Document text
Drain club made its mark as champion By Greg Stiles More than 40 years have passed since the Drain Black Sox put Oregon on the amateur baseball map, winning the National Baseball Congress championship. It was 1958, a time when telephone customers still shared party lines and most small daily newspapers carried only linescores from big league games. If you had any clue about the ballplayers in the next county, you knew more than most people. There were no Baseball America or USA Today lists of the nation�s top prospects. And certainly few people outside of Oregon had any idea where Drain was. But in an era when baseball reigned supreme in American sport, the Black Sox were something special. Next month, the state�s only NBC championship team will be inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame at the Portland Center for the Performing Arts. Other inductees for 2000 are Phil Knight, Maurice Lucas, Bobb McKittrick, Todd Christensen and Lavelle Stoinoff. In the �50s, most logging towns had their own semipro baseball clubs. Semipro meant you were paid to work at a local mill and you�d play ball for the town team. It was a good deal for college players wanting to keep their skills honed while earning money to cover school expenses not covered by scholarships. One such player was Jerry Droscher, who grew up in Roseburg and played for Medford�s old Cheney Studs NBC team before joining the Black Sox after his sophomore year at Oregon State in 1958. He later would become a successful Southern Oregon Conference baseball coach, guiding Grants Pass to the 1976 state championship. He has fond recollections of that magical summer. "In those days, the most important thing was playing the game," says Droscher, now a car salesman in Roseburg. "We hid out or pretended to work at the mill until it was time to play, since there was nothing else to do. If you were in the town of Drain, you�d rather play every night." And play they did, running up a 54-4 record that summer. About 10 percent of the town�s 1,200 people would turn out for games. The Black Sox played their games at Drain High School, featuring an inviting target for young sluggers. "We�d step up to the plate and try to break a window at the junior high school in back of he left-field fence," Droscher says. The Black Sox were sponsored by Harold and Donna Woolley of Woolley Lumber Co. Drain played teams from Washington, Alaska and Canada as well as Oregon foes. Player-manager Ray Stratton formed a pretty impressive lineup, including Jim O�Rourke, an outfielder who had turned down a $50,000 major-league signing bonus to attend Santa Clara University. But despite winning more than 90 percent of their games, the Black Sox needed to play in a state tournament to qualify for the nationals in Wichita, Kan. "We had to have a state tournament, so we staged the tournament," Droscher says. "We played Riddle and Sutherlin and teams like that. When it was all over, they (team officials) told us �We�re going to Wichita.� " At nationals, Drain won all seven of its games, coming from behind four times. "I�m not sure we knew what we were in for," Droscher says. "There were 32 teams there, some of them loaded up with people just off (minor league) AA and A rosters. But we were so naive that we were totally unintimidated." Droscher, a right fielder who made the tournament all-star team, says the team was sixth at nationals in team hitting and seventh in fielding but performed well in the clutch. "I hit .235, but everything I touched drove in a run," he says. In the title game, Drain played Alpine, Texas, a community in the southwestern part of the state. "They told us they had theater seats in their grandstands and better lighting than Yankee Stadium," Droscher says. "Plus, they got $100 a day in meal money, and we were told they were (each) promised a new car if they won the national championship. After we beat them the first time, they were geared up to beat us." Droscher has three memories in particular of the 8-7 championship-game victory: The first is dropping a routine fly in right field then nailing the runner at second base. The second was putting down a suicide squeeze bunt. "I hit No. 3 at Oregon State and never bunted," he says. "But we had a runner on third base and they asked me to suicide squeeze. Not only did I put down a soft bunt part way up the first-base line, but the runner scored untouched and I was safe at first." The third fond memory was a pop-up just a bit behind second base in shallow center field. "The second baseman, shortstop, left fielder and center fielder were all converging," Droscher says. "I�m not sure how I got there, but without calling anyone off I caught the ball on the shortstop side of second base." The Black Sox were one-season wonders as players continued their careers here and there. Relief pitcher Derald Wooton was at the tail end of an eight-year minor league career with the Brooklyn Dodgers when the Black Sox picked him up. "They picked me up just for the national tourney and I pitched in a couple of games," says Wooton, who has been a real estate agent in Medford for the past 24 years. Wooton�s value to the team was more as a mentor. He helped O�Rourke break out of a slump and earn MVP honors at the tourney. "He was taking his eye off the ball and free-swinging," Wooton says. "I told him to just make contact. He started to hit to right field and then he started hitting home runs all over the place." Droscher earned all-coast honors the following spring at Oregon State and was named to the U.S. team that played in the Pan American Games at Chicago in 1959. "Why did it last just one year?" ponders Droscher. "I�m not really sure. But it sure was an experience." He subsequently coached high school ball in Sacramento, Grants Pass and Roseburg. His 1976 Grants Pass team won the state championship. He also coached at Treasure Valley Community College in Ontario and started the program at Scottsdale (Ariz.) Community College. In his second year at the Arizona school, his team went to the national tournament. Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA