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    Rain Delayed: A Personal and Collective Recount of the Whitworth Pirates' Journey Through the Naia Baseball Tournament in Sioux City, Iowa: June, 1960
    Rain Delayed: A Personal and Collective Recount of the Whitworth Pirates' Journey Through the Naia Baseball Tournament in Sioux City, Iowa: June, 1960
    Rain Delayed: A Personal and Collective Recount of the Whitworth Pirates' Journey Through the Naia Baseball Tournament in Sioux City, Iowa: June, 1960
    Ebook174 pages2 hours

    Rain Delayed: A Personal and Collective Recount of the Whitworth Pirates' Journey Through the Naia Baseball Tournament in Sioux City, Iowa: June, 1960

    By Linda Merkel Walline

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    Readers will find Wallines chosen narrative style to be much like watching an actual baseball game... capturing the delightful way a fan can come in and out of the action, enjoying the dalliances and diversions of the afternoon as attention drifts and dips with the cadence of the game. Molly Schick



    Just throw strikes. Coach Merkels singular instruction to his pitchers reflected his faith in both the ball players and the game itself. He preferred to let the game play out as it would and trust that if the pitchers threw strikes, the rest of the team would back him up and make the plays necessary to win.

    In June, 1960 Coach Paul Merkel, took that philosophy and his Whitworth Pirate baseball team to the NAIA Baseball World Series in Sioux City, Iowa. With a team composed primarily of a fire-balling right hander, a fiercely talented shortstop and an otherwise diverse potpourri of multi-sport athletes, the Whitworth Pirates made their way from Spokane, Washington to Sioux City on a shoestring budget. Their collective determination and ultimate success is the stuff of which baseball is made and is what lived in the heart of Coach Merkel until the day he died.

    But this is more than just a story about baseball, the devotion it inspires and the sacrifices it demands. It is also a story about family, the maturation of childhood perceptions, and the blossoming appreciation of all that is singular and remarkable about a parent.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateMay 3, 2013
    ISBN9781481743389
    Rain Delayed: A Personal and Collective Recount of the Whitworth Pirates' Journey Through the Naia Baseball Tournament in Sioux City, Iowa: June, 1960
    Author

    Linda Merkel Walline

    As the eldest of Paul Merkel’s five children, LINDA MERKEL WALLINE grew up a typical coach’s daughter, at turns awed by her father’s position as baseball coach and dismayed by the demands and sacrifices that job entailed. She was ten years old when her father and his Whitworth College baseball team journeyed to Sioux City, Iowa for the 1960 NAIA baseball tournament. An otherwise life-long resident of Spokane, Washington, Ms. Walline currently lives in Seattle. She is a 1972 graduate of Whitworth College (now University) where she majored in French and Art. It was during her many years working in the legal field as a paralegal that her interest in writing solidified.

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      Book preview

      Rain Delayed - Linda Merkel Walline

      © 2013 Linda Merkel Walline. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      Published by AuthorHouse 5/2/2013

      ISBN: 978-1-4817-4339-6 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4817-4338-9 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2013907443

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

      and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Table of Contents

      Creating A Champion

      Chapter 1: Rain Delay

      Chapter 2: Spring Fever

      Chapter 3: Ticket Punched

      Chapter 4: Road Trip

      Chapter 5: On Deck

      Chapter 6: Held Up

      Chapter 7: Rubber Match

      Chapter 8: Bringing The Heat

      Chapter 9: Leading Off

      Chapter 10: 0-For

      Chapter 11: Off Speed

      Chapter 12: On The Board

      Chapter 13: Delay Called

      Chapter 14: The Huddle

      Chapter 15: Uniform Misfits

      Chapter 16: In Relief

      Chapter 17: Bases Loaded

      Chapter 18: The Stretch

      Chapter 19: Honoring Their Own

      Chapter 20: Coach’s Prowess

      Chapter 21: Standing Guard

      Chapter 22: Insurance Run

      Chapter 23: Treading Water

      Chapter 24: Banner Raised

      Chapter 25: Off The Hook

      Chapter 26: Home Safe

      Epilogue

      Acknowledgments

      Appendix

      About the Author

      Creating A Champion

      The year was 1960. My father, Paul Merkel, was thirty-eight years old and head baseball coach at Whitworth College (now Whitworth University). He had been head coach since the spring of 1956. During that time, Dad also assisted with the football backfield, served as athletic director, and filled in with any sport that needed his assistance. Whatever needed doing, my father did it. But baseball was his passion, and his ballplayers were family.

      Whitworth is a small Christian college nestled among pine trees, just north of the city of Spokane, Washington. Like many small private colleges, Whitworth had struggled for years following World War II to finance its various athletic programs. In fact, baseball hadn’t been reintroduced until 1948, the first time since 1935 Whitworth fielded an intercollegiate baseball team.

