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Sidelines Kalani Simpson |
A reunion of
Ruthian proportionsLIKE so many others in this age of information, somehow Byron Reynolds found himself in front of a computer, looking for names. He's older than 50, now, and something was drawing him back to his days as a kid in Hawaii, when for the seventh, eighth and ninth grades he went to school at Radford High.
It was on the Internet that he saw the name of Del Nebeker, a name he knew from many years ago. And then it came back to him, of the summer they played baseball together, and were young.
Soon, the e-mail flew back and forth.
Remember that guy?
Yeah.
Remember him?
Oh, yes.
Remember me?
And it was thrilling, "a real kick," Reynolds said, that after these 43 years each one still did.
That's when the idea came to them that they should track these guys down, get the team together again, and find out what happened to the rest of the members of the 1960 Hawaii Babe Ruth state championship team.
MOST OF THE boys on that team so many years ago were military kids, here a few years and then gone. Together for a brief moment in time. "Mac" McCarthy had played in the Little League World Series with the Hawaii team that made it to Williamsport, Penn., a couple years earlier. Jerry Hibbeler was the team's best pitcher. Bob Apisa, who would star at Farrington and Michigan State, and was drafted by the Packers, and later by show business, could hit it farther than them all. Another local boy on the team, DeRoy Lavatai, was so strong. You could see it.
"You could see he was going places," Reynolds said.
They all were, soon enough.
Nebeker, Ray Rogers and Mark Holmes would play on Radford's league champion football team later that fall. "John Velasco was our coach," Nebeker said proudly. They were his first champions.
Holmes, Hibbeler, Rogers, Nebeker and Dennis Wallace from the 1960 Babe Ruth champs would play on the Radford team that went to the high school state baseball finals in 1961. The Rams wouldn't be back in the championship game again until they won it all in 1979. "I was there to watch that game," said Nebeker, who lives in California now.
Kenny Reynolds, the little brother, the youngest kid on that 1960 state champion team at age 13, would go on to pitch in the major leagues. He played in the show for the better part of four seasons (he made official appearances in six seasons for four different teams), mostly with the Phillies. Today, he's in the Reading, Penn., (the Phillies' Double-A affiliate) Baseball Hall of Fame.
Byron Reynolds found a DeRoy Lavatai on the Internet, but it was Junior. "Our DeRoy," as Reynolds called his old teammate, died some years ago, after living many years in Lake Tahoe, Nev.
Soon after that magical state tournament run, Nebeker said, "My father was transferred to Washington state in June of 1961, so I didn't get to complete my high school years at Radford." When Reynolds first contacted him, he had no idea where any of the other guys were.
The boys of the 1960 Babe Ruth state championship team had scattered like seeds on the wind.
BUT FOR SOME reason that time, that team is still with Reynolds today. It was his last glimpse of Hawaii. He was the first of them to go. "My father had already received his transfer orders," he said. And so when the 1960 Babe Ruth state champions traveled to Utah for the Western States Finals the Reynolds brothers saved the squad some money by making the trip courtesy the U.S. Government.
They were in a hotel, when the team was up late talking story, roasting on cots in some old barracks. When Nebeker and Lavatai were giving leis and kisses to the Utah tournament queen on the late local news. And then they played the games, and lost at last, in the championship game, and then it was over.
"I didn't really get a chance to say goodbye to everyone," Reynolds said. The team was headed back to Hawaii, and he was already gone.
But he can still envision them all, from his home in Massachusetts, the state where he'd moved to that August and he's lived ever since. What happened to them? Suddenly, he needs to know, to see them all again.
"We'll see in time," he said, "how ridiculous an idea it might be."
He and Nebeker are trying to track them all down. "Detective work," he called it with a gentle chuckle. They've found a few, have leads on a couple more. Apisa, the man who makes movies now, has to be "out there somewhere."
Maybe it'll happen, Reynolds said. A reunion of the 1960 state champs, that special group from those fleeting days in the sun. To talk and laugh and remember and tell stories of where they've been all these years. To be a team again, boys again, for yet another brief moment in time.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com