Today is Monday, March 12, 2012. It is the 26,013th day of my journey on planet earth. I weighed 163.2 pounds, did my yoga warm-ups. lifted weights for 10 minutes and walked for 45 minutes which is 2.5 miles. That's my first accomplishment for the day.
I've been expressing my gratitude to some of my teachers at Chatfield Junior and Senior High School the last couple of days - I'll continue today with some others I have positive memories of. Several of my coaches fit that category. Jerry Bernatz was my varsity basketball coach, my sophomore football coach, and P.E. teacher from seventh through tenth grade. Bob Savre was my sophomore basketball coach, baseball coach my last three years, and math teacher for geometry and higher algebra. John Houtz was my junior football coach and Bill Ziebell was my senior football coach. I wasn't the best athlete to go through Chatfield High School but I'm grateful that these coaches felt I had enough ability to let me play.
I got to play guard in basketball, quarterback and defensive back in football (I was co-captain my senior year along with Jerry Narveson and Harold Becker), and catcher in baseball(for three years.) Probably the best thing I could do athletically was be a catcher in baseball. Jerry Narveson and I were the pitcher and catcher for three years. Our sophomore year we were not very good but our last two years we were District 1 Champions and nearly made it to the state tournament - unfortunately Autin beat us in extra innings on a squeeze bunt in the bottom of the 8th inning. Jerry pitched 15 innings that day - he pitched 7 innings in the afternoon when we beat Rochester 6-5 and 8 innings at night when Austin beat us 3-2. Plus he hit a two-run homer against Rochester and a two-run homer against Austin which tied the score and forced extra innings. Jerry had a hell of a fast ball, curve ball and drop ball and when he was on the hitters could hardly get a hit. When he wasn't on a lot of those curves and drops would hit the dirt and I had to try and stop them. I stopped a lot of them but definitely not all - I made quite a few trips to the backstop retrieving my misses. I wonder if some of the old timers in Chatfield today remember those great baseball teams of 1957 and 1958 and the pitcher - catcher duo of Jerry and Pete. I'd like to think they do. Anyway, what good memories Jerry and I have - our wives(Elsie and Ruth Ann)tell us that the tales of our heroics get bigger and better every year - they say they need boots on when Jerry and I start reminiscing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hi Pete. Most of the people that remenbered our baseball team of 1957-1958 have died. Most of the ones left can't remenber last week, say nothing about 50 years ago. And the younger ones don't care. So, maybe we are at an age that we can say we won the State both years? What do you think? Jerry
ReplyDelete