All-Stars Celebrate That Championship Season

McDonald, D. (1983, July 31). All-Stars to Celebrate That Championship Season. Centre Daily Times, p30. 

All-Stars to Celebrate That Championship Season

By DOUG McDONALD

Times Senior Sports Writer

There will be a whole lot of story-telling going on at Governors Park in Bellefonte today starting at 1 p.m.

Members of the Bellefonte Little League All-Star team, which won the state title at Williamsport Aug. 9, 1958, will attend a reunion to celebrate their championship season.

“I wanted to get something started a couple of years ago,” Russ (Bud) Haupt, the team’s assistant manager, said the other day. “I haven’t seen some of the boys in a long time, I thought it would be a good idea to get the whole group together. It’s not so much for the players, but the parents. They went through a lot back then and they were very supportive.”

Rod Mitchell and Charles (Sonny) Fletmake Jr., two of the players 25 years ago, are in charge of arrangements for the shindig.

“We’re expecting about 70 people,” Mitchell said. “We will have 11 players, lots of children, parents, the managers, some friends and two of the umpires who worked our games.

“The parents and the managers are the key people. The two umpires are Vance Dimmick and Ken Larimer. We’ve also invited Don Smith, the present Bellefonte Little League manager. Tony Ficarra, who has been a big booster for many years, also will be there.”

Harold (Pickle) Rossman managed the team and Haupt was his assistant.

The 1958 squad: Mitchell, Fletemake, Mike Ranio, Gary Kellogg, Denny Leathers, Larry Conaway, Ron Howard, Tom Crater, Dan Kahle (deceased), Bill Foresman, Denny Lose, John Sodergren, Barry Burger and Tom Grieb.

“From what we’ve been able to gather,” Mitchell said, “Grieb and Sodergren will be there.”

Leathers and Burger will be involved in a County League playoff game today against Howard and both players plan to attend the reunion after the game.

The ’58 squad beat Bi-County, Nittany Valley and Phillipsburg and then edged Punxsutawney, 1-0, at Clearfield to capture the District 10 title. The Nittany Valley score also was 1-0.

The next stop along the tourney trail was Latrobe, where Bellefonte beat Huntingdon, 7-1, and Brownsville, 3-0, for the Section II crown.

Williamsport was the next stop and the County team tripped Erie Seneca, 5-2, in the state semifinals, scoring three runs in the seventh.

In the title game, Bellefonte scored two runs in the sixth to beat Jessup, 2-1. It marked the first time in postseason play that Bellefonte had been behind in a game.

The regional tournament was played in Staten Island, N.Y., in mid-August and Darien, Conn., eliminated Bellefonte, 4-3. New Hampshire then beat Bellefonte, for the regional consolation honors, 5-2.

The Bellefonte Little League was founded in 1949, thanks to the hard work of people like Ollie Kohlbecker, Frank Webster and Dan Grove. Webster Field, the home of the Bellefonte LL, is named after its late president.

“Our kids behaved well,” Rossman said. “At the regionals, we receive a trophy for being the best-behaved team. I can remember at Latrobe, too. We walked to the dining hall. The other teams ran. The kids made their beds every morning, too. It was a great bunch of boys.

“After we beat State College (Nittany Valley), I thought we had a good chance. They had a real nice team.”

Added Haupt: “The way the kids behaved and the way the people of Bellefonte backed us were two things that impressed me about the whole thing. It seemed like we were having a parade in Bellefonte every week. It was a team that stuck together.”

Leathers, who played pro ball at the minor league level, said: “To me and I’m sure the other guys feel the same way, it was something in our childhood that really stands out. Not every town can say it won a state Little League title. We accomplished it together.

We won the state Babe Ruth League title a few years later with practically the same group. We had a couple of additions, but basically, it was the same gang.

“And I think we proved that what we accomplished 25 years ago was no fluke.”

Today’s reunion at Governors Park should be a storytellers delight. Only the dimensions and ages of the former champs have changed.