      Those of us in Coach Merkel’s family always knew that baseball was part of my father’s soul, but we didn’t find out until years after his retirement that Dad had been a talented baseball player in his own right, catching for both his high school team and for a local recreation league team in Sprague, Washington. He was good enough that he had his eye on obtaining a baseball scholarship from Washington State University, anticipating that a successful stint at WSU would provide his best opportunity to one day play professional ball. He initiated contact with the head coach and sent letters of reference, including an impressive tally of his accomplishments and leadership positions throughout high school. His efforts were rewarded with an offer to play for the Cougars. I can imagine the elation he must have felt when he signed that letter of intent, realizing his dream to play ball on the collegiate level. But my father had underestimated the strength of purpose with which his mother, a fundamentalist Christian widow and stern disciplinarian, approached the idea of her son attending college. She had forbidden him to play on any summer league team sponsored by a town tavern and had no intention of permitting her son to attend a state university, athletic scholarship or not. No, Whitworth was the college she had chosen for him; the fact that Whitworth did not have a baseball program in 1940 did little to deter her resolve.

      My father loved and respected his mother and was not given to going against her will. His father had died when he was barely twelve years old, leaving him, his mother, and his baby sister to manage their large wheat ranch located between Sprague and Edwall. Ever mindful of the temptations surrounding a young man who was growing up without the advantage of a guiding male figure in his life, Lena Merkel compensated by maintaining strict control over her son’s activities. And so, he turned down the scholarship and the chance to play baseball at WSU and became a freshman at Whitworth College in 1940. I wondered if it didn’t break his heart a little to give up the chance to play the sport he loved so dearly on a collegiate level. But if that disappointment did break his heart, he did not let it break his spirit. Over the next three years my father filled the gap by successfully pursuing letters in football, basketball, and tennis.

      In 1943, his college career was interrupted by a call to serve his country in World War II. He chose to enlist in the navy. After basic training he went on to Chicago, where he completed the officer training program at Northwestern University.

      Having grown to love Whitworth during his previous three years as a student and feeling secure in its Christian atmosphere, Dad chose to return in 1946 after serving his time in the Pacific as a naval lieutenant. This time around, however, he was older and no longer content to yield to the status quo. With the single-minded determination he later displayed as a coach and mentor, he became instrumental in rebuilding Whitworth’s baseball program. At first he served as a graduate assistant in both basketball and football, but finally, in 1948, Whitworth administrators gave the nod to expand the athletic department to include intercollegiate baseball.

      My mother (also a Whitworth alum) and father were married in 1947, a few months after graduation. My mother was as artistic as my father was athletic, but she had grown up in the small mining community of Mullan, Idaho, and appreciated all kinds of outdoor activities, whether it was fishing, hiking, skiing, or baseball. My father always said that it was my mom who pursued and caught him. I never believed that for a moment.

      Newly married and in need of a paying job, Dad jumped at the opportunity to teach and coach at his high school alma mater in Sprague, Washington. He was there for four years before accepting a similar position in Tonasket. However, his years coaching high school athletics proved unexpectedly stressful, both professionally and personally. In 1954, remembering both Whitworth’s fledgling baseball program and the structure and spiritual stability he found at the small Christian college, he decided that the time was right to pursue his masters degree in education, and the natural choice was to do so at Whitworth. It was with that intention that he and my mother packed up their belongings and their three young daughters and returned to Spokane. To help finance his degree program, Dad was given the opportunity to serve as a graduate assistant and later as an assistant coach in football, basketball, and baseball. His first contract of employment at Whitworth specified a whopping annual compensation of $3,450, payable in twelve equal installments. When baseball coach Art Smith resigned in 1956, my father took over as head coach. Three years later, the Whitworth Pirate baseball team enjoyed its first Evergreen Conference Championship.

      Historically, 1960 was a pivotal year for the country as well as for athletics. It was a year that saw the first televised Olympic Games (including the US hockey team’s improbable win over Czechoslovakia for a gold medal), Ted Williams’ 500th home run, and the expansion of professional football to include teams from Dallas and Oakland. But 1960 also ushered in a period of unrest and disillusionment, reflected in literature like Catch 22, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Feminine Mystique. Students were taking to the streets, demonstrating in Atlanta churches and staging sit-ins at colleges around the country to promote their push for civil rights, women’s liberation, and equality. John F. Kennedy was running for president, OPEC was formed by oil-exporting countries in the Middle East, and the USS Enterprise was launched as the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

      It was in this setting that my father, Coach Paul Merkel, fielded his 1960 baseball team.

      001_a_cairo.jpg

      Whitworth Baseball Team – spring 1960. Photo reprinted courtesy of Whitworth University Archives.

      Whitworth Baseball Team Roster

      June 1960

      1:

      Rain Delay

      Rain delay. Just minutes before, the grandstands had hosted a cadre of NAIA officials and spectators willing to brave the elements to watch the championship game. Now those same grandstands stood motionless against the elemental onslaught, their previous tenants having abandoned their vigil and retreated to drier locales. Ballplayers from both teams held their ground, huddling in their respective dugouts … to wait. And wait they would. It was the biggest game of their lives. They weren’t going anywhere until a winner was determined.

      2:

      Spring Fever

      Wind and rain defined most of Whitworth’s 1960 baseball season, dating back to early April. The Pirates hadn’t gotten outside to practice or to scrimmage as a team, nor had their pitchers thrown a single pitch off the mound, before they headed to Seattle for their first games that spring. When they did hit the road, their coach, my father, wasn’t with them. Instead, Ross Cutter, the newly hired men’s tennis coach, stepped in and accompanied the team on their first road trip.

      Ross was an energetic sprite of a man, a California native, much more acclimated to the warmth and sunshine of the Bay area than the cold dampness of a Washington spring. He made quite a spectacle. His long black rain coat flapped like a landlocked raven in the unrelenting

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