Published: August 17, 2008 05:05 pm         

Squad made history 25 years ago

Logansport has a deep tradition in baseball with various levels of teams having won multiple championships at the state level.

And it was 25 years ago this month when a Logansport 13-year-old team went deeper into the Babe Ruth League Tournament than any team had ever gone before or has gone since by advancing to the championship round of the Ohio Valley Regional.

To get that far, the Logan squad won an eight-team double-elimination district tournament in Goodland, an eight-team double-elimination area tournament in Carmel and an eight-team double-elimination state tournament in Shelbyville.

Logansport’s run to the Ohio Valley Regional consisted of several close calls. Logan came out of the losers’ bracket in the area tournament at Carmel by defeating Kokomo twice for the championship. It defeated Griffith in the championship game of the state tournament. Griffith came out of the losers’ bracket to force a second game in the championship round, which Logansport won.

“This team really did it the hard way. The team just wouldn't quit,” said the manager of the squad, Dave Long.

At the Ohio Valley Regional at Beckley, W. Va., Logansport lost in the first game to the Illinois state champion. Logan advanced through the losers’ bracket by beating state champions from Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky and the host team before meeting the Illinois state champion again in the final round.

It lost the first of two games in the double-elimination finals, falling a game short of the Babe Ruth World Series.

Long said of Logansport’s run in 1983: “It was one of the most enjoyable and incredible experiences in my 40-year coaching career.”

“They had to win a lot of games against some really tough competition, and they proved that Logansport, Indiana, baseball was as good as baseball in several states we played,” he said.

One of the players on the team, Dan Frye, whose twin brother Dennis was also on the squad, said that he and his former teammates still “reminisce about those days.”

“It was a great time in our lives,” he said. “It was probably the most fun in baseball I ever had.”

Frye added he still hasn’t completely gotten over losing to Illinois in the Ohio Valley Regional.

“I have never forgot about losing to Illinois,” he said. “When I played in college (at Indiana State University) and we played U of I, I usually had it out for them.”

Frye’s son, Clayton, played in the Ohio Valley Tournament a year ago with Logan’s 11-year-old All-Stars, and when the team matched up against a team from Illinois, Frye said “it all came back.”

“Illinois has beaten me out of a lot of happiness. I have quite a resentment for Illinois baseball,” he said.

Not only did the Logan group advance the farthest in Babe Ruth Tournament play, it is the only team that won multiple Babe Ruth state championships, including winning as 15-year-olds and 16-year-olds.

When the group got to high school, Frye said that during his senior year, eight of the nine starters on the baseball team had played on the 13-year-old All-Star team. As seniors, the squad went 29-2, with the only losses coming to Kokomo, one in a non-conference double-header game and one in a regional contest that ousted the squad from state tournament play.

As juniors, along with Mike Farrell, who was a senior at the time and later pitched professionally, legendary coach Jim Turner I said he had the squad “penciled in” for the state finals before the season before injuries to Farrell and Dennis Frye derailed the squad.

Still, Turner considered the Logansport Class of 1988 team, which consisted of the 13-year-olds of 1983, one of the best teams in Logansport High School baseball history, as well as the 1987 team.

“I had about 10 very good teams who could beat each other on any one day,” said Turner, who retired from coaching after winning the state championship in 1991, the last time Logan has won a baseball state championship and the fourth in the school’s history.

Beau Wicker can be contacted at (574) 732-5113 or via e-mail at beau.wicker@pharostribune.com