was done and it was time to sign, he brought not a lawyer or an advisor but his father. Bob Shartzer, a lifelong Cubs fan, walked into the office of Cardinals president August Busch wearing a Cubs hat and said, “I'll never cheer for the Cardinals but I'll be a Steve Shartzer fan.” Busch appraised him, nodded, and said, “Well, Mr. Shartzer, that's fair enough.” At which point Bob Shartzer looked around and said, “OK. You got any beer around here?”

After signing with St. Louis for a good bit more than $20,000,
Shartzer headed to Rookie League ball
. He married a girl, rode buses, moved up in the system. Then one day during his first year of Single-A ball he decided he'd had enough. Just like that, he quit the game. He went back to school and became a college professor and coach. Years later, when his students asked him what happened in the minors, he always answered, “Obviously I wasn't good enough, or I wouldn't have to be standing here teaching you people.”